Guatemala can be considered a vanguard country in ensuring the right to food, in that it has developed legal and institutional protections designed to protect and promote this right. Several national laws exist to promote and ensure the right to food, such as the law (SINESAN) to operationalize the national food security and nutrition plan (PSAN), which declares the right of every person to adequate food. The right to food is further supported through Guatemala’s ratification of international instruments codifying the right, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the supremacy that the Guatemalan Constitution lends to such international legal documents. The government has dedicated institutional resources to the issue, such as establishing the Center for Food Security and Nutrition Information and Coordination (Centro de Información y Coordinación en Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional (CICSAN)) and a council to implement the national food security and nutrition plan (CONASAN.) Legally and institutionally, Guatemala seems to have taken positive steps forward to ensure the right to food within its borders.
Yet, despite legal protections and persons charged with the task, the latest reports from UNICEF indicate that Guatemalan children suffer from some of the highest malnutrition and stunting rates in the world. Children of Mayan decent are the hardest hit, and in some rural Mayan communities, up to 80% of the children suffer from malnutrition. The Guatemalan government has conducted a partial national mapping of hunger and malnutrition, a necessary step for targeting right to food programs to those most immediately in need. In spite of this, the government does not seem to be reaching the Mayan population. The Economist argued on August 27 that, financially, Guatemala is wealthy enough to have reduced its hunger levels, and points out that other Latin American countries such as Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil have all made improvements in reducing child malnutrition that Guatemala has yet to match. The fact that Mayan children suffer disproportionately and that government commitment and financial resources have been mobilized to address the issue points to continued ethnic discrimination and the harmful and lasting effects of income disparity.
The case of child nutrition in Guatemala seems to illustrate the problem of good laws and dedicated institutions failing to reach the most marginalized members of society. The Mayan population, and especially the rural female Mayan population, remain the poorest Guatemalans. It is no coincidence that the Mayan population were also the main victims of Guatemala’s recent decade of civil war: the current child malnutrition problem demonstrates that this population continue to suffer the conflict’s after effects, such as a persistent and extreme income gap between Mayan groups and the rest of the population. What is needed is renewed government commitment to the most vulnerable populations. Children in particular are forever damaged by malnutrition, and thus the case of child hunger should be treated with urgency, as its ill effects cannot be reversed. Guatemala has already made legal commitments to the right to food, and has established institutional capacity to tackle the issue. The Guatemalan government should take steps to reach the most endangered populations from within this existing framework.
