Monitoring Alternative Report from Guatemala to the International Covenant on Civil and Political's rights
CLADEM


INTRODUCTION

1. The United Nations Organization has evaluated the situation of women's human rights for approximately 25 years. Since then, four Women's World Conferences have set the guidelines for the States about the advancement that there should be regarding respect for women's economic, social, civic-political and cultural rights, in every part of the world they live in.

2. Different contexts, histories and levels of development in the vast majority of the world's countries have evidenced that when women elevate their rights, they democratize their societies. On the contrary, if they increase their poverty levels, if the increase in violence and the gender impunity becomes unbearable, if the public representation positions for women decrease, if the discrimination of the indigenous woman is tolerated, and no advances are made in legislations and policies that norm their rights in their favor, then indeed, the countries are drifting away from the minimum desired standards of human development and respect for human rights. Observing the Guatemalan case, it is worthwhile to make three considerations that put into context the framework of women's human rights violations:

a) As a result of 36 years of armed conflict, the effects of the war deepened the structural causes of poverty, discrimination and violence, which affected most the women, the girls and boys and the indigenous people.

b) The process that ended with the Peace Agreements allowed social participation and political proposal spaces that had opportunities of being delved into deeper, if there were a stronger political will on the part of the Guatemalan State regarding the compliance with the Agreements, Pacts and Conventions that it has signed and/or ratified in order to make women's human rights be respected.

c) The return of national security policies and of State representatives -accused of genocide and crimes against humanity- to the space of the executive and legislative powers, close the possibilities and real spaces constructed by women and the social movement in their efforts to create democracies respectful of the human dignity.

3. From this reality, the restriction of women's civil and political rights has limited and restricted the attainment of other rights. Hence, the most recent Human Development Report places Guatemala in the 120^th position, as part of a 170 countries classification, their development ratio being 0.54 for the population as a whole and only 0.17 for women. Next, we are showing a small sample of rights consecutively taken away from women about issues related to gender violence, political representation and participation, discrimination against indigenous women, sexual and reproductive rights, fundamental issues that characterize the present situation of women in Guatemala.

Violence against Women: 

4. To refer to gender violence is to refer to the tolerance levels that exist in our justice systems, regarding the violations of human rights that occur to women. This is so much so, that, in view of the high levels of marital violence, statutory rape, sexual harassment, maltreatment, incest, family violence, death threats, disappearances and kidnapping of women, what we have are judicial practices that are not the least effective, legislation and codes that do not typify or sanction the crimes, justice operators that do not know about international Conventions regarding women's rights, legal systems that condemn the victims and not the perpetrators. Due to this, it is necessary to highlight that, in spite of the women's movement (directed specially to the articulation of institutional mechanisms that contribute to prevent, attend, sanction and eradicate this type of violence) there still are high levels of unconcern regarding the problem on the part of the Guatemalan government. Proof of this are the following facts:

5. In the year 2000, the practices of forced disappearances were re-started, the break-ins into the offices of social organizations -of human rights and women's- violations of women who work in them, death threats and political assassinations, specially of women. The first known case was that of the kidnapping and disappearance of the university professor, Mayra Gutierrez, active member of Guatemala's women's movement. The case was never solved, Mayra is still missing and up to this moment the State institutions in charge of investigating, classify the occurrence as a "crime of passion". Since then, there have been death threats to two women judges in charge of Monsignor Gerardi's case, to a woman magistrate in the Court of Constitutionality, to women attorneys, newspaper women, and human rights defenders, as well as the political assassination of the American Sister Barbara Ford, who was developing mental health programs for the last 23 years for the populations affected by the war.

