Guatemala

Through its groundbreaking Inform Women, Transform Lives campaign, The Carter Center partners with city leaders worldwide to raise awareness about women’s right to access information and to help cities reach women with valuable information and essential municipal services. 

Access to this information empowers women with a stronger voice, enabling them to participate in public life, utilize public services, and make more informed decisions for themselves, their families, and their communities. In Guatemala, the project has partnered with the city of Guatemala City.

The Carter Center has partnered with civil society organizations to strengthen access to information and justice across four Guatemalan departments — Alta Verapaz, Chiquimula, Quiché, and Sololá.

Impacts

• Built strategic partnerships with national government entities — including the Ombudsman for Indigenous Women, the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman, the Ministry of Education, and the Secretariat of Women — to increase awareness of rights at the state level.
• Provided technical assistance to 17 local governments to enhance transparency, improve public information offices, and help citizens access information through government websites and information kiosks.
• Convened youth observatories (2021–2023): Four groups of 20 young leaders monitored local government activities, advocated for equitable services, and promoted women’s access to information and rights.
• Assessed gender equality policies (2024): Evaluated the effectiveness and relevance of government plans to ensure women’s access to justice in Alta Verapaz, Chiquimula, Quiché, Guatemala, and Sololá — identifying key gaps and opportunities for reform.

How It Started

The Carter Center was part of the Organization of American States’ observation missions to the 1999 presidential elections in Guatemala — the first since the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords. In 2003, the Center sent its own delegation to observe the presidential, congressional, and municipal elections.

Our Work and Methods

·   A small Carter Center delegation observed Guatemala’s 2003 electoral process, focusing on human rights and campaign finance issues, and concerns about voters’ access to the polls, access to the media and public resources for all political parties, and significant pre-electoral intimidation and violence.

Impacts

The Center noted significant problems with the 2003 electoral process, including:

• Inadequate preparation among some election officials
• Disenfranchisement of many voters because of problems with voter lists
• Limited investigation and prosecution of election-related crime
• Widespread incidents of vote buying and intimidation·      

On a broader scale, the 2003 elections demonstrated an urgent need for full protection of all human rights; economic justice for rural and Indigenous people; legislative action, including campaign finance reform; and comprehensive civic education programs.

How It Started

An acute political crisis in the months before the 2015 general elections generated domestic and international concern about the voting process and results. The Guatemalan Supreme Electoral Tribunal invited The Carter Center to send a small, high-level political delegation to witness the Sept. 6, 2015, general elections.

Our Work and Methods

• The delegation did not constitute an electoral observation but rather was an expression of the international community’s strong interest in Guatemala’s democratic process.
• The team met with magistrates, political party officials, civil society organizations, private-sector representatives, and others to encourage them to carry out their duties based on respect for the rule of law and democratic institutions.

Impacts

• The Carter Center’s delegation found an extraordinary climate of peace and civic commitment despite the complex political moment in the country’s history.
• At the Center’s urging, citizens voted in record numbers, achieving the highest turnout since Guatemala’s transition to democracy in 1985.

This project ended in 2015.

How It Started
Although Latin America spends relatively less on defense than most other regions, expenditures on expensive weapons systems divert scarce foreign exchange from more effective investments and compel neighbors to spend more on defense and, by doing so, generate international tensions.

Our Work and Methods
Concerned about an arms race in Latin America, the Carter Center’s Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Americas urged governments in the region to pause before embarking on major arms purchases.

Impacts

• Between April 1997 and March 1998, 28 current and 14 former heads of government signed a pledge to accept a moratorium of two years on purchasing sophisticated weapons.
• Guatemala President Alavaro Enrique Arzu Irigoyen and former President Vinicio Cerezo were among the signatories.

How It Started

In 1986, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the late philanthropist Dominique de Menil created the Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize to promote the protection of human rights worldwide. The $100,000 prize was awarded periodically to individuals or organizations for their outstanding efforts on behalf of human rights.

Our Work and Methods

The Carter-Menil prize was awarded in 1986 to Grupo de Apoyo Mutua and, in 1990, to the Consejo de Comunidades Etnicas Runujel Junam.

• Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM) was created in June 1984 by relatives of the disappeared in Guatemala to determine the fate of missing family members by making inquiries of the government, filing habeas corpus petitions, and denouncing disappearances in local and international forums. By denouncing executions, kidnappings, and torture, they placed themselves at the same risks.
• The Consejo de Comunidades Etnicas Runujel Junam was formed by a group of Mayan Indian peasants with the assistance of schoolteacher Amilcar Mendez Urizar in July 1988 to monitor and defend human rights and fundamental freedoms. The group’s objectives included disbanding the massive civilian patrol system, educating the rural populace about human rights, and seeking legal redress for victims of abuse.

Impacts

• From 1986 through 1994, the Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize enabled activists to continue their work and focus global attention on their struggles for justice.
• “Perhaps this prize will inspire the recipients to do even more heroic things,” President Carter said at the 1988 ceremony, “and perhaps it will inspire others to reach full greatness, as they have done, even at danger to their own freedom and even existence.”

How It Started

Guatemala’s hot and humid coastal plains were among the areas most severely affected by onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. In 1996, The Carter Center began supporting the national programs of all six endemic countries in the Americas. Guatemala alone accounted for more than 40% of people at risk in the region, with the disease threatening more than 500 of the country’s poorest communities.

Our Work and Methods

Mass administration of the drug Mectizan^® (donated by Merck & Co. Inc.) had been the primary strategy for the national elimination program since 1991. But after Guatemala’s public health services were decentralized in 1994, The Carter Center absorbed the River Blindness Foundation, and Guatemala’s Ministry of Health was able to resume treatment activities.

In the four focus areas — Central, Escuinta-Guatemala, Huehuetenango, and Santa Rosa — intensive treatments were followed by post-treatment surveillance and then three years of monitoring, during which black flies and blood samples were tested for evidence of onchocerciasis.

Impacts

• By 2014, all surveillance and monitoring activities is completed in the four focus areas.
• In 2016, the World Health Organization confirms that Guatemala has eliminated river blindness.
• As a result of national leadership and strong partnerships, permanent blindness from the disease no longer is a threat.

This project ended in 2016.