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Cody Phillips
Professor Kay
JRN 447
11 January 2016
Justice in Guatemala
On their way home from a Mother’s Day service at their church in Guatemala City,
Griselda, her mother and brother suddenly jumped out of the way as a blue car cut in front
of them. Leaping from the car, a man grabbed 13-year old Griselda and sped off, leaving
Griselda’s family only to scream for help. Mother and brother tracked down a police car and
scoured the streets of a nearby high-crime neighborhood until they finally found the blue
car, with Griselda and one of the men inside. Tearfully, she admitted that she had been
raped at gunpoint.
After arresting the driver of the car who was still at the scene, and filing a report, the
police informed Griselda’s parents of the legal process to convict the driver and took him
into custody. Her parents understood, however, that the police force wouldn’t be tracking
down the other two perpetrators—for lack of resources, for lack of training or for lack of
follow-through from superiors. Thankfully, Griselda’s parents were able to contact an
international justice organization called the International Justice Mission (IJM), which
provided assistance, social workers, and investigators to help Griselda and her family
through the trial. IJM’s private investigator tracked down the remaining two perpetrators,
their social workers remained with Griselda and the family during the trial and convictions
for all three perpetrators, and they ultimately proclaimed a resounding victory for the
justice in Guatemala.
An evangelical Christian nonprofit organization based in Washington D.C, the
International Justice Mission works in Guatemala and sixteen other nations to “rescue
thousands, protect millions and prove that justice for the poor is possible,” in the words of
their mission statement. As demonstrated in the case of Griselda, they specialize in
partnering with state police forces, judicial system officials, attorney general’s officers and
others, in order to halt human rights violations and provide security and hope for the poor
and underprivileged who are the most at risk of being taken advantage of. They have
changed the course of the lives of hundreds of families like Griselda’s with this strategy, but
their close partnerships and reliance on national governments set them apart from other
nonprofit organizations. Specifically in Guatemala, where political upheaval and corruption
has marked the country for decades, IJM faces the extraordinary task of providing their
services in a way that actually promotes change in the midst of a broken system.
Since 2005, when they established a field office in Guatemala, IJM has worked to
provide resources—such as attorneys, private investigators, and social workers—and
training—to equip police officers for criminal investigation and evidence collecting—to
families that need them, with the goal of “transforming the justice system in Guatemala.” As
in the case of Griselda, the ideal result is providing hope for a better tomorrow.
Sean Litton, the Senior Vice President of Justice Operations at IJM noted to the
Newport Beach Independent in May 2015, “the first order of business was helping Griselda
with her trauma and fear. Through hours of gentle, loving therapy, an IJM social worker
helped Griselda work through her trauma. Griselda began to recover. She began to smile
and laugh again. She began to grow strong again.”

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This is the heart of the Mission. Founder Gary Haugen stated in a speech at Fuller
Theological Seminary in November 2014 that the central doctrine that drives IJM’s work is
the understanding that “God is passionate about the world and passionate about his
people,” a sentiment which comes from the gospel of Matthew in the Bible. As ministers of
this creed, IJM’s staff work to spread God’s love to the voiceless, the disenfranchised, and
the impoverished through their work to reform justice systems internationally.
In Guatemala, IJM has already achieved some preliminary successes in addressing
the systemic sexual violence and abuse as they have pursued this mission. According to
their website, they have lobbied for better legislation, which culminated in the 2009
passing of a law that strengthened the definitions for trafficking and sexual assault crimes,
and increased the penalties against perpetrators.
Additionally, they have partnered with UNICEF to create better standards for
investigation and prosecution of crimes against children (a standard which was issued by
the Guatemalan Attorney General), and used this standard to train prosecutors in this new
policy under the supervision of the Guatemalan Public Ministry.
IJM has partnered with local authorities and is continuing to work with them to lead
a training course of all Guatemalan judges on a new Protocol—passed by the Guatemalan
Supreme Court in 2013—which mandates how judges are to treat children in sex cases.
They utilized information gained from experience gained in cases such as Griselda’s to
advocate and train judges in the use of a “Gesell Chamber,” which enables judges to discuss
issues related to the case with children in a separate, safe space, outside of the courtroom
and away from their attackers. These methods, according to Sean Litton, have already
become regular practice in the country, thanks to IJM’s continued partnership with the
Attorney General.
Finally, and most recently, they received permission in 2014 to begin training and
overseeing the National Police Sex Crimes Unit, a unit that was established in 2012 to
investigate and handle all sex crimes in the nation
While IJM has seen some successes in their partnership with the government, as
well as achieved successful results for hundreds of victims, their pledge to working with
government operatives, police officers and justice system officials has posed some
struggles when applied to Guatemala.
To be sure, Guatemala is a nation rife with opportunities for IJM to work. Holly
Burkhalter, a special adviser and former Vice President of Government Relations and
Advocacy at IJM writes on devex.com as a part of their Democracy Matters campaign, that
“when IJM began working in Guatemala ten years ago, sexual violence against women and
children was commonplace, but prosecutions and convictions of perpetrators were
extremely rare. In a five-year review of court files, IJM discovered that only 5.6 percent of
36,166 complaints of sexual assault cases — of adults and children — ever reached a
verdict in the Guatemalan courts.”
Because of such rampant abuses, the Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC)
calls Guatemala “the most dangerous place for women in all of Latin America” in its 2007
report on violence in Guatemala. More than 3,000 women have been murdered since 2000,
665 of which were killed in 2005, and fewer than 2% of such cases ended in convictions.
Mario Aguilar, an El Salvadoran by birth who now works for Children’s Hunger
Fund, an evangelical aid organization based in Southern California that works in
Guatemala, has experienced the situation in Guatemala first-hand for over three decades.