6. Likewise, chain murders of sex workers, assassinations and rapes of girls, young women and old ladies have been registered, in a tidal wave that is increasing and expressing itself more and more in a permanent manner. In many of the cases that were known through the news media, it was clear that those that died did so because they resisted being sexually raped. In this sense, the Judicial Organism acknowledged that the sexual crimes reached 11% of the most frequent crimes, with an average of two every three days and that child prostitution increased 2% in relation to previous years. On the other hand, the violent entry of armed men and assaults to the headquarters of women's groups and the social movements such as: Mujeres en Solidaridad, Mujer Vamos Adelante, Agrupacion de Mujeres Tierra Viva, Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos -FAMDEGUA- Centro de Estudios, Informacion y Bases para la Accion Social -CEIBAS- constitutes a phenomenon that brings back memories of the high levels of repression that the social movement endured during the military governments.

7. It is necessary to point out that several women have played key roles in the construction of democratic spaces and in the defense of human rights in Guatemala. The women's movement is one of the forces that has let its voice be heard the most and has extended its proposals throughout the country; however, the wave of violence has increased against it in these last two years.

8. On the other hand, it is possible to say that, thanks to the implementation of reception mechanisms for denunciations, we now have -in spite of the sub-registry- data regarding the incidents denounced by women, classified by types of aggression. For example, the Women's Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Public Ministry denounced that only last year 5,029 denunciations of intra-family violence to women and girls; 949 sexual violations and other types of aggression were presented, establishing a ratio of 8 to 1 vis a vis the ones presented regarding women and those of old men and children. The Office for the Defense of Women's Rights, a part of the Human Rights Bureau, received 5,000 denunciations of violence against women, of which 3,484 belonged to intra-family violence in the year 1999. Likewise, press reports inform us that 60% of women's homicides are the result of domestic violence

9. It is also important to point out that in spite of the existence of the Catholic Church's Historical Memory Recuperation Reports -REMHI- and the United Nations' Historical Clarification Commission -C.E.H.- in which the high levels of sexual violence that women suffered during the armed conflict are registered, only one precedent exists: the Massacre of Sanchez' Plan, (Rabinal, 1982) in which the Guatemalan State accepted its responsibility before the Human Rights InterAmerican Court for the crimes of genocide, population assassination and sexual violation of women. Nevertheless, to date, the State has not initiated any type of penal persecution against the responsible persons, nor has it publicly acknowledged the right to remedy these human rights violations, even though there is sufficient proof about women, girls and old ladies that were raped individually and/or collectively before being assassinated.

10. In issues such as rape or sexual harassment, the same situation of the justice system prevails as in peacetime. In the first case, no arrest warrants are issued or they are issued late, the rape attempt is presented as a penal fault, absolutions are handed out or thirteen-dollar fines are charged to the aggressors. One example is the one detected by the United Nations' Mission for Guatemala, in which the arrest warrant was issued two years late. Regarding sexual harassment, the crime is not typified.

11. In a study performed in 15 Guatemalan municipalities regarding women's access to justice, it was detected that women go there in 68% of the cases due to intra-family violence, serious injuries 16%, rape 9%; and that out of 256 women interviewed, 72% did so as the injured party and 28% as accused, mostly of faults and in a smaller proportion of misdemeanors, in such a way that there is a ratio of one woman arrested for every seven men. In the cases of preventive imprisonment, it has been verified that the majority of women -arrested for faults- have surpassed two years (14%) and more than one and less than two (6%) without being subject to trial or judicial process.

12. Guatemala was one of the first countries to ratify the InterAmerican Convention to Prevent, Sanction and Eradicate Violence against Women -Belem do Para (1995)-. As a result of this, the effort of the women's movement managed to establish the Law against Intra-Family Violence, the Regulation that makes it operative and the Coordinator for the Prevention of Intra-Family Violence -CONAPREVI-. All this, however, does not have a coherent juridical framework, which makes the discretion of the justice operators prevail in the treatment of the cases of violence against women and the Executive does not include in its budget funds for the functioning of CONAPREVI.

 

Discrimination against Indigenous Women 

13. The ethnic-cultural oppression of women is the fundamental axis of any gender analysis. According to the 1997 data, Guatemala has a population of 11'241,540, of which 49.52% are women and of these, 51% are indigenous women. There is no situation of the Guatemalan reality in which the indigenous women (as a social group) do not live in the worst levels of discrimination, rejection and poverty.

