GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT FINAL REPORT

December 18, 2020

This publication was produced for review by the United States Agency for International Development. It was prepared by Chemonics International Inc.

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT FINAL REPORT

Contract No. AID-OAA-I-13-00032 Task Order No. AID-520-TO-16-00001 Cover photo: A fashion designer and her son visit an event hosted by the Association for Women Weavers of Development (AMUTED) — an organization that supports women entrepreneurs and survivors of violence. (Credit: Dinorah Lorenzana)

DISCLAIMER:

The authors’ views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States government.

CONTENTS

Acronyms ...... ii Overview ...... 1 Introduction ...... 1 Approach ...... 2 Project Context ...... 2 Financial Information ...... 4 Result 1: Government capacity to provide juvenile justice services improved . 6 Context and Challenges...... 6 Approach ...... 6 Key Outcomes ...... 7 Protection of Children and Adolescents (NNA)...... 7 Adolescents in Conflict with the Law (ACLs) ...... 15 Result 2: Guatemalan government services for victims of GBV improved ... 17 Context and Challenges...... 17 Approach ...... 17 Key Outcomes ...... 18 Result 3: Guatemalan government’s response to TIP strengthened ...... 29 Context and Challenges...... 29 Approach ...... 29 Key Outcomes ...... 30 Recommendations and Lessons Learned ...... 35 Monitoring and Evaluation ...... 37

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | i ACRONYMS

ACL adolescents in conflict with the law AMUTED Association for Women Weavers of Development ASOJAV Alta Verapaz Justice Association CAIFGUA Integral Attention Center for Guatemalan Family Strengthening CICAM Women’s Center for Research and Training CSOs Civil society organizations DGO USAID Democracy and Governance Office ERI Immediate Response Teams FY fiscal year GBV gender-based violence GIC Comprehensive Case Management Model IDPP Institute of Public Criminal Defense INACIF National Institute for Forensic Sciences of Guatemala LOP life of the project MAI Integral Assistance Model MAINA Modelo Integral para la Atención de los Niños y Adolescentes MP Public Ministry MuJER Women for Justice, Education, and Recognition NNA Protection of Children and Adolescents subsystem OJ Judicial Branch OMPNAs municipal protection offices for children and adolescents PDH Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office PGN Solicitor General's Office SAI Integral Attention Systems SBS Secretariat of Social Welfare SPI Secretariat for Indigenous Peoples SV sexual violence SVET Secretariat Against Sexual Violence, Exploitation, and Trafficking in Persons

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SWI Secretariat for Women’s Issues TIP Trafficking in persons UCI Institutional Training Unit of the Judicial Branch UCMEFJ Unit of Specialized Bodies on Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women VIVA Asociación Viva Juntos para la Niñez YGJP USAID/Guatemala’s Youth and Gender Justice Project

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OVERVIEW

INTRODUCTION Since 2016, USAID/Guatemala’s Youth and Gender Justice Project (YGJP) has pursued a singular focus: to strengthen the Guatemalan government’s and civil society’s capacity to provide justice and related services to respond to the needs of juvenile offenders and victims, victims of gender-based violence (GBV), and victims of trafficking in persons (TIP). Grounded in the local systems responsible for these services, YGJP has promoted greater integration and coordination among actors to help reduce violence and impunity, reduce recidivism among juvenile offenders, and increase prosecution rates of gender-based violence and trafficking in persons cases.

From the start, YGJP helped break down traditional barriers between justice sector institutions and civil society that have historically failed to communicate effectively. To change this dynamic, the project engaged with stakeholders to reimagine how justice can work for vulnerable populations, particularly women, youth, indigenous peoples, migrants, and LGBTI people. In the process, the project harnessed each of the five “R’s” of USAID’s local systems framework (results, roles, relationships, rules, and resources) to empower public and private champions to conceive of, test, and scale new methods that delivered impact. As a result, a series of large and small impacts has reoriented key aspects of the justice system toward the experience and needs of Guatemala’s most vulnerable and revamped systems, processes, and paradigms. The actors that comprise the Guatemalan justice system are now better positioned to recognize and capitalize on opportunities to leverage one another’s respective roles and resources to continue towards a strong and healthy justice system that effectively protects the vulnerable and merits greater public confidence.

Leveraging its convening power across levels of local justice and protective systems — national, departmental, and municipal — YGJP reached into nearly every part of Guatemala’s 22 departments during implementation. While counterpart leadership changed over time, including at major institutions such as the Public Ministry (MP) — YGJP’s ability to navigate these changes was supported by a broad and growing recognition that the concerns of victims’ as stakeholders in and users of the justice system are paramount.

This final report will examine and present highlighted results, lessons learned, and key recommendations from the dedicated efforts over the past four and a half years to strengthen Guatemala’s institutional and civil society response capacities to guarantee justice through efficient models and upgraded systems. The following three objectives have anchored YGJP strategy:

• Result 1: Government capacity to provide juvenile justice services improved • Result 2: Guatemalan government services for GBV victims improved • Result 3: Guatemalan government’s response to trafficking in persons strengthened

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 1 APPROACH To operationalize its work within each local ENTRY POINTS FOR INFLUENCE: system, YGJP took a people-centered approach, CIVIL SOCIETY working with partners to place the needs of the By leveraging YGJP’s grants and victim and the user of the justice system at the subcontracts, the project worked center of any effort to design and build reforms. nationally and locally to shift behaviors, This conceptual framework effectively practices, procedures, and structures of local justice systems. Examples included streamlined processes and changed cumbersome opening municipal protection offices for institutional arrangements that had muted the children and adolescents across the voice of the victim, who often faced rigid or country and piloting innovative reintegration support for judicially referred redundant bureaucratic hurdles that resulted in adolescents in conflict with the law. secondary victimization or reduced the quality Partner CSOs included: and timeliness of protective or prosecutorial • Viva Juntos para la Niñez de Guatemala efforts. To do so, YGJP convened and catalyzed (VIVA) alliances among multiple public and private • Integral Attention Center for Family Strengthening (CAIFGUA) actors, including prominent civil society • Social Protection Institute organizations, to cut through traditional siloes • Fundación Sobrevivientes and maximize the project’s reach (see box). • ECPAT Guatemala

Ultimately, YGJP strove not only to reorient local justice systems toward their citizen users, but to empower vulnerable populations to move from “victim” to “survivor.” The interventions and tactics described bring this facilitative approach to life, illuminating YGJP’s system-savvy process of finding, fitting, testing, and scaling new tools, techniques, and ways of working that strengthened the collective capacity of key stakeholders that build the protective systems responsible for guaranteeing justice for victims and supporting Guatemala’s move to balance a traditionally retributive model of justice with restorative elements, including alternatives to the deprivation of liberty. In the process, the project drove considerable shifts to user experience in all three components, including streamlining case management systems to reduce constant backlogs, forming and implementing multidisciplinary teams to attend to victims of GBV seeking protection, and redesigning institutional facilities to focus on the needs of children victims.

PROJECT CONTEXT Guatemala has long faced some of the highest rates of homicide, femicide, and impunity in the world. In 2019, the New York Times reported that Guatemala’s rates were three times higher than the global average and that only about 6 percent of prosecutions result in convictions. Guatemalan justice authorities themselves reported nearly 98-percent impunity in GBV cases and similar numbers in cases involving child victims of violence and trafficking in persons. Almost every Guatemalan has been touched by violence in some way, either personally or within a few degrees of social connection. Given the traditional orientation of the justice system — toward judicial institutional needs of investigation and prosecution rather than the victim’s — it is also no surprise that public confidence in the justice system has weakened as violence and victimization proliferated.

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Targeting causes of migration. Violence and BY THE NUMBERS: VIOLENCE victimization are robustly linked to intentions to INVOLVING CHILDREN, migrate (see box). YGJP’s original design was ADOLESCENTS, AND WOMEN therefore a programmatic response to the According to multiple sources, violence increase of migrant flows from Guatemala in involving children and adolescents is acute in Guatemala, which in turn is connected search of asylum in the United States in the to the likelihood to migrate. months and years prior to the project’s launch in • 50,000 complaints of violence against 2016. While northern migration from Guatemala women per year (Public Ministry) and the Northern Triangle is not new, a record • 40,000 complaints per year of crimes number of migrants began to make the journey committed against children and adolescents, including sexual violence, starting around 2014 and infamously became child abuse, human trafficking, or associated with “migrant caravans” that have kidnapping (Public Ministry) affected U.S. policy since that time. This • The probability that an individual intends to migrate is 10 to 15 percent higher for eventually led to the review of USAID funding victims of multiple crimes, described below. Within these groups, women (Congressional Research Service) and children face disproportionately higher risks. • 30 percent of adults in the Northern Unaccompanied children bear enormous risks of Triangle have recently considered migrating due to insecurity (Latin physical, emotional, sexual, and labor American Public Opinion Project and exploitation, and women face disproportionately Inter-American Dialogue) high levels of sexual violence and other traumas. Statistics of victimization and crime in Guatemala paint a stark picture about why people in these two vulnerable populations may feel the need to emigrate. Throughout the project, YGJP remained focused on providing justice services for these vulnerable populations affected by acutely high levels of violence in Guatemala, which make them more likely to emigrate. These populations, particularly youth and adolescent victims and offenders, women and other victims of gender-based violence, and victims of trafficking in persons, lack faith in justice systems and their ability to protect them.

While no single answer solves the complex problems facing victims of violence, access to justice can provide hope and help people rebuild their confidence in public institutions. This confidence is a necessary condition for rootedness, or arraigo, the quality of settling permanently in a place. Better coordination and communication among justice sector institutions and civil society creates spaces where victims feel safe and welcome. For example, it makes it possible for children to live with local, vetted foster families, rather than in safehouses with hundreds of other children, where their risk of recidivism escalates. For adolescents, it translates into programs where they are welcome and learn life skills to build a better future, rather than being drawn into gang life. For many women victims, it can mean the difference on an inner journey to recognize their own courage and gain skills and supports necessary to move toward independent lives rooted in their localities.

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PHOTO: President Alejandro Giammattei speaks during an event highlighting the Modelo Integral para la Atención de los Niños y Adolescentes, or MAINA. (Dinorah Lorenzana)

Developments impacting operations: funding review and COVID-19 pandemic. Since YGJP began, two major developments dramatically altered the project’s goals and objectives. Midway through fiscal year (FY) 2019, upon review of USAID funding in the Northern Triangle by the State Department, allocated program funding was redirected, significantly affecting programming for the remainder of the project. FY2020 funding was approximately 80 percent less than originally planned. Project funding totaled approximately 33 percent less than the original task order ceiling. Guided by USAID, YGJP developed a contingency plan and quickly adapted program staff and resources. The project significantly reduced staff capacity, closed regional offices, and suspended or closed most grants and subcontracts. Nonetheless, the project remained committed to maximizing value with the remaining core staff and consultants and achieved significant impact.

