Conflict Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) and Transitional Justice in Guatemala

Abstract

Preface Guatemala is a paradigmatic case of long-run efforts to punish perpetrators for conflict-related crimes of sexual violence during armed conflict. Truth commission reports published after the internal armed conflict ended in 1996 collated survivors’ testimonies and detailed the scale of atrocities carried out against the civilian -mainly rural, Mayan- population by the Guatemalan state. In the wake of these initial transitional justice efforts, and in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, survivors and human rights activists subsequently built domestic and transnational coalitions and fought to secure convictions in domestic courts for crimes committed during the internal armed conflict, including genocide, forced disappearances, torture, murder, and rape and sexual slavery. In this report, Guatemalan anthropologist Irma Alicia Velásquez details the extent to which truth commission reports in Guatemala addressed conflict related sexual violence (CRSV), and the subsequent efforts of survivors and their allies to document CRSV, raise awareness, build solidarity and safe spaces, and pursue accountability for these crimes. Over time, transnational synergies between the emerging international agenda to confront CRSV and legal developments in Guatemala to support victims of past and present gender violence were able to effect meaningful institutional changes, including specialized courts and prosecutorial services. The results of painstaking struggle by survivors, women’s organizations, human rights activists and their allies were significant: the ground-breaking Sepur Zarco trial of 2016 described in this report was the first case in the world where a national court was able to successfully prosecute perpetrators of sexual slavery which occurred within an internal armed conflict, using national legislation and international criminal law. A second case of CRSV against Maya-Achí women heard in the domestic courts followed the in