14. In some regions of the country, there is up to 87.5% of illiterate women, as is the case with the Chuj women. Only 43% of the indigenous women manage to finish their primary schooling, 5.8% finish high school and only 1% goes on to a university. The majority of indigenous women are monolingual in a Mayan language and the State does not implement yet bilingual programs that respond to their cultural needs. The average birth rate is 6.9 children per rural women and it is the highest in Latin America. Other items such as work, health, land, housing or political participation, equally express the high levels of exclusion and discrimination towards the indigenous women. Although there is not too much data, we present some here:

§ 55% of the women that perform domestic work are indigenous women that migrate to the cities.

§ Paulina Manuel, a nurse in the Rabinal Health Center of Baja Verapaz, denounced in February this year that she received a note from the Director of the Institution severely reprimanding her for not using the white uniform to attend the patients, with the argument that by using her dress she was endangering the patients' health. The injured party presented her denunciation as disrespect for her cultural identity.

15. As a result of the Peace Agreements, Guatemala denominated itself as a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country. This definition for a country and a State implies changes in the legislation, in the public policies, in the government programs and in the culture of a nation. Even though the Defense of the Indigenous Woman was created, it does not cover -in spite of its will to do so-, the whole dimension implied in the discrimination against the indigenous women in a country such as Guatemala, a matter that is the task of the entire State infrastructure and the political will of the governing entities.

16. Guatemala subscribed the Agreement on Identity and Rights of the Indigenous People, the Agreement on the Relocation of the Uprooted People due to armed conflict and the Agreement on Social-economic Aspects and the Agrarian Situation as part of the Peace Agreements signed in 1996, which were acknowledged as State Policy by the present President on his Inauguration speech. In these Agreements, the government commits to typifying: ethnic discrimination and the sexual harassment of women as a crimen, and to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women.

17. On the other hand, Guatemala ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1982, as well as the InterAmerican Convention to Prevent, Sanction and Eradicate Violence against Women in 1994 and Agreement 169 of the International Labor Organization, in 1996. Likewise, the ratification of the CEDAW Protocol is in the making.

18. However, congresswomen Rosalina Tuyuc, Manuela Alvarado and Aura Marina Otzoy, belonging to different political parties in Congress, presented in 1998 before this organism, a Bill against all forms of Discrimination in Guatemala. The proposed Bill pretends to sanction the act harder if it is committed against an indigenous person. Such project was at a standstill and did not advance, for of the various legislative commissions that should have issued a legal opinion, only one replied. The weakest link in the chain regarding violation of human rights is expressed in Guatemala by the discrimination and exclusion of the indigenous women.

Political Participation and Representation 

19. The construction of the civil society from groups traditionally excluded and the strengthening of the political representation spaces in the State decision-making process, are issues that concern directly the challenge of the full citizenship of women. From this perspective, the political participation of a larger number of women should be coherent with the political representation that women would assume in high State positions, with the policies, programs and budgets that the Guatemalan government would boost as a priority during the course of their period, from the needs and interests of women.

20. Thus, the World Platform for Action (Beijing '95) proposes that the political participation should be seen as a mechanism to gain control of the situations that affect women, but also as a demand of political will to the governments, interaction without which objectives such as equality, development and peace cannot be achieved.

21. In fact, the post-war Guatemalan context that pretends to construct a society of participation and respect for the human rights, cannot go astray of the premise of democratizing the personal, domestic, family, political-partisan, labor, syndicate, state, media, justice, human rights, social and sectarian spaces, since in the majority of occasions, they constitute, per se, obstacles for women's participation and decision-making.