Secondly, the unanticipated emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated new ways of operating for all USAID programming from March 2019 onward. Almost immediately, and in compliance with Guatemalan authorities’ guidance, YGJP again quickly adapted, prioritizing the health and safety of staff and beneficiaries while maintaining the maximum possible level of operations and services. All staff worked from home, and YGJP undertook a massive logistical shift to virtualize all activity implementation and promoted similar operating adjustments by counterparts. This health crisis generated an unprecedented slowdown in the operations of the Guatemalan justice system, and thousands of hearings were postponed over the following months, ballooning case backlogs. For this reason, the project spent considerable resources in its final months enabling counterparts to conduct normal procedures and operations virtually, including by adjusting protocols and procuring software licenses.

FINANCIAL INFORMATION Since 2016, YGJP was obligated a total of $25,194,244, of which $1,866,994 was implemented through grants. The main objective of the grants program was to work with civil society organizations (CSOs) to engage in initiatives focused on protection and support for youth, women, the LGBTI community, and TIP victims.

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GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 5 RESULT 1. GOVERNMENT CAPACITY TO PROVIDE JUVENILE JUSTICE SERVICES IMPROVED

CONTEXT AND CHALLENGES YGJP engaged with a historically neglected juvenile justice sector that lacked the investment — financial and political — to adequately provide needed services to youth victims of violence or adolescents in conflict with the law. Moreover, the parts of Guatemala’s justice system that served these populations had become riddled with inefficiencies that too often prioritized the needs of institutions themselves over those of their citizen users. In practical terms, children and adolescents faced serious case delays, frequent secondary victimization, and other important challenges due to overburdened and poorly designed systems that did not meet their needs. A child victim of violence would need to navigate a confusing and discouraging web of justice-related procedures across institutions, which usually required visiting multiple offices, repeating testimony two dozen times or more, and filing redundant complaints or paperwork, often to no avail. Adolescents in conflict with the law, meanwhile, were nearly automatically institutionalized or otherwise given solely punitive sentences that deprived them of their freedom. This “deprivation of liberty” ignored risk-based sentencing with appropriate rehabilitation and reintegration service support. For these vulnerable groups, YGJP aimed to reorient the levers of Guatemala’s justice system away from a solely punitive and user-unfriendly model that had become so bogged down in its own procedural needs that it could not provide a justice journey that invited public confidence instead of damaging it.

APPROACH Consistent with its people-centered approach, YGJP focused Result 1 efforts on what the project defined as two distinct subsystems of the wider juvenile justice and protection system, targeting specific types of user populations: the Protection of Children and Adolescents (NNA) subsystem, and the Adolescents in Conflict with the Law (ACL) subsystem. The NNA subsystem targets children and adolescent victims, while the ACL subsystem focuses on adolescents who are prosecuted for committing a criminal infraction or a felony. Guatemala’s protection system for children and adolescents is composed of the Judicial Branch (OJ), the MP, the Secretariat of Social Welfare (SBS), the Solicitor General’s Office (PGN), the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office (PDH), and many other complementary entities, including the Institute of Public Criminal Defense (IDPP) and the National Council for Adoptions. By focusing on these two user groups and the apparatus of justice system institutions that serve them, YGJP was able to build common agendas with key leadership across institutional boundaries to weave together interventions that ultimately helped shift counterparts’ paradigms

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away from ones focused on institutional needs and toward the needs of children and RESULT 1 IMPACT adolescents. Beyond the essential work of • MAINA: This innovative, one-stop justice model revolutionizes justice service identifying systemic bottlenecks, inefficiencies, provision through streamlined and service provision gaps, YGJP worked processes, optimized interinstitutional closely with counterparts to explore, test, and coordination, and redesigned facilities that meet children and youth victims’ scale models and initiatives that strengthened needs. the connective tissue among the justice system • Increasing use of alternatives to deprivation actors and empowered them to respond more of liberty for ACL. Innovative alternative models offer non-institutional solutions efficiently to identified needs, concerns, and creating new pathways for ACLs, risks faced by victims. The result — a more characterized by educational, holistic set of services and integrated employment, emotional and social development opportunities that improve institutional responses — capitalizes on the chances of effective reinsertion to assets and abilities embedded in public and civil society and reduction of recidivism. society organizations in the Guatemalan justice • Shift to victim-centered approach. Justice systems, shaped by YGJP technical system to better address victims’ psychosocial, support, now emphasize and promote health, and emotional well-being (see box). tailored methodologies, criteria, and operations to address victim needs and KEY OUTCOMES priorities. • Expanding specialized prosecutors and PROTECTION OF CHILDREN AND courts. Redefined, specialized entities ADOLESCENTS (NNA) created with focused technical competencies dedicated to effectively handle and advance child victim and ACL Curtailing institutionalization as a protective cases. response for children and adolescents. Soon after • Integration of a multidisciplinary team approach. Complemented by YGJP’s launch, the early 2017 national tragedy multidisciplinary teams including of the Virgen de la Asunción residential home psychologists, social workers, and (see box next page) brought into stark relief medical personnel, among others, justice responses more appropriately address the need for a sweeping and urgent re-framing the breadth of environmental, social, of Guatemala’s mechanisms and standards for physical, and emotional needs and supporting children and adolescents within the conditions of child victims and cases involving ACL. juvenile justice system. In this context, YGJP • Broadening regional access to justice. and its mandate to strengthen the entire Expanded access to justice services protection system, including juvenile homes through increased presence of efficient and effective justice institutions in rural and residential shelters, served as a timely and remote areas with response and allowed an early focus on moving disproportionately higher rates of away from the public sector’s previous violence against children and overreliance on institutionalization. With the adolescents. SBS, Guatemala’s lead entity for protection of children and adolescents, YGJP worked to design and implement an Alternative Care Model, discouraging the placement of children and adolescents in large institutional facilities and strengthening interinstitutional coordination protocols with the PDH to improve protections for children in care of the public system.

To improve the SBS residential shelter model, YGJP supported updates that reduced its residential population of children and moved them to smaller houses. Additionally, YGJP support helped design and implement improved protocols that meet current standards

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 7 for responsive and dignified attention and treatment of children and adolescents in SBS shelters. These protocols include: Prevention and Intervention for Behavioral Emergencies in SBS Residences and Homes; the Assistance Protocol for Adolescents Who Consume Psychoactive Substances; and the Attention Protocol for Progressive Autonomy and Independent Life of Adolescents.

In addition, YGJP also worked with the SBS MOVING FROM TRAGEDY and the National Council for Adoptions to TO MEANINGFUL REFORM systematically expand the reach and depth of March 8, 2017, was a tragic day in the country’s foster-family system to allow a Guatemala — 40 adolescent girls lost their more supportive and nurturing environment lives, and another dozen were severely injured due to a fire that swept through for younger children. With YGJP support, a the Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asunción, a new SBS Temporary Foster Family Regulation state-run residential home for children and was developed and enacted in August 2018. adolescents. Sixty girls who had attempted to escape the day before were punished by This regulation favors the placement of being locked in a room. They set their children with relatives, improves and simplifies mattresses ablaze. Unable to escape their criteria for foster family selection, and confinement, they lost their lives. Sadly, officials had cited the residential home for prioritizes the placement of young children. a history of abuse against children, YGJP played an integral role connecting key including deplorably overcrowded living responsible institutions such as the SBS, OJ, conditions, physical and sexual abuse, and violence. The Virgen de la Asunción and the PGN. These institutions typically tragedy highlighted well-documented would not convene on these issues despite shortcomings in Guatemala’s child and their significant decision-making roles in child- adolescent protection system. It incited national and international outrage that protection cases. Through YGJP coordination, demanded prosecuting negligent and unified criteria were developed to help decide corrupt officials and sweeping reforms to between options of foster or residential care; reexamine and update inadequate models that institutionalized vulnerable children determine optimal profiles for different types and adolescents. of foster families; and increase institutional awareness about options available for placing In the wake of this tragedy, Guatemala’s government at last took important steps to youth victims. Other important interventions shift its approach. Guatemala’s lead proceeded with SBS as time went on. For institution, the SBS, with support from example, YGJP effectively used its grant funds YGJP, strengthened the foster family care system and developed the necessary to allow SBS to engage Asociación Viva Juntos safeguards — redefined operational para la Niñez (VIVA), a prominent youth- protocols and methods closely aligned with focused civil society organization, to boost the international standards for the protection of children and adolescents. rollout of this model throughout Guatemala. VIVA helped SBS identify 256 interested families, accrediting 60, and ultimately placing 30 children and adolescents. To ensure sustainability of this effort within the SBS itself, YGJP complemented VIVA’s work by preparing SBS staff to take ownership of recruitment and training for foster families. To encourage appropriately comprehensive care, YGJP also recruited and trained multidisciplinary teams of psychologists, social workers, and health professionals specializing in children’s issues who were ultimately hired by the SBS. Multidisciplinary teams can deliver holistic, tailored support, fully recognizing and addressing the dimensions of vulnerable children’s needs.

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Streamlined justice and protection of children and adolescents. In 2019, Guatemala’s Public Ministry reported receiving 40,000 reports of child abuse, missing children, mistreatment, sexual violence, and trafficking, the second-most reported type of crime in the country. Addressing root causes of unnecessary time delays, onerous processes, and the risk of secondary victimization, YGJP supported the Public Ministry to take an innovative step forward in providing justice services to vulnerable children and adolescents. In July 2019, it launched the MAINA (Modelo Integral para la Atención de los Niños y Adolescentes), a first-of-its-kind one-stop-shop for child victims of violence. MAINA, which houses 12 key institutions, positions Guatemala in the vanguard of juvenile justice in Latin America. This one facility responsible for the protection of and attention to young victims of violence responds to victims’ unique, often sensitive, needs and concerns 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Here, a victim of violence can receive immediate, specialized medical, psychological, and legal attention that ensures rapid, comprehensive, and victim-centered support. This expedites justice processes, including investigations and protection measures, that increase the likelihood of successful prosecution and strengthen public confidence. Where previously it could take up to 60 days to obtain an order to detain a suspect, MAINA’s streamlined and coordinated systems reduces this to PHOTO: A girl and her mother attend a presentation about MAINA’s holistic services. (Dinorah Lorenzana) 10 hours (see also “MAINA: By the Numbers,” next page). To date, MAINA has attended more than 3,700 cases; 63 percent girls and 37 percent boys.

To bring this innovative model to life, YGJP carefully and strategically worked across traditional institutional boundaries among justice-sector players to identify the right points of entry with the appropriate power, authority, and incentives to effect change. As a result, several of Guatemala’s leading institutional partners within the NNA subsystem came together, some for the very first time, to build a common agenda and form MAINA. A pivotal point came in August 2018, soon after Guatemala’s newly appointed attorney general assumed responsibility for the Public Ministry, perhaps the country’s principal point of influence on justice administration. Understanding that child victims of violence were also a priority for the attorney general, YGJP arranged for curated visits to New York City’s Center for Court Innovation to introduce her and a select group of senior Guatemalan officials from the MP, OJ, SBS, and IDPP to evidence- based justice models that emphasize interinstitutional coordination between courts, attorneys general, and other public and private community-based programs. A significant

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portion of the trip allowed participants to engage with experts and explore domestic violence courts and justice service centers based on ACL restorative justice models.