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He acknowledges that the social and political situation in Guatemala is significantly more
complex than IJM may even realize.
“In Guatemala,” Aguilar states, “there is a unique layer of corruption within the
country. You will see that the people in power do not have checks and balances or
accountability, so they can largely do whatever they want. And this is very connected to the
fact that civil wars have destroyed the infrastructure of the country.”
Because military power has historically reigned in Guatemala, high-ranking
government officials hold much more authority than in most democracies. The citizens,
who are supposed to provide this accountability, have been entirely unable to collectivize
and create change, as the majority of people are simply struggling to survive due to the
gang control of society.
Aguilar continues, “The gangs and cartels are in government. They are controlling
government officials, through their incredible amounts of resources, because the
government is weak and corrupt.”
A UN report released in September 2015 by the International Commission Against
Impunity in Guatemala found that 25% of campaign funds in this most recent election came
from organized crime. And Laura Carlsen, an expert on Latin American politics at the
Center for International Policy, reported in an October interview with CCTV America, that
“[that number] could be just the tip of the iceberg, because it’s very difficult to track these
kinds of things,”
“They say not only that 25% is from organized crime, but that the majority is from
drug traffickers. In addition to that, some 50% is from contractors, both illegal and legal
contractors. So, the majority of financing to Guatemalan political parties is from illegal
sources.”
It is within this corrupt environment that IJM has been seeking to work for the past
10 years, with scattered results, but admittedly, limited systemic change. Change may be on
the horizon, however.
In October, governmental corruption came to a head, as President Otto Pérez Molina
resigned and forced his cabinet and Vice President to resign as well, after months of citizen
protests and public demonstrations. All of this came on the heels of an investigation by the
UN-sponsored International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which
revealed Pérez Molina’s involvement in customs fraud, racketeering and bribery.
In reaction to this blatant corruption at the highest level, the country elected Jimmy
Morales, an evangelical Christian running on a “Christian nationalist” platform, with no
previous political experience, who made his name as a television comedic actor. His
platform is distinctly different than his predecessor and his opponents as he was elected as
a political outsider, and ran on the campaign slogan “Neither corrupt nor a thief.”
Both the CICIG’s report and the resulting peaceful transfer of power to Morales are
encouraging signs for the country, and for IJM, as the first step towards weakening the
cycle of corruption is empowering the general public and restoring democratic processes.
The Carter Center’s statement on the recent election stated, “these elections serve as
the starting point for necessary institutional transformation to enable the country to
overcome the structural problems of the party system, enhance the credibility of the
branches of government, and ensure a real strengthening of institutions that may be able to
respond to the legitimate demands of society.”

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Morales’ election demonstrates the first time in decades where the national public
spoke out and showed up to the polls to create change. This change only came about,
because of the CICIG, which has worked in Guatemala since May 2007 with a mandate to
“support the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the National Civil Police, and the other State
institutions in the investigation of crimes committed by members of illegal security forces
and clandestine security structures.” They discovered the corruption in Pérez Molina’s
administration, reported on it, and empowered the national public to act on it to hold their
leaders to account.
Now, the country stands ready for change.
Isaura Escobar, the Executive Director and Legal Representative of Roca de Ayuda—
an evangelical Guatemalan NGO that works to provide medical and nutritional assistance
throughout Guatemala—contextualizes the public sentiment.
“This guy is not corrupted, he’s not tainted. He comes from a political party, but he
stands alone, apart from the corrupt regime.”
Not only does the public trust Morales and stand behind him in his efforts at
reforming the government, but Escobar has also seen a different attitude towards working
with NGO’s.
“With the past administration, interaction between the government and NGO’s was
very minimal. But, I see that changing with this new President.”
And Escobar doesn’t just sense this change, but has actually been invited to meet
with the President himself in order to discuss possible legislation or governmental action
in order to allow for greater NGO involvement in the country. Morales’ administration
seems dedicated to partnering with domestic and international NGO’s in his pursuit of
reform. So IJM stands to benefit greatly from this new stance towards NGO’s, and towards
evangelical institutions in Guatemala.
Stanley Katz, a Professor of International and Domestic Philanthropy at Princeton
University, however, provides a word of caution.
“Police, judges, and government officials are all expressions of the state, and carry an
allegiance and connection to that state. When the system is so saturated with corruption—
as Guatemala’s government has historically been—reform is often very difficult.“
With that being said, IJM’s past success, the successes of the CICIG, and the recent
election of Jimmy Morales provide a glimmer of hope for IJM’s pursuit of justice in
Guatemala.
After all, as Mario Aguilar reminds, “The priority of any justice system fix must be on
creating a layer of accountability. And that can only come by empowering local citizens to
carry out this accountability on their government. Because they will do the work for the
long term. That is the only resolution that I can see.”