22. Due to this, the last Verification Report of the United Nations' Mission in Guatemala coincides in pointing out the multiple efforts of the women's organizations in the opening of participation spaces -for a social movement that was only starting 12 years ago-, and that presently has become a generator of new identities, with proposal capabilities before the State, but that in spite of this, it does not achieve major levels of political incidence in the development plans and strategies, in the decision-making and in the monitoring of the public management.

23. It is as of the Popular Consultation, performed in May 1999, that the registry of the voter differentiated by sex is initiated, for which reason it was determined that in the presidential election of that year, only 47% of the women registered for electoral purposes voted, that is, 33% of the women of voting age. In other words, 67% of all women did not vote. A total of 3,328 persons were elected to integrate the municipal corporations; of these, only 148, that is, 4.45% are women and for the total of 330 municipalities in the country, only three female majors were elected, which represents 0.9%.

24. Regarding the degree of political representation at the national level, of the 20 State Ministries, only one minister is a woman, which constitutes 5%; only one woman occupies the position of Presidential Secretary, 8 congresswomen out of 113 seats, which makes it 7% and 7 out of the 22 governor positions are occupied by women. If to this we add the ethnical background of the indigenous women that participate in decision-making positions, we find 1 female minister, 1 governess, 2 congresswomen, 1 sub-secretary and 1 indigenous ambassador. Once again, the degree of female participation does not reflect significantly the management positions held by women in society.

25. The Peace Agreements (Annex I) gave way to the formation of organized groups of women that from their gender identification achieved spaces against violence towards women, changes in juridical norms that discriminated women, organizations of indigenous women that organized themselves to make people respect their linguistic and ethnic ascription, rural women fighting for co-ownership of the land, diverse women working for political participation quotas, for the compliance of the candidates' commitments regarding women, for the educational reform without sexist stereotypes, for the governing Institute of Public Policies for Women, for the re-settlement of the uprooted people and the remedies for the women victims of the armed conflicts. Likewise, indigenous women of different political trends organized spaces of local, regional and national participation to become politically visible from their identities. Never before as today, had the women in Guatemala reached the voice level they now have in social and political participation spaces. In spite of this, the levels of political incidence do not correspond with the efforts undertaken. The State responsibility about including Public Policies and juridical normative from a perspective that includes women integrally, is a major deficiency.

26. The government of Guatemala has not approved: the Electoral and Political Parties Bill, where the women's participation quotas are established, the Law against Sexual Harassment; the changes in the Penal and Penal Processes codes that presently contemplate, among other things, the exemption of the penal responsibility of the aggressor if he marries the injured party after a rape, or if he resolves the matter of his responsibility with the payment of minimal amounts; the Law of Development Councils that constitutes an extremely important environment for women to participate in local government.

27. On the other hand, in spite of the fact that women's organizations contributed to the elaboration of the "Women's National Promotion and Development Policy and the Equal Opportunities Plan 2001 - 2006", until now it is not clear which shall be the application mechanisms at the level of the State organisms, nor the budget to be assigned. Finally, even though the existence of the Women's Presidential Secretariat is something positive, as a first step in the institutional mechanisms to coordinate State organs related to women's situation and condition, it is necessary to clarify that it must be only a transition phase towards the creation of the Institute governing the Public Policies for Women.

Sexual and Reproductive Rights 

28. The lack of access to women's sexual and reproductive rights is intimately related to issues such as violence and discrimination. On that account, the female population's sexual and reproductive health status is clearly one of the indicators that shows the socioeconomic conditions, fair or unequal, that determine the welfare or impoverishment of the population. In this sense, in Guatemala, the too frequent sexual activity implies violence.

29. The Children's Health National Poll of 1995 determined that 13.3% of the women polled had their first sexual intercourse before they were 15 years old, 62% before reaching the age of 20. That one out of every four adolescents 19 years old or younger are already mothers or are pregnant and 18% of the adolescents has 2 or more children, 32.9% give birth to 4 or more children and 12.5% to more than 7. Maternal mortality (190 for every 100,000 born alive) occupied the second place in deaths countrywide in women with ages between 15 and 49 years, 40% of which were due to hemorrhages and 20% for abortion complications.