A people-centered vision and design formed the core of these models, prioritizing citizen needs over traditional institutional siloes to promote what practitioners refer to as “swift, certain, and fair” justice that builds public confidence. Ultimately, this visit proved pivotal in two ways: First, it sparked new, practical thinking focused on the users of the Guatemalan justice system. Despite the differences between the two countries’ justice systems, threads of the New York experience — specifically interinstitutional collaboration — helped inspire MAINA and other ideas. Second, the trip provided new political momentum and relationships to accomplish reform. (See also “MAINA Timeline” exhibit, next page.) As a result, the attorney general and her colleagues across institutions devised ideas and models that would fit the Guatemalan context for vulnerable children and adolescents. Working as a unit, all stakeholders were more effectively able to maximize resources and energy, while minimizing risks and costs for children and adolescent victims. The resulting paradigm shift for institutions places victims’ needs at the forefront of design, implementation, and follow-up, which ripples out and reduces a culture of violence and impunity.

MAINA embedded victims’ perspectives and conditions into its architecture to ensure comfort, safety, stability and expert care. To bring personnel up to speed on providing coordinated and specialized services, YGJP provided technical support, including curricula and teaching plans, to train close to 300 staff from participating institutions. YGJP support also supplied necessary PHOTO: Virtual hearings are now the norm at MAINA. (Dinorah Lorenzana) equipment and furniture outfitting MAINA’s institutions, including closed-circuit rooms and technology for interviews with children victims.

Complementing these efforts, YGJP helped develop the necessary regulations, protocols, and operational tools for MP and MAINA to regulate, implement and institutionalize initiatives. Consolidated interview guides for child victims in closed- circuit sessions were developed as well as an interinstitutional case-management path that, for children and adolescent victims, included a referral system to other institutions. When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, YGJP immediately adapted by developing a Protection Protocol and Pathway for Children and Adolescent Users of MAINA for personnel and other on-site staff. Today, Guatemala’s MAINA model is a pioneering example of people-centered justice in practice and a reference for other countries in Latin America and beyond for how to serve child and adolescent victims of violence.

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Strengthening regional justice system capacity to better serve and protect child and adolescent victims. To help ensure that the Guatemalan justice system serves the millions of children and adolescents who live beyond Guatemala City, YGJP made significant efforts to strengthen and expand the quality and provision of services in regions too often overlooked due to centralization of institutions in the capital. To help focus its work, the project examined violence and crime statistics affecting children and adolescents, which indicated that the departments with the highest crime rate (after Guatemala Department) are Huehuetenango, Quetzaltenango, and Alta Verapaz. Of these four departments, those in the western region reported the most cases, particularly Huehuetenango and Quetzaltenango. Quetzaltenango, with Guatemala’s second largest city as its capital, Xela, faced the highest number of cases during the last seven years. Examples of the project’s regional work follow:

• Expanding municipal protection offices for children and adolescents. YGJP worked to bolster and institutionalize municipal protection offices for children and adolescents (or OMPNAs), which provide frontline response and referral mechanisms for victims throughout remote areas of the Western Highlands and nationwide. As the sole protection mechanism at the local level, OMPNAs provide critical functions, including identification, collection, referral, and follow-up for complaints filed for abuse, sexual violence, exploitation, TIP, and human rights violations against children and adolescents. Through a grant awarded to the Social Protection Institute, YGJP created or strengthened municipal protection offices in 26 municipalities, concentrated in the departments of Petén and Huehuetenango, two of the poorest and most neglected in the country. In 2019, new OMPNAs addressed 4,951 NNA cases. The institute successfully lobbied mayors and municipal corporations to establish municipal agreements to create OMPNAs; appoint a municipal staff member to manage the OMPNA; allocate office space for the OMPNA; and coordinate the OMPNA within the municipal protection network.

• Integrating the Alternate Care Model in the regions. Alongside efforts to develop the Alternative Care Model with the SBS nationally, YGJP also supported efforts to institutionalize this model at the regional level. As part of this initiative, YGJP trained approximately 300 SBS officials who comprise multidisciplinary teams in protection homes in Guatemala and Quetzaltenango on the human rights of children and adolescents and appropriate forms of treatment. As a result, 746 children and adolescents currently in SBS protection homes are now receiving more dignified treatment and specialized care. YGJP also helped the SBS expand its renovated foster family program nationwide by recruiting and evaluating families to become accredited as substitute families, particularly in the departments of Petén, Zacapa, Chiquimula, Quetzaltenango, and Sacatepéquez. In addition, YGJP extended capacity building to other regional SBS offices and donated furniture and computer equipment to the departmental offices of Petén, Quetzaltenango, Alta Verapaz, Zacapa and Sacatepéquez, which register many cases of unprotected children and adolescents.

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 13 • Strengthening specialized judicial administration in priority regions. With the OJ, YGJP worked to develop and establish the first Children and Adolescent Justice Center based in Quetzaltenango to expand regional coverage of specialized justice, offering a wide range of judicial protection services for children and adolescents. Previously, Quetzaltenango had operated solely with a children and adolescent court that did not facilitate access to the comprehensive set of services this target population requires. By incorporating the SBS, PGN, IDPP, and the MP into this new center, the project and the OJ enabled regional children and adolescent courts to immediately consult and coordinate on-site with the many resources, roles, and service responsibilities each of these institutions offers, all vital to the protection and support of victims or the court’s decision-making regarding victims. Consistent with the project’s emphasis on user and victim needs, YGJP facilitated the redesign and relocation of children and adolescent courts to allow for co-location of all stakeholder institutions. Originally on the third floor of the courthouse complex, which posed accessibility concerns, the center now occupies space on the first floor. The design contains physical spaces for children and adolescents of varying ages to ensure that the interests of victims are fully protected, and to avoid secondary victimization of users. A Gesell chamber (closed circuit video) ensures privacy and facilitates virtualized conversations with child and adolescent users, an innovation introduced with YGJP support.

• Replicating MAINA in Quetzaltenango. YGJP’s support in the design and development of MAINA also featured a regional component. YGJP played an instrumental role bringing together the key 12 institutional representatives to plan for agreements and a site for a new MAINA based in Quetzaltenango. Through discussions with the attorney general, the group agreed to include a specialized prosecutor’s office for children, a first for the region. Slated to be launched in December 2020, the MAINA-Xela has transferred all blueprints and structural planning to the MP for launch, based on lessons learned and best practices from the MAINA experience in Guatemala City.

• Positioning justices of the peace (jueces de paz) as frontline responders in the regions. Justices of the peace in Guatemala are closest to their communities and act as critical first responders in ACL and child-protection cases. They act as essential filters for cases of all types, including ACLs, steering them toward appropriate next steps and related support services for youth and adolescents. For this reason, YGJP invested in their knowledge of and response capacities for child protection through training. This ensured compliance with the fundamentals of international human rights law and principles relevant to the administration of juvenile justice. YGJP trained 360 peace judges in child protection and ACL cases, guaranteeing that each region of Guatemala is served by a peace judge with appropriate knowledge and understanding of child protection and ACL cases.

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ADOLESCENTS IN CONFLICT WITH THE LAW (ACLs)

Risk-need methodology to provide alternatives to incarceration and deprivation of liberty. Another innovative concept inspired by the 2018 visit to New York City was the risk- need methodology. This process informs judicial decisions regarding adolescents in conflict with the law, providing profiles of individuals’ relative risks that may provide rationales for diverting ACLs into services and support systems instead of institutions or incarceration. Traditional justice in Guatemala, and most other places in the Americas, tends to rely on punitive measures that institutionalize ACL, overestimating the risks of their continued participation in civic life and severely underestimating the negative impact and possible long-term behavioral change brought about by institutionalization — which disconnects people from critical support systems such as families and communities. When institutionalized or — even worse — incarcerated and treated as adults by judges, adolescents lose out on personal development, educational, social, and trade opportunities and skills, and come out ill-equipped to productively reenter society.

Using New York’s Center for Court Innovation as an example, YGJP introduced and adapted a risk-need assessment tool to provide judges informed and risk-sensitive profiles of ACL once they enter the justice system, enabling them to better use alternative sentencing such as channeling youth toward key community resources, engaging ACLs with educational or social and community service opportunities that support reintegration. This stems high rates of incarceration or institutionalization. With YGJP guidance, four ACL courts adapted this methodology in concert with the OJ, two in Guatemala City, one in Mixco, and one in Villa Nueva de Guatemala. In addition, the methodology was recently incorporated into the Integrated Juvenile Justice System launched in late 2020, broadening use of this important tool.

Introduction of methods streamlining justice processes. To complement the risk-need methodology’s focus on stemming ACL institutionalization, YGJP also worked closely with the OJ to shift the practice of treating ACLs as adult criminals. Guatemala’s OJ, with its 23 specialized courts focused on children and ACLs, is the primary entity responsible for deciding whether a child is separated, institutionalized, or provided an alternative to deprivation of liberty. As such, YGJP worked with the OJ to revise a case- management model to improve and expand outcomes for ACL cases beyond deprivation of liberty. This model also enabled the OJ to streamline processes for judges and courts, effectively reducing the length of judicial proceedings from four months to one, while also improving case information reporting and clarifying judicial personnel duties. Its comprehensive design offers alternatives to institutionalization through educational and community service opportunities that benefit ACL development.

Through this restructuring, users experienced increased access to justice, case information, and case status. This people-centered approach tailors services and facilities to the needs of children and adolescents, the primary users of these specialized courts. YGJP focused on promoting the model at the national and regional levels, and successfully implemented it in all 27 specialized child and adolescent and ACL courts across the country. To further guarantee sustainability of the new case management

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 15 model, YGJP worked with the Institutional REDIRECTING FUTURES FROM Training Unit of the Judicial Branch, the training CRIME AND VIOLENCE unit of OJ, to incorporate a training module YGJP grantee CAIFGUA served as an into the permanent curriculum for all judges of essential youth development resource and specialized courts for children and adolescents training center for ACL. It provided adolescents with psychosocial, legal, and ACLs. Since implementation, more than education and technical skills and support 9,000 children and adolescent cases were to pursue healthy livelihoods and positive processed under the new model, according to futures. Recognizing that family networks are critical to ACL success reintegrating data provided by the OJ’s Youth Unit. This into society, CAIFGUA also includes the figure represents 50 percent of the total families of participating ACLs to orient number of youth in protection cases that enter them and provide them with knowledge and skills on how to best support the OJ every year. adolescents in crisis. As a result of the grant, Guatemala’s SBS referred 27% of Adolescent reinsertion model and case diversion. ACLs to CAIFGUA’s reinsertion program as an alternative to incarceration. The MP To reduce recidivism and strengthen the also began to request that some ACLs channels for ACL served by the risk-need participate in CAIFGUA’s process instead methodology and similar tools, YGJP used of detention centers. Judges subsequently granted these requests, confident in the grant funds to pilot a reintegration, reinsertion, results from the collaboration between and socialization initiative with the Integral SBS and CAIFGUA. With the support of Attention Center for Guatemalan Family the SBS, OJ, IDPP, and the MP, 240 ACLs completed the program. Of these, only Strengthening (CAIFGUA) and the SBS (see two adolescents recidivated — a box). Adolescents typically assisted by testament to the effectiveness of CAIFGUA come from marginalized alternative methods that transform the lives of ACLs. backgrounds and have often experienced or witnessed violence or domestic abuse, have limited economic means and low levels of education, or may have participated in gang activity. Implemented with 275 adolescents and their families, this program provided education, skills development, workforce readiness, and community-service opportunities in a non-residential structure. Through the program, ACLs worked with target youth families in lieu of incarceration or other deprivation of liberty.

