[By Grahame Russell, September, 2005]

Almost one year after its 10-year peacekeeping mission - MINUGUA - closed its doors, the United Nations has again decided to address the chronically bad human rights situation in Guatemala, this time by establishing OACNUDH (Guatemalan Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights).

The human rights (HR) situation in Guatemala is seriously bad. All HR - economic, cultural, civil, political and social - are violated with next to complete impunity. Repression continues unchecked; exploitation and poverty are normal; racism against the Mayan majority is normal; gender violence against women and girls is normal.

The political and legal systems do not, for the most part, work. In most important ways, Guatemala is not a democratic country, is not governed by the rule of law.

Protection and support are needed for environment, development, indigenous and women leaders across the country working courageously in defense of all HR and for the establishment of the rule of law and the proper functioning of all political institutions of a real democracy. Yet, I fear that the presence of OACNUDH will weaken the HR and institution building work that needs to be done here.

MINUGUA
Beginning in the mid 1990s, ending formally in 2004, the UN had a large operation in Guatemala. The mission of MINUGUA (United Nations Mission in Guatemala) evolved from the monitoring of human rights commitments during the "peace talks", to disarmament and reintegration of the guerilla forces, to the monitoring of the implementation of the "peace agreements", with a focus on the justice system, citizen participation at all levels of government, and equitable development.

Much of the work MINUGUA was to do was well conceived of. Civil society invested much hope and energy into working with MINUGUA. Some of what MINUGUA accomplished was helpful in the short-term - i.e., providing a HR presence that helped to partially break the silence and fear that had characterized the country since the worst years of genocide and repression.

Yet, the underlying causes of endemic HR violations - and indeed of the armed conflict - remain. Repression and impunity, as well as systemic violations of economic, social and cultural rights, continue; all of this despite (or because of?) the fact that approximately one billion dollars was invested by the so-called "international community" in the limited peace process.

Given the pending opening of OACNUDH, it is urgent to have a critical understanding of what MINUGUA was not able to do to end power-abuse and impunity in all of their dimensions.

MINUGUA'S findings and recommendations were non-binding and non-enforceable. Thus, in a very real sense, MINUGUA's presence provided a veil of respectability and a protective wall of impunity to cover-up entrenched non-democratic and abusive structures.

Throughout MINUGUA's time in Guatemala, repression continued widespread (again, without even addressing the issue of poverty as systemic violations of ESC rights). While MINUGUA documented repression and impunity in regular reports, little changed.

Moreover, and importantly, the flow of "aid" and investments from international "development" and investment institutions continued unaffected. Much of the "aid" and investments not only strengthened the position of human rights abusers but also contributed to the endemic violations of economic, cultural, environmental and social rights.

MINUGUA left Guatemala without accomplishing its most important objective: ending the power abuse and impunity of the powerful economic, military/ security and political sectors.

THE 'WHO' IN MINUGUA
On another note, while many serious people worked in MINUGUA - receiving very high salaries compared with the vast majority of Guatemalans -, many hired by MINUGUA did not have the appropriate background and knowledge to work on HR in a country such as Guatemala, barely recovering from genocide, where poverty and racism are endemic.

This matter of 'whom' the UN hires - and pays high salaries to - is not an idle complaint. These decisions are taken in a context in which local human rights and community leaders and activists are unable to undertake key human rights work and actions, not only for fear of on-going repression but also for lack of resources and political backing.

By their very establishment, MINUGUA (and now OACNUDH) create an elite, well-funded human rights bureaucracy, one more often than not unfamiliar with and divorced from the every day reality and struggle in the communities plagued by structural abuses of power, and one that will soon head off 'to the next mission'.

As with the United Nations mission in Ell Salvador (ONUSAL) of the 1990s, many Guatemalans referred to MINUGUA as the "Vacaciones Unidas" (United Vacations).

CICIACS
Even before MINUGUA left the country, community-based groups and HR NGOs were calling for the UN to establish CICIACS (Commission to Investigate Illegal Bodies and Clandestine Security Apparatuses).