30. On the other hand, the 1999 data indicates that 54% of the non-indigenous women received information about planned parenthood, compared with only 14.7% of indigenous women. Which implies that 46% of the non-indigenous women and 85.3% of the indigenous women have not had access to information of any kind regarding this subject. Finally, the illiteracy rate in the rural area (80%) coincides with the level of fertility (7.1%) of the persons that have no schooling whatsoever. As far as persons with VHI / AIDS are concerned, there is a sub-registry of 10,512 persons, with a rate of 3 men for every woman infected.

31. The Health Ministry has designed the Reproductive Health National Program, which does not consider women as integral persons with sexual and reproductive rights, but rather only as mothers, as reproductive beings. Several opinions of women leaders have coincided in pointing out that the Program was undertaken without counting with the criteria of the women's organizations and that it seems to focus its proposal in the opinions coming from the Catholic church and not the lay State. An example of this is the disapproval -in the Program- of the emergency birth-control, which contradicts the statistics presented by the Ministry itself regarding maternal mortality.

32. The situation of women's sexual and reproductive rights in Guatemala claims for the pressure of the international community to demand political will and clear public policies in relation with this issue, that determines the levels of violence, discrimination and exclusion that women undergo.

Recommendations: 

1. That the Guatemalan State comply fully with what was ratified in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Belem do Para Convention, the 169 Agreement of the International Labor Organization and that it promptly ratifies the CEDAW Protocol.

2. That the Human Rights Procurer institutionally acknowledges violence against women as a violation of the Human Rights, as established in Vienna's Action Program (1993).

3. The present government must locate the adequate space and the necessary recourses for the effective compliance of the functions of the National Coordinator for the Prevention of Intra-Family Violence -CONAPREVI.

4. The acknowledgement of the State's responsibilities regarding the damages suffered by the victims of armed conflict implies the urgent integral remedy in each one of the cases presented before the Human Rights InterAmerican Court.

5. The Women's National Institute -INAM- as the autonomous governing entity for Women's Public Policies, is a commitment undertaken by the State before the women's movement. It must be complied with with the utmost urgency.

6. The present government must assign the necessary budget to boost the Equal Opportunities Plan 2001 - 2006, for the effective compliance with its goals in favor of the Guatemalan women.

7. In compliance with the Peace Agreements and the Beijing Platform, it is urgent that the Guatemalan State applies positive measures in all the organisms and institutions of the public administration to "increase substantially" the number of women in governmental posts and in decision-making positions. The Electoral Law and Political Parties Project, with Participation quotas for women, must be approved as soon as possible.

8. It is recommended to boost the Women's Integral Health Policies, not just proposals that consider women only as a reproductive being, as is the case with the present Reproductive Health Program.

9. The legislative power must approve the laws against Discrimination boosted by indigenous congresswomen, the laws against Sexual Harassment, the changes to the Penal Code, the Household Workers' Law, the Law of the Development Councils and others that are in Congress in favor of women.

10. It is utterly important that the United Nations assign for Guatemala a Narrator in matters of Human Rights and Violence against Women. The ever so grave situation of violations of these rights merits so.

ANNEX 1: 

SOME OF THE ORGANIZED WOMEN'S GROUPS CREATED AS OF THE PEACE AGREEMENTS, ARE: 

1. The Women's Sector of the Civil Society Assembly. It was created in 1994 in order to participate in the process of peace negotiations. It is a coordination space of several women's organizations all over the country. Its activities have focused basically in strengthening the processes of women's political participation and in making itself strongly felt in the compliance of the commitments regarding women acquired in the Peace Agreements. 

2. The Women's National Forum. It was created in 1998, as a result of the Peace Agreements. It was established as of a governmental agreement of temporary and extraordinary nature. The work performed countrywide by thousands of women developed an acknowledgement of the Forum as the organization that at the national level had the highest levels of participation of women with gender vindications. 

