Receive the best source of conflict analysis right in your inbox. Between January and June 2005, 1,442 cases of violence against women in the family were registered in Guatemala but in only two murders of women during 2005 was the motive described as violence against women in the family. (18) Cases of Maria A. López Camas and Suly Niseyda Leonardo and Maria C. Menchu Tacan. In the case of 17-year-old Andrea Fabiola Contreras Bacaro who was raped and murdered in June 2004 in Jocotenango, Sacatepéquez, and who had the word "vengeance" carved into her leg, in February 2005 Otto René Argueta was sentenced to 35 years. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del. The Guatemalan government should state that gender-based violence is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. The report examined the extreme brutality of the killings, which are also frequently characterized by sexual violence, and the serious and persistent shortcomings at every stage of the investigative process. They said many young girls run off with boyfriends; and so they couldn't start a search for 24 hours.(2). According to the police Female Homicide Unit by the end of 2005 they had archived 100 cases out of a total of 224 cases of murdered women and girls allegedly due to a lack of evidence because families no longer wanted investigations or witnesses were no longer willing to talk for fear of reprisals. The murder of 26-year-old Clara Fabiola García, witness to the murder of two sisters, 15-year-old Ana Berta and 18-year-old Elsa Mariela Loarca Hernndez on 7 August 2003 in Guatemala City bears testament to the failure of the authorities to guarantee the effective safety of witnesses. The Public Ministry's Witness Protection Programme should be strengthened to guarantee the safety of both witnesses and family members. In the case of the rape and murder of Oliberta Elizabeth Calel Gómez, on 2 April 2005 former police agent Bartolome Teni Cu was sentenced to 60 years 50 years for the murder and 10 years for the rape. Amnesty International welcomes these proposals as a critical step towards the removal of legislation that is discriminatory towards women. In the case of 19-year-old university student Claudina Velsquez who was studying to become a lawyer, her dead body was found on 13 August 2005. On 8 March 2006, three Congressional Commissions issued a joint favourable opinion to a draft amendment which proposes the reform of the Guatemalan Penal Code in relation to violence against women. Amnesty International believes that collection of and reference to such data is a necessary requirement for the development of sound policies to combat gender-based violence. The alarming number of killings and lack of an effective government response has also caught the attention of the international community and prompted demonstrations across Latin America and hearings in the European Parliament and the US Congress. 2 United States,8 explaining that the majority have suffered some type of human right violation.9 These violations mainly correspond to poverty, ethnic and gender discrimination, and generalized violence,10 and Guatemalan children usually leave the country as a direct result of combined factors like deprivation of basic social rights, violence, and family Contradictory and incomplete data relating to the killings of women and girls, including the near total invisibility of gender-based violence in official reports and analysis, continues to prevent the authorities from determining both the extent and the gender-based nature of the violence suffered by the victims. (14) For example see Femicidio en Guatemala: crimenes contra la humanidad, Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG), November 2005, p67-90. From there, media coverage of unarmed black men getting shot began to sky rocket. Lack of protection for survivors of violence against women and girls in Central America Why do they flee? (33) Draft law no. The National Civilian Police (PNC) is the primary law enforcement agency in Guatemala although the military are also involved in law enforcement tasks. In 2006, Guatemala and the United Nations agreed to create the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an independent investigatory body that helped convict more than. The government of President Otto Prez Molina must reboot and revitalise police reform, as part of an overall effort to strengthen justice and law enforcement, with financial support from the U.S. and other countries interested in preventing Guatemala from becoming a haven for organised crime. The UN recommends that a country employ at least 222 police officers for every 100,000 residents. Amnesty International received many reports of cases where police authorities had failed in their duty to take urgent action to prevent injury to women and girls believed to be at immediate risk. The failure to carry out the most basic investigations, properly process the crime scene and protect potential evidence remains evident in numerous cases. Human Rights Ombudsman's Office. (32) Interview with head of the Central morgue, 5 April 2006. That The organization is concerned, however, that four years after the original reform proposal was presented to Congress, and after two previous favourable opinions, without the necessary political will and momentum, these reforms may yet again stall at the approval stage in Congress. (41) In May 2006 the Committee against Torture (CAT) published its concluding observations following the consideration of Guatemala's fourth periodic report. "Impunity" is the issue relatives often refer to as being one of the major contributing factors to the deaths of their loved ones. For example, on 5 June 2006 both the offices of the Women's Sector (Sector de Mujeres), a group of non-governmental women's organizations, and the National Union of Guatemalan Women (Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas) were broken into. This site uses cookies. Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, recruit children who do not attend school or lack adult supervision and protection. While individual autopsy reports may include information as to whether the victim had suffered sexual violence prior to being killed, this information is lost in official statistics from the Forensic Investigation Service. The initiatives in Villa Nueva and Mixco rely on local politicians whose successors may not share their commitment. Still, the country experienced one of the smallest GDP contractions in 2020 in LAC (-1.8 percent compared to a regional average of -6.7 percent). The organisations signing this letter are respectfully writing to remind you of the obligation of the State of Guatemala to comply without delay with the ruling of 2014 of the Inter-American Court of Human Right "Human Rights Defender and Others vs. Guatemala", in which the adoption of a Public Policy for the Protection of Human Rights . Police agents are obliged to take immediate action to locate women who have been reported missing or respond to emergency calls where witnesses report that someone has been abducted. The question is whether his government will be able to muster the resources and will to bolster institutional reform or will rely primarily on militarised crime-fighting operations that provide short-term gains without solving long-term problems. (28) The PDH had previously requested that the Constitutional Court (CC) issue a resolution which would empower the PDH to oversee the investigation of the cases within the Public Ministry, however, the CC responded that this was not necessary as the PDH, in line with article 275 of the Guatemalan Constitution, are already empowered to do so. Since 2007, the CICIG has supported corruption probes that resulted in the indictment of Guatemala's former president and vice president; the [] "Claudina was killed by one thing: impunityClaudina's killer knew that the likelihood of him being found was very remote" father of 19-year-old law student Claudina Velsquez Paíz, murdered on 13 August 2005. (23) See Policía Nacional Civil busca investigadores, El Periodico, 6 January 2006. (34) Article 180 applies to articles 176 and 177 (estupro, sexual activity with a minor) that state that the honesty of the woman or in this case a minor is a basic requirement for establishing the existence of a crime. In October 2005 a hearing was held in the US Congress on the killings of women in Guatemala, during which the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women of the Inter-American Commission spoke as did Guatemalan representatives. Impact of Reporting Gang Activities to Police in Guatemala Nov 10, 2021 Indigenous Discrimination and Danger in the Mexican State of Guerrero There are also encouraging developments within the area of preventive or community-oriented policing. The remaining four cases are cases from outside the department of Guatemala. In April 2006 the European Parliament held a hearing on the killings of women in both Guatemala and Mexico. Nonetheless, there are steps that the government, with international backing, should undertake to ensure that the PNC becomes a professional force capable of investigating and preventing the crime that threatens Guatemalan democracy. However, with the support of women's NGOs some families have become increasingly vocal in their pursuit for justice. (11) Establishing a comprehensive overview of the statistics regarding both the numbers of women killed as well as the identity of the perpetrators is still therefore extremely difficult. Such attitudes coupled with the lack of genuine sanctions for officials who fail to take action to prevent violence against women continues to perpetuate the idea that female victims are to blame for their own deaths and that violence against women is acceptable rather than a violation of girls' and women's fundamental human rights. A previous document from the same unit, however, stated that this figure was 665, of which 195 of the cases were termed as "non-violent" deaths. What significance does CICIGs closure have for the region? Refugees International and Human Rights Watch conducted research on the impact of the ACA in Guatemala in February 2020, investigating the vulnerabilities of transferees and the lack of support for them in Guatemala, as well as their access to the Guatemalan asylum system and its capacity to provide protection to those needing it. The next morning her dead body was found. Amnesty International concurs with other national and international experts that the steps taken by government authorities since have been wholly insufficient to address the scale of the problem. Since 2001 over 2,200 women and girls have been murdered in Guatemala and the rate of murders is on the increase. However, as the data is processed upwards, in order to arrive at wider departmental or national statistics of male and female homicide victims, the female victim will simply be one of those termed "death by gunshot wound". Despite recommendations made by Amnesty International and others, no urgent search mechanisms or comprehensive data collection system of women and girls reported missing have yet been created.