Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
victims filed a suit against the Guatemalan government for denial of justice with
the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
In addition to officially marking the end of hostilities between leftist insurgents
and the Guatemalan government, the UN-brokered 1996 peace accords estab-
lished a starting point from which to address historical grievances leading to the
conflictandbegintheconstructionofamoreequitablesociety.Fromthestart,the
agreements established a fact-finding mission known as the Historical Clarifica-
tionCommission(CEH)toinvestigateculpabilityforwartimeatrocitiescommit-
ted largely against the country's Mayan population. The CEH and an independ-
ent wartime inquiries body created by Guatemala's Catholic Church, the Recu-
peration of the Historical Memory Project (REMHI), blamed the vast majority
of atrocities on the army, with some violations also committed on the part of the
guerrillas. Since the findings, many family members of victims of the civil war
have sought to bring to justice those responsible for crimes against humanity, in-
cluding genocide, torture, and illegal arrest. Because of the inadequacies of the
Guatemalan judiciary, many have been forced to seek recourse in international
courts, as in the case of the suit filed in a Spanish court under universal juris-
diction by the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation against eight government officials
accused of crimes against humanity.
The accords also created an ambitious framework for reestablishing the rule
of law as the country returned to peacetime while also seeking to address the
war's underlying causes. In this regard, agreements were reached in the follow-
ing areas: human rights, socioeconomic and agrarian issues, the strengthening of
civilsocietyandtheroleofthearmyinademocraticsociety,andrightsandiden-
tity of indigenous peoples. Interestingly, these were negotiated by the establish-
ment of a consensus among various sectors of society working with the Guatem-
alangovernmenttohavetheirinterestsanddemandsaddressedatthenegotiating
table.
The first accord in the long process of negotiations dating to 1991 was the
Human Rights Accord, signed in March 1994. While human rights were already
guaranteed on paper in the 1986 Constitution, the accord was significant in that
it created a new mechanism for ending their systematic violation via a UN veri-
fication mission known as MINUGUA.
The Accord on Socioeconomic and Agrarian Issues officially recognizes
poverty as a problem and hints at government responsibility to ensure the well-