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RESULT 2. GUATEMALAN GOVERNMENT SERVICES FOR VICTIMS OF GBV IMPROVED

CONTEXT AND CHALLENGES Government services for GBV victims were relatively more advanced than those for juvenile justice prior to YGJP. Guatemala’s 2008 Law Against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women (Femicide Law) had already developed several institutional changes to address the unique concerns in serious GBV, sexual violence (SV), and femicide cases. Models such as specialized femicide courts and specialized women’s prosecutor offices (SWPOs), for example, had demonstrated that addressing GBV/SV with specialized staff and institutional structures meaningfully improved the justice experiences of Guatemalan victims of violence. Nevertheless, as Guatemalan justice institutions and USAID recognized, these models needed to improve their effectiveness and coverage. Existing structures and models could not handle the annual volume of GBV/SV complaints seen by the MP and courts. Nor did the institutional architecture adequately respond to the comprehensive needs of GBV victims, both in heavily resourced urban areas such as Guatemala City and in more rural, relatively less- resourced departments. The landscape of GBV justice services — both within the public institutional justice system and civil society — remained deeply fragmented, similar to the challenges facing the juvenile justice system. Services needed to be woven together strategically to comprehensively support victims and enable them to become survivors. In responding to GBV, the justice system had dedicated more attention to major urban areas, particularly Guatemala City, and less to regions and departments. As a result, fragmentation, distance, and other systemic challenges frequently discouraged victims from pursuing cases in full or caused secondary victimization with unnecessary procedural hurdles.

APPROACH With key justice counterparts such as the MP, OJ, the National Institute for Forensic Sciences of Guatemala (INACIF), and the IDPP, as well as civil society partners such as Fundación Sobrevivientes, YGJP employed local systems thinking to strengthen the connectivity among stakeholders and improve the quality and comprehensiveness of the justice sector’s response to GBV victim needs. In this way, the institutional paradigm shifted to prioritize victims’ needs in pursuit of “people-centered” justice, aiming to consolidate processes, seek efficiencies, and foster changes to streamline and improve victims’ experience with the system. To do so, as in Result 1, the project placed a typical user — the GBV victim — at the center of its work for every intervention. To provide an additional strategic filter to drive activities, the project

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 17 focused on three areas of GBV: specialized criminal prosecution, support for victims, and prevention.

To this end, YGJP channeled resources and efforts to review existing justice services and respond to resulting gaps. This resulted in the establishment of specialized units, courts, policies, and protocols tailored to the different needs of GBV victims including indigenous women and people who identify as LGBTI. Moreover, it implemented key recommendations to establish holistic and multi-disciplinary processes and models that filled identified gaps in services, such as legal counseling and psychosocial support. As a result, by the end of the project, GBV victims accessed more responsive, comprehensive, streamlined, and proximate services, particularly in priority departments selected by YGJP for their density, vulnerability, and frequency of GBV reporting: Petén, Chiquimula, Chimaltenango, and Sacatepéquez. All in all, with YGJP assistance, a total of 172,528 people were reached by YGJP-supported services nationwide, including health, legal, psychosocial counseling, shelters, hotlines, and related support.

KEY OUTCOMES Streamlining processes to meet victims’ needs. YGJP prioritized strengthening inter- and intra-institutional coordination, working closely with counterparts, particularly the MP, to break down siloes and promote efficiencies for GBV victim users of the justice system. To do so, YGJP and the MP analyzed where GBV prosecution strategies and models worked and where they did not. YGJP provided technical tools to enable MP staff, leadership, and consultants to identify and target processes that created bottlenecks for teams or unnecessarily complicated the experience of GBV victims. With this in mind, YGJP served as a primary support and technical lead for the MP to redesign and roll out an upgraded and streamlined Integral Assistance Model (MAI) in the Gerona neighborhood of Guatemala City at the MP headquarters. When women become GBV victims, their first recourse is usually the MP in Guatemala (as opposed to the police, as in many other countries, which is responsible for initiating an investigation and managing the prosecution). Although the MAI existed prior to YGJP, it required substantial updating and streamlining to effectively meet the needs of victims. Despite the model’s best intentions, GBV victims were often met with a multilayered system of entities and agencies that would subject them repeated questioning processes across multiple locations (otherwise known as the “ping-pong” effect). In practical terms, victims faced institutional demands and rigid structures rather than the reverse: responsive institutions that provided services, support, and easy-to-manage processes that helped vulnerable people navigate a critical time and make their own informed decisions about their individual situations in an empowering environment.

YGJP considered the MP the most suitable entry point for this effort. Not only was it the primary influencer in the justice system and the convener of the MAI, but the attorney general at the time prioritized improving the experience of GBV victims, the prosecution of their cases, and the MAI itself. YGJP therefore worked closely with MP staff and other MAI participating institutions to draft a strengthening plan for the

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institution, with streamlined processes and increased interinstitutional communication and coordination (see box). The redesigned MAI-Gerona, launched in 2018 with significant YGJP support, placed all the participating justice system actors and support- service providers under one roof, with 24-hour, 365 days a year access for GBV victims, including a medical clinic and a criminal investigation unit.

By co-locating institutions and services, TARGETED GAPS FOR MAI providing a dedicated one-stop, “single window” STRENGTHENING approach to increase GBV victims’ access to With the MP, YGJP identified a series of justice, the MP and its partners at the MAI- priority gaps and weaknesses: Gerona placed victims’ needs at the center of a • Lack of services providing privacy and disparate set of institutional processes that had protection for GBV victims. The previous once discouraged them from pursuing their MAI model and facilities did not provide cases and made prosecution more challenging designated areas for GBV victims to be attended to, often leaving them in close and time-consuming. By integrating technologies proximity of accused abusers brought in and innovations such as closed-circuit camera during investigation and prosecution. systems or the similar Gesell chambers, for case • Unnecessarily prolonged delays. Weak to poor interinstitutional coordination investigation interviews, GBV victims are now placed the onus on victims to provide spared from repeatedly recounting traumatic multiple, repeated statements and to experiences while still preserving invaluable travel to many different office locations. GBV case processing often resulted in evidentiary material to build cases. When used unnecessary delays and secondary to gather evidence (e.g., prueba anticipada) at an victimization. early stage in the process (with the judge, • Lack of specialized GBV services. The former MAI did not provide exclusive prosecutor, and defender present to guarantee services prioritizing GBV victims, the right of confrontation), the victim does not resulting in longer processing items and have to appear at trial and testify, which often case delays. • Lack of child and family care. GBV victims involves directly confronting her aggressor. The undertaking investigation processes updated, streamlined MAI also embodies a often arrived with their children. The people-centered approach by ensuring that even previous MAI offered no access to childcare services, forcing victims to the physical layout of its centers meet the keep children with them during sensitive differing needs of GBV victims. To ensure this, medical and investigative interviews. YGJP subcontracted a specialized engineering • Victims had to tell their stories many times. firm to ensure the layout and design of the In the former MAI, which was not as “people-centered” as the current one, interior spaces appropriately secured victims’ victims had to “tell their stories” up to privacy while providing a safe and comfortable seven or eight times. That has now been environment where victims could receive quality reduced to two or three times, using more streamlined processes and single- care, counseling, and referrals for other services. interviewing techniques (such as the As a result, the site now allows multiple closed-circuit camera so that other specialized professionals — including auxiliary actors can watch/participate in the interview without causing secondary prosecutors, psychologists, and social workers victimization), — to conduct the initial case intake process, using, to the extent possible, a “single-interview” approach to minimize secondary victimization. These staff then steer the victim toward other on-site staff and expertise, drawing on a specialized multidisciplinary team of professionals, including MP prosecutors, psychologists, social workers, and doctors, who together comprise the care pathway.

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As a result, the MAI-Gerona has vastly improved victims’ experiences while providing streamlined systems and better prosecutorial processes necessary to increase the likelihood of successful conviction and reduce impunity levels. These changes have rippled far beyond the MAI-Gerona, leading several regional SWPOs to adopt similar models that co-locate GBV services where GBV prevalence rates are high and access to justice services is scarce or inadequate.

Even with the positive results achieved by the MAI-Gerona, the MP recognizes the importance of continuous improvement. Since its founding in 2018, a new attorney general leads the MP and, with YGJP, revisited the MAI concept to evaluate further upgrades. During 2020, the MP and YGJP worked to design the Comprehensive Care Model for Women Victims of Violence, or I’x Kem MAIMI. This model, intended to be broader and more comprehensive, draws on the MAI’s existing services and expands its services and support even further. Although the plan has not been finalized, key institutional partners that aim to co-locate include the MP, the SWPO, INACIF, health- related services for victims managed by the Ministry of Health, specialized courts, family courts, and the IDPP. All stakeholders are dedicated to prioritizing GBV cases. In addition, the I’x Kem MAIMI integrates other public and private initiatives or institutions providing social services that support women’s economic empowerment. YGJP played an integral role in forming the technical committees driving the drafting and validation of the I’x Kem MAIMI operational pathway.

Enhancing specialized prosecution and response for GBV victims, including indigenous populations. While the revamped MAI-Gerona, and soon the I’x Kem MAIMI models, represent an important shift in government response to GBV victims, they were not sufficient to fully align prosecution of GBV cases with victim needs, particularly beyond Guatemala City. After all, in terms of sheer case numbers, there are more GBV complaints filed in departments and municipalities beyond Guatemala City than in the capital’s metropolitan area. For this reason, YGJP worked with the MP to prioritize expansion of new SWPOs within hospitals or clinics in the regions, better positioning specialized prosecution alongside essential victim-care services. To this end, with YGJP support, the MP opened SWPOs in the National Hospital of Culiacán, Santa Rosa, as well the Cobán National Hospital of Alta Verapaz. Specialized prosecuting units, such as these SWPOs, included culturally diverse teams of prosecutors and investigators familiar with working on crimes related to sexual violence. The strategic placement of these units within health facilities ensures quicker access to evidence that strengthens cases and operates within the first, critical 48 hours of reporting. Bilingual and bicultural staff from these complementary services can communicate with and relate to victims from local indigenous populations, which have reported some of the highest numbers of GBV and sexual violence cases. YGJP also ensured the establishment of updated and strengthened SWPOs in Chimaltenango and Baja Verapaz.

