Lethal during the internal armed conflict in Guatemala (1960–1996)

Guatemala experienced an internal armed conflict between 1960–1996, which involved fighting between government forces and guerrilla groups. The Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), the UN-sponsored truth commission in Guatemala, estimated that during this period there were approximately 200,000 homicides and disappearances during the conflict. They also found that approximately 93% of violence (all forms) was perpetrated by government forces, primarily against the country’s Indigenous Mayan population. The CEH argued that in several instances this violence amounted to acts of genocide committed against Mayan communities.

While Guatemala is now considered a post-conflict country, many aspects of the conflict remain unresolved. The statistics about the number of victims of homicides and disappearances published by the CEH are highly contested. There is currently an outright denial that genocide occurred, which has served to perpetuate marginalization of Indigenous communities. Conflict reconciliation has been incomplete, and the government institution created to provide reparations to victims of human rights violations closed without fulfilling its mandate. Many people are still searching for loved ones who disappeared during the conflict decades ago, and the burden of the search is borne by civil society organizations and loved ones of victims, rather than the State.

This project revisits the original estimates of violations of the right to life—killings and disappearances—that occurred between 1960–1996. We build on the original estimates published by the CEH using additional data sources that have become available since the publication of their initial findings. Additionally, we apply state-of-the-art methods for record linkage, imputation, and multiple systems estimation that allow us to address data quality issues present in the data and estimate the entire population of victims of homicides and disappearances, including those victims whose stories have not yet been documented. After estimating the size and demographic characteristics of the victim population, we then use these estimates to calculate associated bereavement due to violations of the right to life at the national level to better understand the harms the conflict has had on survivors of violence.

Nearly 30 years after the end of the conflict, examining conflict violence remains relevant, as does understanding the impacts that this violence has had on survivors’ lives. Both aspects help contextualize current issues facing the country, provide information useful in the search for the disappeared, and have implications for ongoing peace, memory, and accountability processes.