Accord. Negotiating rights: The Guatemala peace process

Accord - An International Review of Peace Initiatives is published by Conciliation Resources (CR), a London-based service and support organisation for national or community-based peace and conflict prevention initiatives.
This article is intended as a primer for readers unfamiliar with Guatemala. It provides a brief introduction to the history of the country prior to 1987, when the broad peace process is widely perceived to have started. The history of the process itself and of Guatemala since 1987 is not covered in this article, but is outlined at the back of the issue, in the chronology and key actors sections.
The Guatemalan civil war began after the failure of a nationalist uprising by military officers in 1960. It formally ended on 29 December 1996 with the signing in Guatemala City of The Agreement on a Firm and Lasting Peace. While there are no reliable figures on how many people died in this war, current estimates suggest around 180,000. In addition, 40,000 people ‘disappeared’ during the conflict, over 400 villages were completely destroyed, at least 100,000 became refugees in neighbouring Mexico, and a further million were forcibly displaced within the country. Guatemala’s population is currently estimated at around 10 million.
The signing of peace agreements in 1996 ended 36 years of civil war between the Guatemalan government and the Marxist rebel army, Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit.
The peace process went beyond an arrangement between armed groups, allowing regional and civic actors to advance their concerns on issues of social justice, political power-sharing and the rule of law.