It aims to provide security, protection and psychosocial support tools to more than 70 environmental and territorial defenders.
Designed after a series of listening sessions, it proposes a methodology that focuses on reflection and action, and facilitates the appropriation of skills and knowledge.
Environmental and land defenders, along with their families and communities, face serious and constant risks. They are criminalised, persecuted, attacked, and even killed. In addition, they are often targeted by stigmatisation and smear campaigns that seek to undermine support for their causes and the work they do.
Specific skills and knowledge in security, protection and psychosocial support are crucial to help them act more effectively and safely. In order to strengthen these capacities, a training process for human rights defenders in Guatemala has begun.
This process is a central part of the strategy of the ‘Standing Together for Land and Environmental Defenders’ (STAND) initiative, which aims not only to strengthen defence, protection and prevention strategies, but also to reinforce the capacities of defenders to demand compliance with environmental and land legislation and policies. It also seeks to promote the creation of norms and policies that guarantee their rights, while expanding financial resources to respond to the risks they face.
A proposal built by and for defenders
The training proposal has been designed after a series of listening sessions, which brought together defenders from different regions of Guatemala to identify their interests and needs.
The programme, which will be implemented in the coming weeks, consists of four thematic modules to be developed in eight workshops.
Around 70 defenders, belonging to more than 14 peasant and indigenous organisations in Guatemala that face territorial conflicts for which they are threatened and criminalised, will participate in the process.
The first workshop will focus on the structure and functioning of the Guatemalan political system, seeking to strengthen historical understanding in order to identify opportunities and actions in context. The second workshop will address human rights and administrative and jurisdictional mechanisms, providing legal tools for the protection of territories and communities from internal and external threats. The third workshop will offer comprehensive protection strategies (physical, digital and psychosocial) to mitigate risks, strengthen community resilience and promote self-care in contexts of vulnerability. The training will conclude with a workshop on digital tools and communication strategies to make the struggle of defenders visible, while protecting their personal and community data.
For Elisa Wiener, programme officer at ILC LAC, the current political context, in which the Guatemalan government is more open to dialogue with rural and indigenous organisations, is a key moment to carry out this training process. In this sense, she points out that ‘by providing tools and promoting greater capacities, both the defenders and the organisations they represent will be able to strengthen their voices and strategies to leverage the commitments that the government has made to address the country's agrarian crisis’.
One more step in the struggle for land and environment
‘We came to learn but also to unlearn,’ says Angélica, a defender from a community near Quetzaltenango.
‘A lot of the knowledge we are learning in this first meeting we have never heard before and it is very important for our causes. But we must also unlearn some of the ideas that have been imposed on us if we want to defend our rights’, she explains. Together with her compañera Oralia, they hope to be able to take their learning back to the organisation - especially to other women - ‘to be able to make demands on governments and raise our voices’.
The beginning of this process marks a milestone in the efforts of ILC LAC and its allied organisations to support and accompany the struggles of those who defend the environment and the territory, betting on working together to continue sowing hope and resistance.
To learn more about this training process, follow us on our social networks, where we will share highlights of this valuable experience.
About the STAND initiative
The STAND initiative is designed to respond to the call of environmental and land defenders to strengthen prevention strategies, especially those from underserved and underrepresented communities in places with weak governance. It is a joint effort promoted by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Alliance for Land, Indigenous, and Environmental Defenders (ALLIED), and is implemented in Guatemala by the International Land Coalition LAC, in partnership with the National Land Coalition of Guatemala and Trocaire Guatemala.