General Assembly Session 63 meeting 43

The Acting President

I give the floor to the representative of Guatemala to introduce draft resolution A/63/L.18.

Mr. Rosenthal (Guatemala)

It has been several years since the General Assembly last addressed this agenda item, on the situation in Central America. That is, in fact, a source of satisfaction for us, since, in contrast to the situation of 15 or even 10 years ago, Central America is now a region at peace where democratic institutions and respect for basic human rights have been strengthened and where progress has been achieved in the economic and social spheres. Some of those advances may be fragile or insufficient, but there is no doubt that the current situation is incomparably better than the one which prevailed during the mid-1990s. For that reason, the most recent United Nations Human Rights Verification Mission in the region -- the mission to Guatemala -- left the country in 2002, after ten years of fruitful work.

Having said this, some of the repercussions of prolonged conflicts -- the one in Guatemala's lasted nearly 40 years -- take a long time to resolve. In the case of my own country, we inherited a culture of impunity as a consequence of that conflict, which led to a continuation over time of human rights violations illustrated by threats, extortions, intimidations and even the use of violence against judges, prosecutors, teachers, journalists, human rights activists and other innocent civilians.

Protected by the environment of impunity I just described, some delinquent groups also emerged, at times with high degrees of organization and with transnational connections. Succeeding Governments made important efforts to combat impunity through specific projects and programmes aimed at strengthening the civil police, the judicial system, the system of penitentiaries, the Public Prosecutor's Office and other entities of the State, including the legislative branch.

It was in the context of those efforts that the idea was developed to create a more robust criminal prosecution mechanism with the assistance of the United Nations. During the conceptual stage of the initiative, various alternatives were explored, the most ambitious of which being the creation of a new United Nations mission that would undertake some of the tasks of a public prosecutor, and the most modest expression of which being a technical cooperation project to strengthen the Office of the Public Prosecutor. Consultations and negotiations between the Government and the United Nations were extended for some time in order to search for a more appropriate model that would be consistent with Guatemala's legal and constitutional framework as well as with the norms of the Organization.

A relatively ambitious first attempt was tried during the last year of the administration that relinquished power in January of 2004, but it did not meet with the approval of the Guatemalan Congress and was even challenged by the Constitutional Court, the latter of which found that the Commission usurped some functions that were the exclusive jurisdiction of the Guatemalan State. A second attempt promoted by the previous administration moved in the direction of working through national institutions by strengthening them, with the creation of an ad hoc commission governed by national legislation. Such a commission would be composed of personnel appointed by the United Nations with a mandate that would not interfere with the Office of the Public Prosecutor and would work hand-in-hand with that body.

That revised version of the commission, adapted to the norms of the United Nations, was also judged compatible with the constitutional and juridical norms of Guatemala by the Constitutional Court, and as a result was approved by the Congress in August of 2007. The letter of 27 October sent by the Secretary-General to the President of the General Assembly, and which has circulated under the symbol A/63/511, offers more detailed information on the matter.

There are two specific observations to be made. The first is that the Commission responds to an initiative originating in Guatemala, rather than an initiative of the United Nations. It reflects our profound conviction that international cooperation is needed in order to confront organized groups that operate with impunity -- not to replace national authorities, but to support them and thus strengthen them in the future.

We approached the United Nations because we perceived an objective and independent Organization without its own agenda. We sought creative means of partnering with the Organization without renouncing our obligations as a sovereign State under our own Constitution. We persevered in that effort and, as already stated, this is the third consecutive administration to tackle that initiative and it has finally managed to implement it.

The second observation is that in our view, the lessons learned in Guatemala will also be beneficial to the United Nations.

We are now entering relatively new and unknown territory for multilateral cooperation, but we must recall that the United Nations has accumulated extremely valuable experience in defending and protecting the rule of law and human rights throughout its institutional life. More recently, it has accumulated a wealth of experience thanks to the activities being carried out by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. We believe that the work of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala will open new areas of work for our Organization and provide lessons that may in due time be useful to other Member States.

The purpose of the draft resolution that we now present to the plenary is two-fold. It is, first of all, to ensure that the main intergovernmental body of the United Nations will be involved and informed about the steps taken by the Government of Guatemala and the Secretary-General from the moment the General Assembly urged the latter, in 2003, to support the initiative of creating the Commission discussed in the draft resolution. Secondly, its aim is to continue the support of the General Assembly for our initiative, without any additional financial or budgetary implications.

Let me conclude by thanking the Secretary-General for the welcome that has been extended to our initiative. I would also like to pay tribute in public to the many States that have supported the Commission by means of voluntary financial contributions or cooperation in the form of providing national experts, as well as to the staff of the Commission, and most particularly the Commissioner, Carlos Castresana, for their dedicated work. Finally, I would like to thank the countries that have supported us by sponsoring the draft resolution that we are about to consider. I would also like to thank those who, I hope, will support us in adopting it by consensus.