Across the project’s targeted areas, these efforts enabled the MP to significantly increase its capacity to receive and manage GBV-related cases and complaints. When YGJP started, the number of accusations presented by the MP in GBV cases was 530 in

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targeted offices. By the end of the project, this number had grown to 7,237, representing an increase of more than 1,300 percent, demonstrating considerably stronger investigation processes (the MP needs a certain minimum amount of admissible evidence to present the accusatory instrument). Similarly, results in GBV cases initiated in specialized femicide courts improved dramatically, rising from 1,206 at the beginning of YGJP to 5,244 at the end (representing a 434-percent increase).

Elevating women and indigenous concerns within ALL HANDS ON DECK the MP. The focus on staffing SWPOs with The first hours after a person goes missing culturally competent professionals grew out of are critical. Immediate, well-coordinated a wider effort by the MP and YGJP to elevate action by authorities and widely the voices of women and indigenous people broadcasted public alerts save lives. To complement the launch of the SWI, YGJP within the justice system. For example, early worked with the MP to create the “Isabel- on during the project, the MP worked with Claudina Alert,” a national search YGJP to create two new secretariats, the mechanism for missing women named for two women whose brutal kidnapping and Secretariat for Women’s Issues (SWI) and the murder — and subsequent case Secretariat for Indigenous Peoples (SPI). The mismanagement —sparked outrage and SWI monitors implementation of the MP’s reform. One of the two cases, that of Maria Isabel Franco, was the first-ever gender equality policy and supports and femicide brought before the Inter- conducts monitoring and evaluation of all American Commission of Human Rights in gender-related and women-focused activities 2012. As a result of the commission’s recommendations, Guatemala’s MP, with within the MP, which now includes the “Isabel- YGJP support, revised the country’s Law Claudina” alert system (see box). for the Immediate Search for Disappeared Meanwhile, the SPI became first justice Women and related mechanisms, including the new alert system, which removed the institution of Guatemala to dedicate such a previous 72-hour investigation waiting high-level office and structure to indigenous period. Thanks to these reforms, public peoples’ concerns. This specialized unit institutions, search teams, and local and ancestral authorities have launched more concentrated on socializing and than 3,800 such alerts since 2018 for institutionalizing the MP’s Indigenous Peoples missing women, 86 percent of whom have Policy throughout Guatemala’s departments. been found. Through workshops with MP public officials and civil servants and effective advocacy to ensure proper budgeting and management, the SPI has significantly improved access to justice and protection, ensuring cultural and linguistic relevance serving indigenous victims of violence.

Meanwhile, the SPI became first justice institution of Guatemala to dedicate such a high- level office and structure to indigenous peoples’ concerns. This specialized unit concentrated on socializing and institutionalizing the MP’s Indigenous Peoples Policy throughout Guatemala’s departments. Through YGJP-supported workshops with MP public officials and civil servants and effective advocacy to ensure proper budgeting and management, the SPI has significantly improved access to justice and protection, ensuring cultural and linguistic relevance serving indigenous victims of violence.

Prioritizing a gender focus in the court system. Similarly, YGJP’s strategy to reinforce judicial structures to improve GBV response included assessing and adjusting the specialized femicide courts, units, and the judicial branch’s Integral Attention Systems (SAI) to

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 21 expand their regional coverage and quality of service. To do so, YGJP worked with the OJ to carefully analyze and reform its Unit of Specialized Bodies on Femicide and other Forms of Violence against Women (UCMEFJ, which carries out monitoring and other support of the specialized femicide jurisdiction), first instance and trial courts, specialized appeals courts, and SAIs from regions such as Guatemala City, PHOTO: Guatemala’s Attorney General María Consuelo Porras honored the family Quetzaltenango, Petén, Chiquimula, of Isabel Franco during the launch of a new national alert system for missing women. and Alta Verapaz. For over four and (Dinorah Lorenzana) a half years, YGJP led and supported institutional assessments, resulting in recommendations to strengthen coordination, increase information sharing between institutions, and incorporate gender-focused knowledge and techniques into policies, practices, procedures, and structures. As part of this effort, YGJP also led specialized training sessions and dialogues among judges, magistrates, prosecutors, and SAI team members, particularly in priority regions, to open channels of communication, identify bottlenecks, and promote collaboration to strengthen case management and follow-up for cases involving femicide and violence against women.

Results of this effort included expanding and bolstering judicial services by launching Suchitepéquez’s first femicide court (the Lower Court and Judgment Tribunal for Criminal Matters Related to Femicide and Other Forms of Violence against Women and Sexual Violence) and the SAI. In its first three months, the court and tribunal issued 63 rulings with a gender perspective and cultural relevance, and the SAI team attended 384 cases. Also, Quetzaltenango now operates a similar multi-person court, which has facilitated an expansion of access to justice for women, using tactics such as mediation to expedite the alimony process.

In Chimaltenango, YGJP worked with the OJ to open two new specialized courts (a first-instance court and a trial court) in 2017. In addition to furnishing these courts with essential equipment, it led training events with the School for Judicial Studies of new staff to ensure an integrated gender focus delivering specialized assistance to GBV victims. Engagement with local community leaders and indigenous authorities was also prioritized to increase ownership by and collaboration with the indigenous communities of in this region that make up a high percentage of the population.

Thanks to collaboration between the OJ and YGJP, Guatemala City also now operates its second Pluri-Personal Court for Femicide and Other Types of Violence against Women. This new court incorporates three new judges, facilitating improved access to specialized justice, quicker judicial processes, and a reduced backlog of GBV cases in Guatemala City. YGJP also strengthened operations of 24-hour courts, forging interinstitutional coordination to consolidate and calibrate criteria for unilateral

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hearings, restraining orders and other security measures, initial declarations, and the time period for attention to victims. In the process, the project carefully reviewed and recommended updated management procedures to integrate specialized justice components. Through targeted training, YGJP has fostered a holistic, gender-focused approach to handling femicide, SV and serious GBV cases in these specialized courts. YGJP also promoted interagency coordination by implementing judicial roundtables to improve case management and victim attention. With a focus on engaging the MP, OJ, and the IDPP, YGJP facilitated roundtable discussions in Chimaltenango, Quetzaltenango, and Suchitepéquez, led by justice personnel and attended by representatives of all public institutions that constitute the criminal justice system related to violence against women. These roundtables explored ways to improve case management, systematize good practices, and consider local interinstitutional contexts.

YGJP also worked with the OJ to strengthen the ability of justice of the peace courts to provide quality access to justice for GBV victims across five departments, including Guatemala, Chiquimula, Peten, Alta Verapaz, and San Marcos. As a result, the president of the OJ approved the implementation of a “Specialized Attention Model” for justice of the peace courts, which standardizes procedures and provides efficient and specialized attention with regard for gender, cultural differences, and age. It also requires adequate training for judges and court staff, as well as enhanced interinstitutional coordination.

Strengthening the policy and procedural landscape to streamline access to justice. To complement YGJP’s work to expand and strengthen specialized courts, YGJP also supported the development of robust policies and protocols to ensure high-quality, informed decision-making and service delivery for GBV victims. Working with the OJ, this support led to the definition of the Judicial Policy on Care for Victims of Gender Violence. This policy provides clear guidance to judicial authorities on preventing, processing, and sanctioning GBV, and was validated and approved by magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice to be disseminated and adopted throughout Guatemala’s justice system. YGJP then played an integral role in socializing the policy throughout the region and trained more than 400 judicial officials and other members of the specialized criminal justice system. The project established a roundtable with the Supreme Court of Justice to coordinate and encourage effective implementation. Similarly, with the Judicial Branch’s Unit of Specialized Bodies on Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women (UCMEFJ), YGJP facilitated a technical working group with 18 national administrative entities to clearly convey roles and responsibilities for implementing the policy.

YGJP also led technical assistance to support Guatemala’s SWPO, through developing, implementing and training organizations on the people-centered and progressive Comprehensive Case Management Model (GIC) for handling cases of GBV. The GIC significantly reduced bottlenecks and avoided procedural delays by prosecutors’ offices and MP authorities and introduced a reorganization of prosecutorial staff. In line with this, the GIC launched two new units: one focused on new cases and the other on active cases. This innovative model offers a clear pathway for prosecutors to consider and assign cases across criminal, penal or alternative justice tracks. These tracks alleviate

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 23 case backlogs where alternative recourses may be suitable, in accordance with the legal context as well as the victim’s preferred outcome.

PHOTO: After a Mayan ceremony, members of the Quetzaltenango Association for Women Weavers of Development share their experiences of overcoming violence. (Dinorah Lorenzana)

New measures introduced by the model, such as vertical prosecution, expedite and reorganize prosecutorial case handling and improve the likelihood of timely and more successful case resolution (as cases, for example, start with one prosecutor, who continues supporting the case through trial). To facilitate staff restructuring, YGJP concentrated its support to promote efficiencies and equitable distribution of work among the teams that comprise Non-Judicial Procedure Units and Investigation Units. YGJP also prioritized the GIC integration and adoption by MAI-Gerona. Working closely with the MP, YGJP contributed to a reassessment of operations and recommended adjustments to facilitate the transition of case handling per GIC guidelines and procedures.

With the MP’s Secretariat for Criminal Policy, YGJP also facilitated planning for five new “single window” models at the SWPOs in the departments of Huehuetenango, San Marcos, El Quiché, Quetzaltenango, and Jalapa. These efforts mirrored similar progress to implement single windows servicing GBV victims in the departments of Chimaltenango and Sacatepéquez.

Responding to the “shadow pandemic”: GBV during COVID-19. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated public health containment measures, particularly lockdowns, resulted in serious disruptions to normal justice processes. The OJ, for example, initially suspended the work of the specialized femicide trial courts nationally to ensure the health of staff and users of the system. At the same time, as in much of the world, GBV rates grew more acute and widespread as victims spent considerably more time than previously at

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home with their abusers. In response, YGJP worked with counterparts to promote tools and modes of work to restart system operations and ensure continuity thereafter. Below, we provide illustrative examples of this effort.

• Expand virtual hearings and trials. With the Criminal Chamber of the CSJ, YGJP supported expansion of the pilot plan for holding virtual hearings that it had recently supported in the Specialized Femicide Court of Suchitepéquez, including broad adoption of a protocol for managing virtual hearings and trials in all specialized courts in 14 regions. To complement this effort, YGJP contributed more than 100 Zoom licenses with room connectors and related tablets to the specialized courts and INACIF, which is responsible for remote interviews and gathering evidence.

