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 to increase awareness of rights at the state level. 
• Provided technical assistance to local governments to enhance transparency, improve public information offices, and help citizens access information. 
• Convened young leaders to  monitor local government activities, advocate for equitable services, and promote women’s access to information and rights.
• Evaluated the effectiveness and relevance of government plans to ensure women’s access to justice.

The Carter Center sent teams to observe elections in Guatemala in 1999 and 2003, focusing on human rights and campaign finance issues, 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. The 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. 

Amidst an acute political crisis, 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. 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. At the Center’s urging, citizens voted in record numbers, achieving the highest turnout since Guatemala’s transition to democracy in 1985. 

More information about these elections is available in our publications section. 

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. Between April 1997 and March 1998, 28 current and 14 former heads of government — including Guatemala’s — signed a pledge to accept a moratorium of two years on purchasing sophisticated weapons. 

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

In 1986, the prize was awarded to Grupo de Apoyo Mutua, an organization formed to determine the fate of the disappeared during Guatemala’s civil war. In 1990, the Consejo de Comunidades Etnicas Runujel Junam, an organization of Mayan Indian peasants who fought for human rights, received the award. 

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.” 

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.  

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

Impacts 

All surveillance and monitoring activities completed in 2014 

River blindness elimination confirmed by World Health Organization in 2016 

This project ended in 2016.