3. The Defense of the Indigenous Women. Several women and indigenous women organizations assumed the responsibility of designing the consensual draft bill. Two years later the Defense was created ascribed to the Human Rights Presidential Commission, a matter that does not give it much autonomy. Presently, it is strengthening its structures and programs. 

4. Women's Presidential Secretariat. After the present government committed itself with the women's movement, to the creation of the Women's National Institute -INAM- as a State policy in favor of women, it only approved a Presidential Secretariat that depends on the Executive. The women's movement still awaits and demands the creation of a governing entity of public policies for women. 

 

Some changes to the juridical norms after the Peace Agreements 

a) Approval of the Law to Prevent, Sanction and Eradicate Intra-Family Violence (Decree 96 - 97)

b) Modifications to the Civil Code (Decree 80 - 98)

c) Dignifying and Women's Integral Promotion Law (Decree 7 - 99)

d) Incorporation of the concept of co-ownership in the Land's Fund Law (Art. 20)

e) Approval of the Regulations to make operative the Law to Prevent, Sanction and Eradicate Intra-Family Violence (Governmental Agreements 831 and 868 - 2000)

f) Creation of the National Coordinator for the Prevention of Intra-Family Violence and Violence against Women (CONAPREVI)

g) Consensual formulation of the "National Policy for the Promotion and Development of the Guatemalan Women and Equal Opportunities Plan 2001 - 2006"

 

ANNEX II

Bibliographical Notes

[1] Report on Human Development 2000. United Nations Organization, 2000.  Mundi-Prensa, pages 159 - 160.

[1] Human Development Index and Women's Development in Guatemala Index, 1998.  The Economic Dimensions of Gender at the End of the 20^th Century.  Human Development Notebooks.

[1] Report on the Human Rights Situation in Guatemala during the year 2000.  Group of Mutual Support -GAM-. Guatemala, 2001.

[1] Op. Cit. GAM, 2001.

[1] Communiqués of the Organizations and press reports.

[1] Women's Office of the Public Prosecutor. Statistical Report of the Department of Guatemala on Intra-Family Violence. Public Ministry. Guatemala, 2000.

[1] Centro de Estudios, Información y Bases para la Accion Social (CEIBAS). Instruction Module.  Contextual introduction to the problem of intra-family violence.  Integral Analysis of Violence in the Family.  Educating processes for male and female Justice Operators.  Public Ministry. July 2000.

[1] Siglo XXI newspaper, February 4th, 2001. Guatemala.

[1] Human Rights' Legal Action Center Reports -CALDH- Guatemala, May 2001.

[1] Verification Mission of the United Nations in Guatemala -MINUGUA- Supplement to the Tenth Report on Human Rights. Justice Functioning.  Guatemala, January 2000.

[1] USAID Justice Program.  Diagnosis on the Impediments to Women's Access to Justice in 15 Municipalities of the Republic of Guatemala.  December 2000.

[1] Interviews with the Women's Prevention Center's Directress.  May 2000.

[1] CALDH.  National Report on the Situation of the Guatemalan Women's Human Rights.  Updating of the Report presented to the Human Rights InterAmerican Commission, on its visit in loco to Guatemala from August 6 to August 11, 1998.  Guatemala, 2000.

[1] MINUGUA. Verification Report. The challenges for the participation of the Guatemalan women. 2001.

[1] Op.cit. CALDH 2000.

[1] PNUD. Report on Human Development. Guatemala: the including force of human development.  Guatemala, 2000.

[1] Defense of the indigenous women. Interviews.

[1] Op. Cit. MINUGUA, 2001.

[1] Asturias, Mercedes. Studies on the Social-Political Participation of Rural Women in Power.  Mujer Vamos Adelante Association. Guatemala, 2001.

[1] Association of Women Medical Doctors.  Integral Focus on Human Sexuality Project.

[1] Mother-Child National Poll 98 - 99.

[1] Prensa Libre March 19, 2001. Guatemala.