• Promote virtual ways to process and facilitate protection measures. With the MP, YGJP designed specific guidance, or a ruta, for the attention and protection of victims of intrafamily violence and SV/GBV, drawing on international standards recognized in the CEDAW and Belém Do Pará conventions. This effort provided procedures to request, process, and remotely implement security measures for victims of domestic violence and violence against women, create an immediate action team with the members of the MP’s and PNC’s 1572 emergency call center, and enable mobile justices of the peace to process orders of protection again. In Chimaltenango specifically, YGJP established a working group of MP staff and justices of the peace to implement the attention route that allows victims to request and receive protection orders remotely. A victim, for example, may call the Chimaltenango SWPO, and the SWPO then requests the order from the responsible justice of the peace via email or WhatsApp. The justice of the peace then grants the order via the same electronic means, and OJ staff then notify the appropriate parties.

• Strengthen emergency services. With the Secretariat for Women, the Office of the Prosecutor for Women, and the Directorate of Criminal Analysis, YGJP worked to adapt the protocol for the 1572 hotline and the “panic button” system to align guidance for all three institutions involved and promote coordinated responses. For example, the updated protocol for interinstitutional coordination now clearly establishes responsibilities for the MP and the PNC in the context of COVID-19.

Expanding access to justice in the regions. In all YGJP’s efforts and advances, expanding the reach of and integrating cultural relevance into regional access-to-justice initiatives remained a priority. Judicial authorities and other key regional stakeholders benefited from models and updated systems, conveyed through training, dialogues, and forums that cultivated commitments and increased ownership. To design the models, YGJP worked closely with diverse judicial authorities and other key actors to examine and evaluate existing methods and mechanisms. This often included monitoring and evaluation instruments across entities or courts throughout Guatemala’s departments. YGJP extensively assessed Guatemala’s femicide jurisdiction system and related SAIs in departments such as Guatemala City, Quetzaltenango, Petén, Chiquimula, and Alta Verapaz. These processes gathered integral feedback and also generated valuable assessment tools for organizations to develop improvements and monitor and evaluate

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 25 systems. Direct outcomes included strategies to exchange experiences, information, and best practices among judges and SAI staff to strengthen coordination and leverage resources to reduce secondary victimization when assisting victims of violence.

In San Marcos, YGJP supported the IDPP’s effort to establish a new Legal Assistance Office for GBV cases in regions with disproportionately high levels of violence against women. In November 2017, with and support from the local municipal authorities, IDPP opened a new office as part of its National Coordination of Free Legal Service for Victims and their Families. Currently, the San Marcos office provides culturally relevant information, support, and care for women victims of violence through legal, psychological, and social services. This critical resource center for GBV victims in this remote region of Guatemala facilitates interinstitutional coordination and communication among security and justice institutions, integrating responses to and support for victims.

Building partnerships with civil society to broaden institutional support to GBV victims. Civil society organizations, either through grant support or subcontracts, enhanced institutional efforts to assist GBV victims. YGJP strategically selected organizations with records in targeted communities and partnering institutions, building on existing trust and ready access points. Fundación Sobrevivientes, a nationally recognized organization dedicated to the prevention of violence against women and their families, is one such example. Although it serves primarily as a resource center for GBV victims, it provided fundamental strategic litigation assistance in coordination with the MP, considering historical, social, and political contexts and the particular contexts of each event and victim. This work is critical to build building meaningful precedence, paving the way for future favorable decisions for victims and reducing impunity for GBV.

Fundación Sobrevivientes led strategic litigation processes for 10 cases of sexual violence against indigenous girls, adolescents, and women through the SWPOs of Alta Verapaz and Huehuetenango, departments with predominantly indigenous populations. As a result, the organization worked in coordination with prosecution teams to identify areas for improvement in case handling, including better evidence PHOTO: “Marta,” a survivor of violence (name changed to protect identity), shares her story to support women going through similar situations. (Dinorah Lorenzana) collection, make adjustments, and finally strengthen their capacities to develop case theory, a hypothesis for each investigation, required investigative proceedings, and a litigation strategy. Sixteen training events built the capacity of 53 prosecutorial staff of these central SWPOs. Fundación Sobrevivientes went on to support strategic litigation in the SWPO of Chimaltenango and the Women’s Prosecution Division and the national-level Specialized Prosecution

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Office for Femicides located in Guatemala City. These efforts aimed to build strategic litigation capacity and increase accusations and improve rulings in cases of violence against women, sexual violence, and femicide. In addition to serving as a co-plaintiff in relevant cases, Fundación Sobrevivientes led a series of training workshops and provided technical assistance to: a) the SWPO in Guatemala City and Municipal Prosecution Offices in Villa Canales, Villa Nueva, Palencia and Mixco; b) the Specialized Prosecution Office Against Femicide; c) the District Prosecution Office of Chimaltenango; and d) the Specialized Prosecution Office for Children in Guatemala City.

Through a YGJP grant to the Women’s Center for Research and Training (CICAM), four GBV attention centers were established in Guatemala City, Chimaltenango, Chiquimula and Cobán. These centers now provide GBV victims with essential services such as GBV attention through telephone assistance, personal counseling, direct attention, psychological care, legal assistance, and alternative therapies. The victims treated are mainly women referred by: the SWPOs in the MP; justice, security, and health institutions; and organizations in referral networks where centers are located. CICAM played an invaluable role strengthening these referral networks by increasing their knowledge on human rights and victims' rights, how to lead critical dialogues, and analyze statistical and victimological information.

Complementing work that bridged indigenous GBV victims with needed supported and services was YGJP grantee Alta Verapaz Justice Association (ASOJAV). This YGJP grantee supported a temporary shelter for Q’eqchi GBV victims in the department of Alta Verapaz, named Ak’ Yu’am, meaning “new life” in Q’eqchi, where victims receive attention in their own language. ASOJAV implements a multidisciplinary team to train women on legal and psychological issues, providing them with a deeper understanding of conditions and how to manage them. ASOJAV also conducted an education campaign targeting women’s groups, community leaders, and health staff that dispelled misperceptions surrounding GBV and provided resources and support.

To assist GBV victims in Guatemala City, YGJP awarded a grant to Women for Justice, Education, and Recognition (MuJER), a CSO with 13 years of experience defending the rights of female sex workers, migrant women, and women GBV survivors. MuJER provided victims of violence with essential information, counseling, and legal and psychological assistance. It also led bold initiatives such as “Face to Face” sessions in which their staff visited red-light districts to have brief conversations with sex workers about how to deal with GBV and where to file complaints or seek help. In partnership with other CSOs, MuJER also set up two information booths in red-light districts of Guatemala City to provide information, legal assistance, medical services, and orientation to sex workers and migrant women. Through these efforts, the project has provided services to more than 1,000 sex workers in Guatemala City. Other key results include legal support, specialized multidisciplinary care, and travel support for more than 40 GBV victims as well as training for more than 244 municipal and social leaders to assist women victims of violence.

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 27 Recognizing the fundamental value CSOs providing services and support to GBV victims, YGJP worked to strengthen capacities and coordination of referral networks. YGJP provided technical assistance to 10 referral networks — informal groups of multidisciplinary, governmental and non-governmental organizations, supported by the MP, that provide attention to victims and coordinate integrated services. YGJP helped referral networks standardize attention routes for women victims by updating information on local service providers and their capacities. YGJP also facilitated improvements to the MP’s referral system (redes de derivación), providing technical assistance to strengthen the “Model for Integral Services to Victims” (MASI). Through the MASI, the MP will help determine victims’ needs, and MASI staff accompany the victim throughout the attention and referral process.

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RESULT 3. GUATEMALAN GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE TO TIP STRENGTHENED

CONTEXT AND CHALLENGES Human trafficking has plagued Guatemala in RESULT 3 IMPACT recent decades, and it remains a source, transit, and destination country for TIP networks with • Guatemala earned Tier Two ranking in U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons national, regional, and international reach. These Report. Thanks in part to YGJP support, networks capitalize on commercial sex trafficking Guatemala improved anti-TIP efforts to and exploitation, underground forced-labor reach this positive milestone toward eliminating TIP. enterprises, and the northbound human migration flows that have deeply affected the • Two mass communications campaigns Northern Triangle in recent years. While raised TIP awareness. Using diverse communications platforms, two Guatemala has adopted national laws and policies nationwide campaigns oriented at the regarding the prevention and prosecution of TIP general public and tourists disseminated crimes, weak institutional capacity combined with critical information on TIP prevention, detection, and reporting. historically low funding have hampered Guatemala’s efforts to effectively tackle TIP and • Strengthening interinstitutional TIP improve indicators and its rank in the U.S. coordination mechanisms. Interinstitutional and multisectoral Department of State’s annual Trafficking in coordination increased preventive Persons Report. Guatemala’s institutional culture factors and advanced proactive has not fostered information sharing or detection, reporting, and prosecution. collaboration among partner entities, generating • Increased training and tools targeting TIP missed opportunities to raise awareness, deepen enforcement and justice authorities with a engagement, or properly train first-line detectors regional and border focus. TIP capacity building initiatives included reinforcing or key allies in targeted communities and the first-line detectors, with an emphasis on private sector. At the same time, the actors in key areas such as remote government’s inadequate criminal investigation, regions and borders. prosecution, and judicial response capacities result in low rates of prosecution and lesser convictions.

APPROACH YGJP’s strategy was rooted in promoting collaborative strategic thinking and action with key institutions such as the MP, OJ, the PDH, and the Secretariat Against Sexual Violence, Exploitation, and Trafficking in Persons (SVET). To deepen these actors’ understandings of intersections, opportunities and respective capacities as partnering leaders in the fight against TIP, YGJP contributed to expanding institutional capacity building while reinforcing collaboration with the public and private sectors. To this end, YGJP led in-depth assessments of key institutional actors, identifying, for instance,

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PHOTO: Children connect with an educational play put on by MAINA staff during a Children’s Day celebration. (Dinorah Lorenzana)

potential first-line responder capacity building opportunities. Additionally, YGJP played an instrumental role integrating innovative modules, policies, and legal frameworks. YGJP’s interventions ensured that policies were consistent with national and international laws and standards regarding TIP prevention and assistance and protection of TIP victims. Recognizing disproportionately high incidence rates in Guatemala’s rural regions and weak institutional presence, YGJP effectively broadened institutional reach and services with culturally relevant strategies targeting vulnerable populations. YGJP also crafted action-oriented mass communications campaigns focused on prevention, detection, and response. By comprehensively raising awareness, YGJP has empowered victims, communities, and allies such as the tourism sector to increase reporting and bring trafficking networks to justice.

KEY OUTCOMES U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report Tier Two ranking. While Guatemala’s justice system has faced challenges to reduce high levels of impunity regarding TIP crimes, YGJP support has proved a catalyst, enabling key stakeholders in the Guatemalan government to collectively dedicate greater resources and concerted, coordinated efforts to prioritize and address TIP. As a result, according to the 2019 State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, Guatemala reached a Tier Two ranking, advancing from a Tier Two Watchlist ranking from years prior. As a Tier Two country, while not fully meeting minimum standards to eliminate TIP, Guatemala has demonstrated significant efforts to bring national response and norms into compliance with standards outlined in the Trafficking Protection Act of 2000. According to the State Department, “These efforts included investigating more traffickers, dedicated additional resources to increase judicial and prosecutorial capacities outside the capital, identified and provided services to more victims, increased funding for victim services, developed

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several new victim identification and assistance protocols, and launched several new awareness-raising campaigns, including vulnerable populations.”

