Who we protect

We now accompany several social movements, among which are those who are searching for the truth about Guatemala's civil war, for compensation, reconstruction and respect for the war's victims, those who are fighting against the repression of defenders of human rights, and those raising issues concerning environmental degradation and access to land.

Exposing environmental abuses

• Continued accompaniment of the Madre Selva Collective, Friends of Izabal Lake, the Indigenous Municipality of Sololá and the Mayan Foundation (Fundamaya) whose work exposes the negative impact of illegal exploitation of forestland and natural resources, and of mega-projects (open air mining, hydroelectric projects etc.) on indigenous communities; these are the most common forms of environmental damage and illegal expropriation of communal lands.

Fighting impunity: supporting grassroots organisations

• Continued accompaniment of members of the National Coordination of Guatemalan widows (CONAVIGUA) in Quiché, Chimaltenango, Guatemala and Las Verapaces Departments.  Since the 1980s CONAVIGUA has been involved in the exhumation of clandestine cemeteries from the ‘dirty war’ period.

• Protection for two grassroots lawyers organisations: Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) and the Indigenous People’s Council Runujel Junam (CERJ), which have received threats related to their investigative work on new repression mechanisms by illegal security and para-state bodies.

Empowering women: protecting female human rights defenders and supporting female victims of violence

• Together with the human rights section of the Attorney’s Office and some Guatemalan women’s organisations, PBI is taking part in a joint initiative to provide protection services to female lawyers’ associations taking to court cases of women who have been murdered or who have suffered death threats as a result of their human rights work.

Upholding and strengthening indigenous land rights

Land concentration and the lack of acknowledgment of ancestral land rights is one of the main problems affecting indigenous people in Guatemala and is an important root cause of the armed conflict.

• Shadowing community groups working to gain legal rights to long-term occupied land in marginal areas of Guatemala City.

• Accompaniment of the Verapaz Union of Campesino Organisations (UVOC) which works to empower indigenous people in their access to land rights in the Alta and Baja Verapaz regions, well known for the presence of large cash crop plantations for the international market.  UVOC’s Director has suffered intimidation, persecution and death threats.

Exposing the negative impact of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)

Protection to individuals and organisations in the areas of Ixil (Quiché), San Marcos, Petén, Izabal, Sololá and Las Verapaces involved in exposing the negative impact of CAFTA, foreign investment and trade on communities.  As noted above, these activists are among the most targeted since their work poses a threat to large economic players.