Danida-SP-ToC14-Guatemala

Most of the root causes to the civil war that ended in 1996 after 36 years are still not resolved today. Agro-export and extractive industries continue to be the main priorities for the Guatemalan economic development model, which according to all available evidence leads to high levels of conflict and benefit only the economic and political elite in the country. Although ranked as a lower middle income country, 59% of the population lives in poverty and 28% in extreme poverty. According to UNDP, 50% of Guatemala’s indigenous children suffer from severe mal nutrition. In addition, Guatemala has the second highest inequality rates in Latin America, with only 260 individuals holding more wealth than the rest of the population altogether. At the same time, domestic resource mobilization (DRM) is among the lowest in the world, which means that basic human rights and services such as health and education are left unattended. Guatemala e.g. only spends 3,2% of its GDP on education, which is generally of poor quality, monolingual and blind to cultural difference, while countries with comparable economies invest a larger share on education. The level of poverty reaches 79% among Guatemala’s indigenous populations that account for almost half the population. Indigenous peoples, women and youth are particularly exposed to violations of human rights, unemployment and exclusion from political participation and access to social services. Guatemala shows extremely horrific statistics when it comes to femicides and violence against women and perpetrators rarely face trial. In recent years, the space for civil society has narrowed and criminalisation of civil society and attacks on and threats against human rights defenders are increasingly common. Against this context, Oxfam IBIS will prioritize the following two objectives for this programme in Guatemala: Specific objective 1: Empowerment of civil society alliances to dialogue with private sector and government in order to find common ground for evidence based reform proposals to increase progressive domestic resource mobilisation and pro-poor public spending on e.g. education in Guatemala. Specific objective 2: Capacity development of women’s, youth and indigenous peoples’ leadership and organizations to enhance their voice and influence on concrete policy changes related to business & human rights, Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), access to justice, quality education, job creation, and elimination of violence against women.