45 thousand reasons to approve Bill 3590

Guatemala has the highest number of disappeared people in all of Latin America.  Forced disappearance is the ‘arrest, imprisonment, kidnapping, or any other type of detention on the part of agents of the government, or people or groups who act with authorization, support, or acquiescence of the government, including ongoing refusal to recognize said detention or to disclose the fate or location of a disappeared person, thereby denying that person due protection of the law.’

According to the report of the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), 45 thousand people were disappeared during the internal armed conflict, indicating that disappearance was a systematic practice in Guatemala.  The victims were male and female farmers, civil society leaders, students, professors, political leaders, religious leaders, and children.

Lack of a meaningful political response

Repressive government policies aimed at noncombatants were made common knowledge by a national report by CIDH that covered 1981-1983, as well as the reports of the CEH and the Interdiocese Project for Recovery of Historial Memory (REMHI).

The facts are self-evident, yet the government still has not formulated a policy that responds to the pleas of families of the disappeared.  In the absence of government action to investigate the whereabouts of the disappeared, civil society organizations and family members – usually wives, daughters, sisters, and mothers – have worked for disclosure for years and met some success.  Their actions have proven that there are various means to establish what has become of the disappeared, if the will exists to undertake them.

In December, 2006, Initiative 3590 was presented before the Guatemalan national Congress.  It calls for the creation of the National Commission for the Search for Victims of Forced Disappearance and Other Forms of Disappearance.  This initiative was the fruit of the labor of civil society groups, primarily the Working Group Against Forced Disappearance (GDTF), that worked with support from international organizations.  GTDF is a collection of groups that includes the International Center for Investigation on Human Rights, the Mutual Aid Group, the Association of Family Members of Detained and Disappeared People in Guatemala (FAMDEGUA), and the Foundation for Forensic Anthropology in Guatemala (FAFG).

The initiative has been approved by two legislative committees: Legislation and Constitutional Items (in March, 2011) and Public Finances and Currency (in August, 2007).  Even so, the rest of the legislature has been totally indifferent to requests for investigation into the whereabouts of the disappeared, and Initiative 3590 still has not been granted a place on the legislative agenda for discussion by Congress.

The 36 years of the internal armed conflict in Guatemala left inestimable damage in its wake through political violence and the death, displacement, disappearance, and abuse of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children.  This humanitarian initiative would answer the pleas of the families of the 45 thousand people who disappeared during the internal armed conflict.  This is why we are trying to convince legislators that this initiative must be approved.  If we unite our voices, we can achieve its approval.  This would be a major step toward healing some of the damage that, along with other human rights violations, affected the lives of so many people, families, and communities.

Working Group Against Forced Disappearance

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