Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala

Join the Guatemala Accompaniment Project
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What We've Accomplished!

Guatemala Accompaniment Project (G.A.P) staff has trained and placed more than 145 human rights monitors in returned refugee and internally displaced communities, with human rights organizations, and with genocide survivors since the project first began in 1995.
Due to heightened security concerns around the visit of the Spanish investigative commission to Guatemala in June-July 2006 (see information about the Guatemalan genocide case before the Spanish courts for background), G.A.P. mobilized sponsoring communities to support four former accompaniers to return to Guatemala to provide "emergency accompaniment" to communities and individuals under threat.
Responding to a request from massacre survivors, in 2000 we began expanding our accompaniment work to cover nearly 20 communities of survivors and eyewitnesses who risk their lives by charging former Guatemalan dictators Efraín Ríos Montt and Romeo Lucas García along with their military high commands with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
In 2000, when the UN threatened to pull its human rights monitoring mission out of Guatemala, NISGUA accompaniment volunteers gathered testimonies from rural communities affected by political violence. These declarations, which were submitted to the UN, attested to the communities’ profound desire for a continued UN presence. As a result of our efforts, along with those of our colleagues, the UN’s mandate was extended for an additional three years.
As the human rights situation in Guatemala declined under the 2000-2004 FRG administration and Guatemalan social justice organizations suffered an increasing level of threats and attacks, city-based activists asked for international accompaniment. NISGUA responded by forming a two-person Organization Accompaniment team in 2001 which has accompanied forensic anthropologists at exhumation sites, lawyers and witnesses in precedent-setting legal cases, as well as a number of prominent human rights organizations.
Twelve years after the 1990 stabbing of Guatemalan anthropologist Myrna Mack, three intellectual authors of her assassination were brought to trial. The Myrna Mack Foundation requested an extraordinary level of accompaniment during the legal processes against the highest ranking military officials to ever face trial in Guatemala for human rights issues. NISGUA responded with two full-time accompaniers for the six-week-long process, as well as a number of shorter-term accompaniers from Sponsoring Communities and U.S.-based NISGUA staff

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print \| close window Join the Guatemala Accompaniment Project ............................................................................................ What We've Accomplished! Guatemala Accompaniment Project (G.A.P) staff has trained and placed more than 145 human rights monitors in returned refugee and internally displaced communities, with human rights organizations, and with genocide survivors since the project first began in 1995. Due to heightened security concerns around the visit of the Spanish investigative commission to Guatemala in June-July 2006 (see information about the Guatemalan genocide case before the Spanish courts for background), G.A.P. mobilized sponsoring communities to support four former accompaniers to return to Guatemala to provide "emergency accompaniment" to communities and individuals under threat. Responding to a request from massacre survivors, in 2000 we began expanding our accompaniment work to cover nearly 20 communities of survivors and eyewitnesses who risk their lives by charging former Guatemalan dictators Efraín Ríos Montt and Romeo Lucas García along with their military high commands with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In 2000, when the UN threatened to pull its human rights monitoring mission out of Guatemala, NISGUA accompaniment volunteers gathered testimonies from rural communities affected by political violence. These declarations, which were submitted to the UN, attested to the communities’ profound desire for a continued UN presence. As a result of our efforts, along with those of our colleagues, the UN’s mandate was extended for an additional three years. As the human rights situation in Guatemala declined under the 2000-2004 FRG administration and Guatemalan social justice organizations suffered an increasing level of threats and attacks, city-based activists asked for international accompaniment. NISGUA responded by forming a two-person Organization Accompaniment team in 2001 which has accompanied forensic anthropologists at exhumation sites, lawyers and witnesses in precedent-setting legal cases, as well as a number of prominent human rights organizations. Twelve years after the 1990 stabbing of Guatemalan anthropologist Myrna Mack, three intellectual authors of her assassination were brought to trial. The Myrna Mack Foundation requested an extraordinary level of accompaniment during the legal processes against the highest ranking military officials to ever face trial in Guatemala for human rights issues. NISGUA responded with two full-time accompaniers for the six-week-long process, as well as a number of shorter-term accompaniers from Sponsoring Communities and U.S.-based NISGUA staff print \| close window