Raising awareness, reducing risks. YGJP’s expert communications capacities and innovative thinking helped shape two dynamic media campaigns that disseminated key messaging to stem high TIP incidence rates, while encouraging increased reporting of all forms of this crime. With a national scope, YGJP worked with the SVET and the PDH to increase knowledge on TIP identification as well as attention resources. In 2017, YGJP teamed up with SVET to address the lack of information and increase prevention efforts regarding the sexual exploitation of boys, girls, and adolescents exposed because of travel and tourism. This national communications campaign “Protecting Our Most Valuable Treasures” was launched with the endorsement of the vice president of Guatemala, Jafeth Cabrera, underlining the national importance of this plight. The campaign targeted national and foreign tourists and emphasized criminal penalties of TIP in Guatemalan and international law. This effort engaged businesses such as hotels, which posting campaign media products. These included billboards that extended through departments such as Quetzaltenango, Totonicapán, Coatepeque, Villa Nueva, and in Guatemala City. YGJP supported the design and production of posters, stickers, and social media products.

PHOTO: Sample poster from the #DenunciaLaTrata communications campaign.

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 31 Complementing these efforts, YGJP also partnered with the PDH to launch a similarly tailored campaign in 2018 with a broader scope. The national Report Trafficking, It Saves Lives campaign appeared on all media platforms to spread the word about the pervasiveness victim-targeting and how to report TIP through a dedicated TIP hotline. The campaign implemented an intercultural approach and educated the public on the variety of TIP crimes (particularly labor and sexual trafficking). This mass-media campaign included crafted messages for radio, cable TV, social media (Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube), as well as printed products for minibuses, billboards, rickshaws, and bus stops. The campaign reached approximately 20 percent of the Guatemalan population with its strong anti-TIP message. The campaign resulted in 926 TV spots, 425 radio spots, 13 radio programs, 7 press conferences, 285,325 text messages, 268 awareness activities and workshops, and 3.5 million people reached. Poster distribution reached departments of Quetzaltenango, Suchitepéquez, Petén Chiquimula, and Zacapa.

PHOTO: A Mayan language translator helps interview a woman using services at a Childhood Court in Huehuetenango. (Dinorah Lorenzana)

Building key institutional capacity and tools to combat human trafficking. YGJP was instrumental in defining protocols for key entities to improve services and support for TIP victims. With SVET, YGJP contributed to the development of protocols to address TIP victim response, protection of migrant women in shelters, and the Interinstitutional Action Protocol for Immediate Response to Cases of Sexual Exploitation of Boys, Girls, and Adolescents in the Areas of Travel and Tourism. This consolidation of information ensured a smooth and effective transfer of shelters providing services to children and adolescent victims in 2019 to the SBS pursuant to Guatemala’s 2016 Migration Code. YGJP also worked with the SVET to revise its attention and action protocols regarding shelters to develop a comprehensive model on attention for adult migrant women victims, an overlooked population. To this end, YGJP provided several workshops for SVET shelter personnel, strengthening their knowledge of TIP, attention for victims, and

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their integrated, victim-centered focus. These workshops trained personnel in Guatemala City, Cobán, and Coatepeque, and YGJP helped develop a complementary protocol to facilitate implementation.

In addition, YGJP contributed to the SVET’s development of a comprehensive intervention model for TIP victims that concentrated on assisting victims as survivors. This model addresses immediate care and assistance for victims, particularly when they require shelter and ensures an integrated support system focused on the restitution of rights once survivors leave shelter systems. Drawing on relevant experiences and public sector systems throughout Latin America, this model included innovative and practical approaches that incorporated cultural contexts. Similarly, to support PDH efforts regarding shelters, YGJP helped prepare the Protocol for Attention to TIP Victims, which standardizes the institution’s response to cases of TIP across the country.

Stronger together: Bolstering interinstitutional coordination as a bulwark against TIP. To foster interinstitutional engagement and capacities, YGJP supported coordinating entities and efforts. For example, the National Roundtable Against Sexual Exploitation for Children and Adolescents in Areas of Travel and Tourism, under the leadership of SVET, plays a critical role engaging the private sector and institutions committed to addressing and countering TIP crimes. It comprises the Chamber of Tourism, tourism service providers, the tourism police, the Guatemalan Tourism Institute. The SVET and PDH participate as observers. These organizations bolster and expand the reach of institutional initiatives to prevent, detect, and report TIP crimes. In addition, via the project’s grant to ECPAT Guatemala, technical support was provided to prepare fundamental tools such as the national roundtable’s strategic and annual plans. With YGJP guidance, these plans incorporated comprehensive training programs for personnel as first-line detectors. In addition, ECPAT revitalized Immediate Response Teams (ERI). These teams are composed of representatives from the MP, PGN, SBS, the national police, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and provide comprehensive, coordinated and effective response to presumed victims of TIP. ECPAT facilitated a diagnostic of ERI’s capacities, which informed an Action Guide focused on victim- centered operations. Action routes defining clear intervention, resources, and roles for protecting TIP victims increased the effectiveness of this guide.

First-line detector capacity building. Similarly, YGJP made significant investments across key institutions and agencies to train personnel to build technical capacities and their expertise as first-line detectors, an important concern in the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report. YGJP led training sessions for personnel from the PDH, the Ministry of Labor, PGN, and the MP. With the MP’s Prosecution Division Against TIP, YGJP implemented curricula for prosecution offices that focused on Guatemala’s border areas and migrant issues. This helped train 39 personnel from offices in the departments of Chiquimula, Izabal, Huehuetenango, Jutiapa, Petén, and San Marcos. YGJP also trained 47 PGN personnel as first-line detectors based on their function to protect children and adolescents in vulnerable conditions. With the training unit of the MP, YGJP designed a workshop for social workers and psychologists working at the MAI to build their awareness as first-line detectors of TIP and provide knowledge to offer

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 33 assistance and referrals to victims. To strengthen PDH first-line detector capacities, YGJP trained 556 of its staff as first-line detectors, including personnel from departmental, municipal, and mobile auxiliary PDH offices, national indigenous authorities, and departmental leaders. Participants came from regions including Alta Verapaz, Chimaltenango, Chiquimula, Isabel, Jutiapa, Quetzaltenango, and Sololá.

Harnessing data collection and continuous learning as weapons against TIP. Lack of accurate data and analysis has proven a major obstacle in grasping the full extent of TIP. Per Guatemala’s Law against Sexual Violence, Exploitation, and Trafficking in Persons, SVET is responsible for creating and maintaining data about TIP, but until recently, quality data that could inform decision-makers did not exist. YGJP therefore prioritized work with the SVET to improve its accountability and compliance with the law by hiring a subcontractor to develop a National TIP Registry System. Through this system, the SVET can access data visualization and management tools that enable it to generate detailed, up-to-date records all TIP cases. This system classifies the ways TIP affects the population, means used by traffickers to lure victims, and victims’ needs for proper assistance and protection. In addition, SVET digitized records of victims of sexual violence, exploitation, and TIP and finalized system manuals reports. SVET also ensured that 33 entities responsible for entering TIP data received training. This national registry marks a significant step forward that brings Guatemala’s justice system in line with TIP laws and has made it a resource for future strategic planning.

Strengthening justice institutions combatting TIP in the regions. YGJP also boosted TIP prosecution and protection capacity in the regions. YGJP helped launch a new prosecutor’s office in Quetzaltenango that specialized in TIP. The Regional Prosecution Office Against Trafficking in Persons has jurisdiction in throughout Quetzaltenango, Retalhuleu, San Marcos, Suchitepéquez, Sololá, Totonicapán, Quiche, and Huehuetenango. Prior to YGJP, almost all potential TIP-related cases were referred to a national TIP unit from department-level MP offices, complicating and distorting investigation and prosecution. With a specialized regional prosecutor for TIP, resources are closer to the source of cases and responsibilities are clear and matched to local needs, increasing the likelihood of effective and efficient prosecution.

In addition, YGJP worked closely with the OJ in Quetzaltenango to inaugurate the first Guatemalan court that specializes in TIP cases. This institution represents a strong commitment to guaranteeing access to justice and, in turn, will strengthen Guatemala’s capacity to investigate, prosecute, and punish criminals and criminal networks. To ensure efficiency, YGJP trained 50 judges from eight departments in the western region on TIP and how to standardize coordination with newly installed judicial bodies. YGJP also helped train judicial personnel nationwide throughout courts, tribunals, and courts of appeals dedicated to handling TIP cases. With a regional focus, YGJP led training events on issues such as legal and social contexts, victims’ rights, legal arguments, and due diligence in TIP cases, reaching departments such as Guatemala, Quetzaltenango, Alta Verapaz, Chiquimula and Petén. The project trained a total of 117 judges of first instance from courts focused on civil, family, labor, children and adolescents, and criminal law. The Judicial Studies School assumed responsibility for disseminating modules on TIP, ensuring continuity and institutionalization for other magistrates, judges, and auxiliary personnel.

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RECOMMENDATIONS AND LESSONS LEARNED

• Design and implement access-to-justice projects targeting vulnerable populations using a people-centered approach that prioritizes victim needs. This paradigm shift reinvigorates institutional processes and systems to consider and execute alternative solutions that focus on meeting victim needs in their quest for justice and healing. This can include integrating multidisciplinary teams, starting specialized prosecutor units, and restructuring the layout of victim service centers to deliver support and orientation in a dignified manner sensitive to victims’ experiences.

• Engage political will at the highest level to advance innovative victim attention models. Top officials should meaningfully engage throughout the design, implementation, and monitoring of people-centered initiatives. Identifying and working tactfully with the right political and institutional entry points in the justice system meaningfully improve a project’s ability to facilitate change. In addition, to gain the proper level of political entry, a people-centered conceptual framework for access to justice that places victims and vulnerable populations at the center of a common understanding of the typical users of the justice system can provide a vision that fosters paradigm shifts across multiple institutions at once and integrates efforts that spark change at scale. The MAINA, the reforms of the MAI-Gerona, and soon the I’x Kem MAIMI serve as powerful testaments to this idea. Each is worth closer examination to replicate and scale.

• Further develop projects and curricula to equip public officials and justice operators with the knowledge, expertise, and practices to support victims of violence. Integrating strengthened specialized training curricula and structures such as SWPOs, MAINA, or femicide courts and prosecution teams facilitate a targeted, appropriate, and rapid response to victims of violence. Systematized, specialized trainings and practical tools ensure sustainable justice practices and solutions for future review and development. This creates an expert justice sector prepared to effectively reduce some of the country’s most pervasive crimes.

• Invest resources to strengthen TIP awareness and response among key state first-line detectors regarding the changing dynamics of migration. The migration issue in Guatemala and across the Northern Triangle requires significantly increased resources for accurate data and analysis to define targeted strategies and build response capacity. Increased specialized training should target key state actors and non-traditional actors such as public-private partnerships to strengthen regional capacity.

