Image: © 2025 Doris Miranda for Human Rights Watch
Successive governments in Guatemala have failed to meet their obligations toward girls facing early and forced pregnancies due to sexual violence, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on 18 February. The authorities need to provide sexual violence survivors with comprehensive health care, education, and social security, as well as necessary legal protections, justice and reparations.
The 85-page report “Forced to Give Up on Their Dreams: Sexual Violence against Girls in Guatemala” documents the numerous barriers that girls who are survivors of sexual violence face accessing essential health care, education, social security, and justice. Guatemalan law classifies any sexual activity involving a child under 14 years of age as sexual violence. Many of the pregnancies were a consequence of sexual violence. Guatemala’s National Registry of Persons (RENAP) reported that between 2018 and 2024, 14,696 girls under the age of 14 gave birth and became mothers, in many cases against their will. The new 85-page report focused on several obligations, including access to abortion, healthcare, education, financial support, and justice.
HRW interviewed 31 representatives of civil society organizations, 41 government officials, and experts such as healthcare workers and lawyers who worked with the girls. The girls themselves were not interviewed, the report noted, as HRW wished to avoid re-traumatizing survivors.
The report highlighted a lack of access to abortion as being one of the obligations that Guatemala is not meeting. Abortion is a criminal offence under the Guatemalan Penal Code and is only legally permissible when the life of the pregnant person is at risk. This exception requires the threat to be immediate and certain before the procedure can be considered lawful.
HRW also pointed out that survivors of sexual violence face barriers to accessing health care, including emergency contraception, pre-natal care, birthing care, and post-natal care. The report also asserted that the justice system is often under-resourced and fails to prioritize cases of sexual violence against girls.
Guatemala’s obligations under international law include, under Article 12 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), to which Guatemala is a party, stipulates that:
1. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of health care in order to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, access to health care services, including those related to family planning.
2. Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph 1 of this article, States Parties shall ensure to women appropriate services in [connection] with pregnancy, confinement and the post-natal period, granting free services where necessary, as well as adequate nutrition during pregnancy and lactation.
The CEDAW Committee’s General Recommendation No. 24 elaborated on states’ obligations under CEDAW and determined that they include providing access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion services. The HRW report stated that the CEDAW Committee has previously expressed concern over the criminalization of abortion in Guatemala and recommended amending the relevant article of the Penal Code.
SOURCES: Human Rights Watch, 18 February 2025 ; Jurist News, by Darina Boykova, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, Canada, 18 February 2025.