Guatemala can be considered a vanguard country in ensuring the right to food, in that it has developed legal and institutional protections designed to protect and promote this right. Several national laws exist to promote and ensure the right to food, such as the law (SINESAN) to operationalize the national food security and nutrition plan (PSAN), which declares the right of every person to adequate food. The right to food is further supported through Guatemala’s ratification of international instruments codifying the right, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the supremacy that the Guatemalan Constitution lends to such international legal documents. The government has dedicated institutional resources to the issue, such as establishing the Center for Food Security and Nutrition Information and Coordination (Centro de Información y Coordinación en Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional (CICSAN)) and a council to implement the national food security and nutrition plan (CONASAN.) Legally and institutionally, Guatemala seems to have taken positive steps forward to ensure the right to food within its borders.
Yet, despite legal protections and persons charged with the task, the latest reports from UNICEF indicate that Guatemalan children suffer from some of the highest malnutrition and stunting rates in the world. Children of Mayan decent are the hardest hit, and in some rural Mayan communities, up to 80% of the children suffer from malnutrition. The Guatemalan government has conducted a partial national mapping of hunger and malnutrition, a necessary step for targeting right to food programs to those most immediately in need. In spite of this, the government does not seem to be reaching the Mayan population. The Economist argued on August 27 that, financially, Guatemala is wealthy enough to have reduced its hunger levels, and points out that other Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil have all made improvements in reducing child malnutrition that Guatemala has yet to match. The fact that Mayan children suffer disproportionately and that government commitment and financial resources have been mobilized to address the issue points to continued ethnic discrimination and the harmful and lasting effects of income disparity.
The case of child nutrition in Guatemala seems to illustrate the problem of good laws and dedicated institutions failing to reach the most marginalized members of society. The Mayan population, and especially the rural female Mayan population, remain the poorest Guatemalans. It is no coincidence that the Mayan population were also the main victims of Guatemala’s recent decade of civil war: the current child malnutrition problem demonstrates that this population continue to suffer the conflict’s after effects, such as a persistent and extreme income gap between Mayan groups and the rest of the population. What is needed is renewed government commitment to the most vulnerable populations. Children in particular are forever damaged by malnutrition, and thus the case of child hunger should be treated with urgency, as its ill effects cannot be reversed. Guatemala has already made legal commitments to the right to food, and has established institutional capacity to tackle the issue. The Guatemalan government should take steps to reach the most endangered populations from within this existing framework.
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The Guatemalan institutions charged with these tasks may exist, certainly, but they are weak in practice and underfunded. The state, meanwhile, is faced by problems of violence and insecurity associated with drug trafficking, organized crime and youth gangs, all of which contribute to a homicide rate that is one of the worst in the world. Therefore it seems more likely that it is historical legacy (long-standing inequalities from pre-war and from the war of the 1980s and early 1990s that included victimization of indigenous groups to a greater degree than any others) and current inability that leave these populations with much lower incomes, high rates of child malnutrition and low rates of schooling, not necessarily continuing discrimination.
Of course, this does not make the current problem any less significant, but might help highlight the causes. The state is having an impossible time addressing all of its crippling issues, and widespread corruption certainly is no help.
Melissa, thank you for pointing out some of the obstacles to realizing the right to food in Guatemala, such as the weakness and underfunded state of the institutions charged with the task, and for calling our attention to additional factors that make it difficult for the Guatemalan government to adequately address the child malnutrition and stunting problem.
Certainly there are many causes that contribute to the state of child malnutrition, including amongst the Mayan population. However, Guatemala’s indigenous population continues to face racism and discrimination, which contributes to their lower levels of education and higher levels of poverty. The poverty and exclusion that result in part from this racism and discrimination are significant causes of child malnutrition and stunting.
The appropriate response would be to target government resources to Mayan children, as they are the hardest hit by malnutrition and stunting. Not doing so is in itself a form or racism and discrimination, because it represents a failure to provide an equal opportunity to a healthy life for all Guatemalan citizens.
One non-governmental organization that is addressing the nutritional needs of the poor in Guatemala, especially the Mayan poor, and most especially their children, is CFCA (Christian Foundation for Children and Aging). This is a lay Catholic organization that assists the poor of the world without respect to religion or ethnicity. CFCA buys and distributes food and special nutritional supplements to these folks regularly, and provides other key benefits for the children (and their families) with funds provided by “sponsors,” most of them USA citizens, who make monthly payments or this purpose.
To sponsor one or more poor, indigenous children in Guatemala–thousands have been identified and await sponsorship–is an excellent way for concerned, compassionate people in the developed world to do something real about this problem of hunger and malnutrition in Guatemala.
Please have a look at the CFCA website: http://www.cfcausa.org
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