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Past ICTJ Activity

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In a 1999 report, the UN-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification estimated that 200,000 people were killed or disappeared during Guatemala's 36-year internal armed conflict. The Commission itself registered 42,275 victims, including men, women, and children. Some 23,000 were victims of arbitrary executions and more than 6,000 were victims of forced disappearance. The overwhelming majority of the victims (83 percent of those who were fully identified) were indigenous Mayans. The Commission concluded that acts of genocide had been committed in at least four regions of the country. To provide guarantees for non-repetition and respect for human rights, the Commission recommended that those responsible for abuses should be brought to justice by the Guatemalan authorities and that a reparations policy should be promoted to dignify victims.

Building Domestic Capacity for the Prosecution of International Crimes

During 2003 and 2004, the ICTJ worked closely with the Attorney General's Office to build the technical capacity of those investigating past abuses. In July 2003, the Center organized a week-long course for prosecutors and a shorter one for members of the judiciary. Following the trainings, the ICTJ carried out a technical assistance program, evaluating the capacity of the Special Prosecutor's Office (SPO) charged with prosecuting these crimes and advising on possible improvements. An expert on investigating and prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity made three visits to Guatemala and spent five weeks working with the SPO.

The Center continued to evaluate opportunities to strengthen prosecutorial efforts made possible by the new government, elected in November 2003. When the new government assumed office in January 2004 and named a prominent human rights leader to head the Presidential Commission on Human Rights, a former ICTJ senior associate advised the government on the practical aspects of a justice and reconciliation policy.

In late April 2005, the Center submitted a written report to the recently appointed Attorney General and new Prosecutor for Special Cases on Human Rights. The report detailed the capacity-building work that had been done in 2003 and 2004, and set out specific recommendations for improving the investigations process in preparation for the prosecution of international crimes. In late 2005, the Attorney General's office requested from the ICTJ ongoing technical assistance and continued follow-up on the Center's earlier work.

Reparations

In 2003, ICTJ Research Director Pablo de Greiff and another staff member met with and provided feedback and advice to members of a civil society organization involved in designing a proposed reparations program. In October of that year, Dr. de Greiff was invited to Guatemala by GADRES, a group of international agencies working to support the reparations process in Guatemala. On that occasion, Dr. de Greiff participated in a seminar on reparations and met with the commission set up to develop and implement a reparations program outlined by a political agreement between the government and civil society sectors.

Dr. de Greiff returned to Guatemala in July 2004, to discuss reparations issues with different stakeholders in the country, including high-level government officials, civil society groups, and the National Reparations Commission (CNR) and its staff. In those discussions, he provided general conceptual guidance and pointed out specific areas of concern for the viability of the process.

The National Reparations Program (PNR) is a body that was created to carry out the CNR's policies. At the request of the PNR director, ICTJ Senior Associate Lisa Magarrell traveled to Guatemala in March 2005 to work with five divisions of the Program's technical team. There, she provided feedback and comparative references for the team's work on developing specific reparations measures, producing written comment on and conducting workshops with each of four program areas. In conjunction with another consultant, Ms. Magarrell addressed a meeting of the technical team leaders and wrote a report for the CNR summarizing her findings. During this mission, she also met with GADRES and later provided extensive reference materials to the PNR at their request.

In April 2005 Ms. Magarrell returned to Guatemala, again at the request of the PNR director, to lead a two-day workshop for the Program's technical team. The objective of the workshop was to discuss PNR's progress, identify problem areas encountered in the process of integrating various reparations measures, and focus on economic compensation issues.

Since then, despite the government's pledge to provide financial resources, the reparations process in Guatemala has seen slow progress due to various political factors and the challenges of implementing a reparations program. In late 2005, the Guatemalan government moved to restructure the process.

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Background

Guatemala is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural nation with some 24 different linguistic communities. The country's history is marked by the marginalization of the indigenous population, military rule, and a 36-year internal armed conflict. Estimates place the human toll of the conflict at 200,000 deaths and disappearances, with somewhere between 500,000 to 1.5 million people displaced internally or seeking refuge in other countries. More than 669 massacres have been documented. The fate of many of the disappeared continues to be unknown.

After a lengthy peace process, a UN-brokered peace agreement was signed in 1996 between the government and the Revolutionary National Unity of Guatemala (URNG). The agreement covered a range of issues—from demobilization and reintegration of the guerrilla forces, to respect for human rights, resettlement of the displaced population, dissolution of civil defense patrols, steps toward resolving land tenure issues, and strengthening of the judicial system and civil society.

An unofficial truth-seeking process sponsored by the Catholic Church, called the Recovery of Historical Memory project (REMHI), issued a report in April 1998 that analyzed some 7,000 interviews with victims and attributed responsibility for more than 90 percent of the atrocities documented to the army. Two days after the report was published, REMHI's leader, Bishop Juan Gerardi, was murdered. While this case eventually resulted in a few convictions, legal proceedings continue to this day. When domestic prosecutions failed to achieve justice, some turned to international forums, including the Spanish courts and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which ruled against the government on a number of cases in recent years. In October 2005 the Spanish Constitutional Court ruled that genocide and crimes against humanity committed during the Guatemalan dictatorship and internal armed conflict could be prosecuted in Spanish courts under universal jurisdiction provisions in Spanish law.

The Guatemalan peace accords also included the creation of a Historical Clarification Commission that—operating with a mixed Guatemalan and international staff—collected testimonies throughout the country and presented its report in February 1999. Its resounding conclusion that acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and other violations of human rights and humanitarian law had occurred, was contested by the government. As a result, many of the report's recommendations languished along with prosecutions for serious human rights abuses. However, some cases are still under investigation or pending prosecution in national courts, and victim organizations have continued to press for justice.

During the administration of Alfonso Portillo of the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), concessions were promised to former civil defense patrols—which at one time numbered some 500,000—following violent protests by its members. The Historical Clarification Commission found that the patrols were responsible for some 18 percent of human rights violations and acts of violence, and that they often acted in concert with the army, which was found responsible for some 85 percent of the abuses. Following Portillo's commitment to the civil defense units, a lengthy and unproductive process to provide reparations to victims of human rights abuses finally culminated in an agreement among civil society, victims' groups, and the government to create a National Reparations Program. In May 2003 the agreement led a governmental decree establishing the program.

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(Updated June 2008)