• Continue to support interinstitutional participation that engages justice, protection, and response services. By focusing and supporting communications and strategy-building

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 35 mechanisms across institutions, the Guatemalan government can make rapid and considerable gains to build political momentum and move away from siloed thinking. YGJP’s efforts have built consensus and interinstitutional coordination to design and implement immediate, differentiated, and specialized services that prevent secondary victimization and the duplication of efforts while reducing impunity.

• Consolidate efforts to transfer specialized justice services onto virtual platforms to increase access to justice for vulnerable populations. Although the COVID-19 pandemic propelled the transfer of justice services to virtual platforms, YGJP had already initiated a major shift to virtual platform integration to facilitate services for victims of violence (virtual hearings, automated reports, and e-learning). It has dramatically streamlined onerous processes, but, more importantly, it provides confidentiality and protection for victims without the risk of secondary victimization.

• Coordinate with government and civil society in projects focused on improving GBV victim services. External expert opinions and models, such as the CCI, should be consulted and adopted to better support victims, promote specialized attention and advance user satisfaction surveys.

• Strengthen the Inter-institutional Commission Against Trafficking in Persons to advance coordination of anti-TIP efforts, including the National Trafficking in Persons Victims Registry. The commission, which engages 33 multisectoral organizations representing civil society, states, and international actors, can advance advocacy to leverage greater state budgetary commitments to secure ongoing operations and strengthen the registry. Advocacy should also engage the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and CSOs, and efforts should be supported to facilitate this process. In addition, the registry, launched with YGJP support, ensures a comprehensive operational system that issues reports initiating timely actions and coordinated responses.

• Ensure consistent funding, careful targeting, and timely impact measurement for public- awareness initiatives. To meaningfully shift behaviors and awareness, communications campaigns must be effectively targeted, funded, and measured in a timely fashion. Due to reduced funding, the impact survey of the #DenunciaLaTrata campaign and its ability to alter public awareness of TIP was not completed until many months after the campaign ended, reducing its ability to accurately capture the effort’s impact or inform future efforts. Also, TIP communications benefit from partnerships with public, private, and civil society entities. The SVET-led mass communications campaign “Protecting Our Greatest Treasure” illustrates successful sustainability, having engaged the tourism sector in key geographies known for TIP prevalence.

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MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Table 1 below presents the 17 performance indicators with their corresponding targets and results per reporting period. The first four indicators (Indicators 1 to 4) cut across all three results. Result 1, Juvenile Justice, has four indicators, (Indicators 5 to 8). Result 2, GBV Justice, has three indicators (Indicators 9 to 11). Result 3, TIP, has four indicators (Indicators 12 to 15). Two remaining indicators include Indicator 16 (context), and Indicator 17 (service satisfaction, a mission Democracy and Governance Office (DGO) indicator). Table 1 also provides details on:

• Baseline result • Target by year • Total achieved by year • Life-of-project (LOP) target • Progress percentage with respect to life-of-project target Activities and progress in several related indicators were affected by funding available. The relatively lower allocation of funds to YGJP in its final two years compared to the project’s first two years reduced the project’s ability to implement at scale. The project’s funding was reduced to 33 percent less than the original task order ceiling. All targets were set in 2018, prior to this shift in funding. Therefore, the project’s targets do not align with eventual resource allocations. Despite the reduction in funding, the project exceeded most life-of-project targets.

Utility of indicators. YGJP designed project indicators to focus resources and align interventions toward common results. Consistent with USAID’s emphasis on continual learning and adaptation, the project conducted a midterm review of indicators and discovered necessary adjustments. As a result, the final 17 indicators reflect the activity monitoring and evaluation plan approved in 2018, two years into the project. A discussion of this process follows:

• Crosscutting. Indicators 1, 2, and 4 were F code indicators and provided broad means to track and capture important efforts within the justice system that transcended results. The number of judicial personnel trained (Indicator 1) and the number of U.S. government-assisted courts with improved case-management systems (Indicator 5), for example, served as flexible tools to measure the project’s reach with important OJ stakeholders. With these indicators in mind, the project designed interventions and strategies that reinforced its design for broad engagement nationally — beyond Guatemala City — with justice-system stakeholders. Indicator 3, the number of youths receiving services with U.S. government assistance, was a USAID/Guatemala DGO indicator and provided a similar method

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 37 to track and focus efforts across components. This maximized the reach of interventions for juvenile justice system users at scale. One original indicator — the number of training days provided to executive-branch personnel — was removed in 2018 as no longer necessary to capture the reach and impact of project activities.

• Result 1. The four custom indicators in Result 1 (Indicators 5 to 8) after the 2018 modification ensured strategic focus on impact for children and ACL users of the justice system in two ways: First, they allowed the project to capture the impact of interventions that encouraged wider uptake of the PINA law, allowing more ACL to be dejudicialized where appropriate. Second, they tracked use of judicial authority to grant alternatives to the deprivation of liberty. Focusing here allowed YGJP to focus on interventions that would spark paradigm shifts within the justice system toward alternatives to incarceration or away from institutionalization.

• Result 2. Two custom indicators (Indicators 9 and 10) provided ways to focus efforts on two primary counterparts with responsibilities in GBV cases: the public prosecutor and courts. The third indicator — number of people reached by a USG- funded intervention providing GBV services (F code GNDR 6) — reinforced the project’s focus on broad impact. Important systemic shifts in the justice system resulted, such as the MAI, and more recently the momentum toward the I’x Kem MAIMI.

• Result 3. The indicators in Result 3 — a mix of F code and custom indicators — directed YGJP efforts to encourage the government of Guatemala to take more concerted and meaningful action to combat trafficking in persons and fed directly into USAID’s contributions to the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report. While trafficking in persons is notoriously challenging to measure in full, the results of YGJP’s progress provide important windows into how the Guatemalan government has changed its engagement with TIP in the last several years.

• Context. Indicator 17 — percent change in the degree of citizen satisfaction with service delivery by target institutions (DGO Result Framework USAID 1.1-1) — provided helpful information about user satisfaction. While the project did not have resources to measure this indicator annually or in each target institution, the data it provided offered a picture of how users’ perceptions changed over time. Because the project chose to focus this measurement on institutions of juvenile justice, the indicator proved most useful to Result 1.

TABLE I. PERFORMANCE INDICATORS The following table presents project achievements and quantitative analysis of performance through FY2020, based on PMP indicators approved in 2018.

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BASE- FY 2017 FY 2018 FY 2019 FY 2020 PERFORMANCE LOP LOP TYPE LINE PLANNED PROGRESS INDICATOR (BL) Achieved Achieved Achieved Achieved (E) (A+B+C+D)/E Target Target Target Target (A) (B) (C) (D) 1. Number of judicial personnel trained with 645 2,213 0 620 730 700 411 700 427 680 2,700 USG assistance (95%) (82%) (F code DR.1.3-1) 2. Number of CSOs receiving USG

assistance engaged in 0 55 55 29 20 29 27 12 0 55 n/a1 advocacy interventions (F code DR 4.2-2)

c utting 3. Number of youths receiving services with 44,590 141,508

Cross USG assistance (DGO 0 0 0 10,000 15,846 44,000 81,072 63,000 117,000 (71%) (121%) Results Framework USAID 1.2.2-3) 4. Number of USG- assisted courts with 319 484 improved case- 0 8 9 70 72 70 84 70 218 (456%) (222%) management systems (F code DR.1.5-1) 5. Number of children 26,981 62,244 receiving services with 0 n/a n/a 2,600 7,586 17,000 27,677 23,000 42,600 (117%) (146%) USG assistance 6. Number of ACL

dejudicialized under the 771 4,572 189 n/a n/a 195 619 201 3,182 207 603 PINA Law by target (372%) (758%) institutions 7. Number of ACL Result 1 beneficiaries with alternatives to the 1,565 3,723 1842 n/a n/a 685 694 2,150 1,464 2,300 5135 deprivation of liberty (68%) (72%) granted by a judge in target courtrooms

1 Per the performance indicator reference sheet in the approved YGJP AMEP, LOP targets are not cumulative.

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BASE- FY 2017 FY 2018 FY 2019 FY 2020 PERFORMANCE LOP LOP TYPE LINE PLANNED PROGRESS INDICATOR (BL) Achieved Achieved Achieved Achieved (E) (A+B+C+D)/E Target Target Target Target (A) (B) (C) (D) 8. Number of ACL participating in 1,260 4,173 rehabilitation and 0 50 0 250 365 1,900 2,548 1,900 4100 (66%) (102%) reintegration programs supported by USG 9. Number of accusations of GBV 2,857 7,237 requested by targeted 530 n/a n/a 535 546 3,050 3,834 4,800 8385 (60%) (86%) Public Prosecutor Offices 10. Number of cases of GBV with final

1,784 5,244 resolution in specialized 1206 n/a n/a 1300 911 1,890 2,549 3,000 6190 (59%) (85%) target courts and tribunals

Result 2 11. Number of people reached by a USG- funded intervention providing GBV services 46,205 172,528 0 20,000 18,931 25,000 25,349 30,000 82,043 35,000 110,000 (e.g., health, legal, (132%) (157%) psychosocial counseling, shelters, hotlines, other) (F code GNDR-6) 12. Number of victims of TIP receiving services 210 958

provided with USG 0 130 6 145 404 150 338 160 585 (131%) (164%) assistance (Archived ref. F Code 1.5.3-18) 13. Number of potential Result 3 first responders trained 1,630 0 110 100 500 790 500 740 500 0 1610 in TIP identification (101%) techniques

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BASE- FY 2017 FY 2018 FY 2019 FY 2020 PERFORMANCE LOP LOP TYPE LINE PLANNED PROGRESS INDICATOR (BL) Achieved Achieved Achieved Achieved (E) (A+B+C+D)/E Target Target Target Target (A) (B) (C) (D) 14. Number of anti-TIP policies, laws or international agreements 1 15 0 3 3 8 4 5 7 3 19 strengthened and/or (33.33%) (79%) created with USG assistance (Archived ref. F code 1.5.3-19) 15. Percent change of target population that 10% 15% shows an awareness of 6.2% n/a n/a n/a n/a n/r n/a 6.2% n/a over BL over BL TIP (Archived ref. F code 1.5.3-13)

16. Number of GBV Not cumulative or complaints filed with the 59,839 59,839 n/a n/a 49,935 n/a 50,147 n/a 49,576 projected because it is a Public Prosecutor's (BL) context indicator Context Office

17. Percent change in the degree of citizen satisfaction with service 70.3% 2% 6.7% 5% delivery by target Satis- n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 12% 12% over BL over BL over BL

Service Service institutions (DGO faction atisfaction

S Result Framework USAID 1.1-1)

GUATEMALA YOUTH AND GENDER JUSTICE PROJECT | 41 U.S. Agency for International Development 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20523 Tel.: (202) 712-0000 Fax: (202) 216-3524 www.usaid.gov