Guatemala: the fight for accountability and the rule of law

Abstract

Guatemala’s political system has been shaken by corruption scandals over the past two years. In large part, the country’s political system has been consumed by efforts to fight impunity for corruption and human rights abuses. In 2015 voters elected Jimmy Morales to the presidency on an anti-corruption platform, hopeful for change from a political outsider. Throughout 2016 some advances were achieved in the fight against corruption, and prosecutors won several high-profile convictions for human rights violations that occurred during the country’s civil war. But organized criminal networks continued to operate in the country, posing serious challenges to the rule of law, and both the Morales administration and the new Congress displayed some of the same shortcomings as previous governments.