Guatemala
Sexual violence was systematically used against Guatemala’s Mayan Indigenous communities, who were subjected to genocide, during the internal armed conflict from 1960 to 1996. The conflict left more than 200,000 people dead, 50,000 missing, and entire communities displaced. Women and girls were specifically targeted through rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual violence intended to destroy family structures, erase Indigenous identity, and terrorise communities into submission.
Despite the establishment of a now-defunct national reparation programme in 2003, survivors have spent decades without adequate reparations, and many have passed away without ever receiving justice or recognition.
We started our fight for justice many years ago. We thought we would receive nothing in return, but for the first time I feel that something is coming. We dreamed of this moment for so long.
In October 2024, the Global Survivors Fund launched the Guatemala Global Reparations Study, entitles Nos quitaron todo menos la dignidad (“They took everything from us, except our dignity”). Developed between 2023 and 2024, with the participation of over 60 survivors from diverse regions, the study identified survivors’ priorities for reparation, including land restitution, economic support, access to culturally relevant health services and psychosocial care, education for survivors and their descendants, and memory and dignification measures. In addition to emphasising the importance of preserving Indigenous culture, the study shone a light on the plight of the LGBTQIA+ community – whose suffering as victims of sexual violence during the conflict has long remained invisible and under-researched.
In 2025, GSF began co-designing an interim reparative measures project with survivors from Mayan communities across the country, in partnership with the Centro para la Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos (CALDH) and Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial (ECAP). The project will provide individual and collective measures to an initial 200 survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, with future expansion foreseen.
Alongside these efforts, GSF continues to support national advocacy and explore avenues to provide technical support to State authorities in the provision of administrative reparations, ensuring that survivors’ voices remain at the centre of all reparation processes.