The very conceiving of CICIACS was an admission that power-abuse and impunity were endemic in Guatemala and that the work of MINUGUA had not succeeded. Unlike MINUGUA, or any other UN body I know of, CICIACS was conceived to have enforceability. CICIACS was to investigate the policies and actions of the Interior and Public Ministries, the Presidential High Guard, and the Public Prosecutor's Office as government entities possibly involved with "clandestine" groups in the commission of human rights violations and crimes. The decisions made by CICIACS were to be binding and carried out by the Public Prosecutor's Office.

To no one's real surprise, the CICIACS proposal is shelved, even as some courageous community based HR groups and NGOs continue to demand for it establishment.

Hiding behind the excuse that Guatemala could not allow an outside body to carry out functions that the legal institutions of the country are supposed to carry out, the powerful sectors of Guatemala rejected CICIACS because it would have had binding legal authority and the enforcement mechanisms to back it up.

The so-called "international community" - particularly Guatemala's major northern partner governments, the US and Canada, as well as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank, etc. - did not in any way insist on the establishment of the CICIACS.

WEAKENING HUMAN RIGHTS WORK
How did the UN respond to this situation? Did it put its full weight behind the establishment of CICIACS? No. Rather, as approved by the Guatemalan Congress in May 2005, the UN agrees to set up OACNUDH with the utterly weak mandate to serve in an "advisory capacity" to the Guatemalan State in matters related to HR.

This is wrong. It is not "advice" concerning HR issues that is needed in Guatemala. For close to 30 years, mainstream organizations of the so-called "international human rights movement" have been investigating, denouncing and giving advice to the Guatemalan power holders about HR violations and impunity. Their reports could fill a library.

I hope I am wrong, but I fear that OACNUDH will:

- document a wide range of HR violations, probably focusing narrowly on certain political and civil rights;
- stick to a traditional and narrow 'state-centric' approach in its HR work, considering only the actions/ in-actions of the Guatemala State, with respect to HR violations, and not consider the actions and impacts of other actors on HR, including global mining companies, international hydro-electric dam projects, the on-going role of the United States in arming, funding, providing intelligence to and collaborating directly with Guatemalan police and military 'security' forces;
- identify patterns and structures of impunity, again as related only to violations of certain political and civil rights, not as related to poverty (violations of many human rights) and not as related to the actions of global "development" institutions and private sector businesses and investors;
- make recommendations to the government, and its various agencies and branches, with respect to the political and civil rights violations and impunity;
- publish reports for the "international community", including the UN, OAS, etc;
- provide jobs, high salaries and privilege to its staff.

And that will be it. The worst outcomes of this scenario are the following:

- the UN will - in effect - provide assurance to the powerful sectors in Guatemala and the "international community" that HR will continue to be dealt with in a non-binding, non-enforceable way;
- HR will be dealt with in a way that will have no impact on the relations that the government and powerful economic and military/ security sectors maintain with their international partner governments - principally the US and Canada; no impact on their relations with the WB, IDB, IMF; no impact on their relations with international investors and companies, such as mining and hydro-electric companies;
- the UN will once again provide false hope to the Guatemalan population and the Guatemalan human rights movement, that the structural situation of power abuse and impunity might change - when it won't;
- the UN will provide a mask of respectability and good governance, a false demonstration of the supposed 'good faith' efforts of the Guatemalan government and the "international community" to improve the human rights situation, while in effect facilitating the abuses;
- the UN will again undermine and dis-empower community-based and nationally-based HR NGOs - let alone international solidarity groups and NGOs -- that will either put their faith in OACNUDH, or - if they are skeptical or critical - will be marginalized by the attention that will be given to the work of OACHUDH.

I hope I am wrong. I hope the UN will set up OACNUDH and hire the right people and empower the office to take HR work in Guatemala to places that the UN has never wanted to go.

The people of Guatemala and indeed millions of people across the planet, especially in the exploited countries of the global south, really need the United Nations to take global HR work in directions it has never yet gone to.

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Grahame works for Rights Action / Derechos en Accion, a non-profit organization based in Guatemala, funding and working with community based development, environment, human rights and emergency relief organizations in Guatemala, Chiapas, Honduras, Haiti and beyond. info@rightsaction.org. www.rightsaction.org.