Rigoberta MenchúTum is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist,feminist,and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchúhas dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996),and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.
JoséEfraín Ríos Montt was a Guatemalan military officer,politician,and dictator who served as de facto President of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods in the long-running Guatemalan Civil War. Ríos Montt's counter-insurgency strategies significantly weakened the Marxist guerrillas organized under the umbrella of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) while also leading to accusations of war crimes and genocide perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army under his leadership.
Kʼicheʼ are Indigenous peoples of the Americas and are one of the Maya peoples. The eponymous Kʼicheʼlanguage is a Mesoamerican language in the Mayan language family. The highland Kʼicheʼstates in the pre-Columbian era are associated with the ancient Maya civilization,and reached the peak of their power and influence during the Mayan Postclassic period.
General Fernando Romeo Lucas García was a military officer and politician who served as the 37th president of Guatemala from July 1,1978,to March 23,1982. He was elected as the nominee for the Institutional Democratic Party. Elections for his presidency were fraud-ridden. During Lucas García's regime,tensions between the radical left and the government increased. The military started to murder political opponents while counterinsurgency measures further terrorized populations of poor civilians.
Human Rights in Mexico refers to moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour in Mexico,and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. The problems include torture,extrajudicial killings and summary executions,police repression,sexual murder,and,more recently,news reporter assassinations.
The Guatemalan genocide,also referred to as the Maya genocide,or the Silent Holocaust,was the massacre of Maya civilians during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) by successive US-backed Guatemalan military governments. Massacres,forced disappearances,torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilians at the hands of security forces had been widespread since 1965,and was a longstanding policy of the military regime,which US officials were aware of. A report from 1984 discussed "the murder of thousands by a military government that maintains its authority by terror". Human Rights Watch has described "extraordinarily cruel" actions by the armed forces,mostly against unarmed civilians.
The International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala was an international body charged with investigating and prosecuting serious crime in Guatemala. On January 7,2019,the agreement between the United Nations and Guatemala was terminated by Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales,evoking CICIG's alleged participation in illegal acts,abuse of authority and acts against the constitution. The UN rejected this unilateral termination,and the country's highest law court ruled against the president's decision. CICIG's term was scheduled to end in September 2019. Morales' decision,approved by the country's business elite,triggered an institutional crisis in Guatemala,as the Constitutional court sided with CICIG. Morales is being investigated concerning his campaign financing.
Frank La Rue is a Guatemalan labor and human rights law expert and served as UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression,from August 2008 to August 2014. Along with American Human Rights attorneys,Anna Gallagher and Wallie Mason,Mr. La Rue is the founder of the Center for Legal Action for Human Rights (CALDH) and has been involved in the promotion of human rights for over 25 years. He was nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize by Mairead Corrigan,Northern Irish peace activist and 1976 laureate. Mr La Rue was previously the executive director of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Europe. He has also served as Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information at UNESCO.
Human rights in Liberia became a focus of international attention when the country's president,Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,was named one of the three female co-winners of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize,all of whom were cited "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work".
Sara Susana del Valle Trimarco de Veron,or Susana Trimarco,is an Argentinian human rights activist,whose efforts to combat human trafficking and corruption have been recognized internationally. After the 2002 disappearance of her daughter,who is believed to have been kidnapped by a human trafficking network,she spent years searching for her daughter,and started a foundation to support victims of sex trafficking. Her lobbying is credited as bringing corruption and government impunity to the fore in Argentina,a discussion which led to a 2011 law banning the advertisement of sexual services in newspapers and magazines.
Violence against women in Guatemala reached severe levels during the long-running Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996),and the continuing impact of that conflict has contributed to the present high levels of violence against women in that nation. During the armed conflict,rape was used as a weapon of war.
In July 2005,in an abandoned warehouse in downtown Guatemala City,Guatemala,delegates from the country's Institution of the Procurator for Human Rights uncovered,by sheer chance,a vast archive detailing the history of the defunct National Police and its role in the Guatemalan Civil War. Over five rooms full of files containing names,address,identity documents,were brought to light.
The Secretariat for Multidimensional Security of the Organization of American States is a part of the General Secretariat,which is headquartered in Washington,D.C.,United States. The Secretariat for Multidimensional Security has a mandate to promote cooperation between Organization's Member States,Inter-American and international organizations,as well as with entities such as the United Nations and its subsidiaries,in order to analyze,prevent,confront and respond to security threats.
Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar is a judge and the president of one of Guatemala’s two High Risk Court Tribunals. She was the presiding judge in the case of Efraín Ríos Montt,a former dictator of Guatemala. In that trial Montt was found guilty of the genocide of indigenous Ixil Mayans;the verdict came in 2013. The trial was the first time a national judiciary tried a former head of state for genocide in his home country. However,on May 20,2013,the Constitutional Court of Guatemala overturned the conviction,voiding all proceedings back to April 19 and ordering that the trial be "reset" to that point,pending a dispute over the recusal of judges. Officials have said that Ríos Montt's trial will resume in January 2015.
Almudena Bernabeu is an international attorney,writer and co-founder and director of Guernica37 International Justice Chambers,Almudena Bernabeu was the director of the Transitional Justice Program at the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) until 2017. She is the winner of the 2015 Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award.
Nadia Murad Basee Taha is an Iraqi-born Yazidi human rights activist based in Germany. In 2014,as part of the Yazidi genocide by the Islamic State,she was abducted from her hometown of Kocho in Iraq and much of her community was massacred. After losing most of her family,Murad was held as an Islamic State sex slave for three months,alongside thousands of other Yazidi women and girls.
Thelma Esperanza Aldana Hernández is a Guatemalan jurist and politician who served as President of the Supreme Court from 2011 to 2012 and as attorney general from 2014 to 2018.
Human rights is an issue in Guatemala. The establishment of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala has helped the Attorney General prosecute extrajudicial killings and corruption. There remains widespread impunity for abusers from the Guatemalan Civil War,which ran from 1960 to 1996,and Human Rights Watch considers threats and violence against unionists,journalists and lawyers a major concern.
The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad "for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict," according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee announcement on 5 October 2018 in Oslo,Norway. "Both laureates have made a crucial contribution to focusing attention on,and combating,such war crimes," according to the award citation. After reading the citation,Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen told reporters that the impact of this year's award is to highlight sexual abuse with the goal that every level of governance take responsibility to end such crimes and impunities.
