Priority Areas in Guatemala

In November 2008, the governments of Guatemala and Germany agreed on two priority areas for German development cooperation with Guatemala:

Democratic governance with equal rights
The implementation of this priority area centres on the following issues:

• Good local governance and development
  Jointly financed by Germany and Sweden, local development interventions focus on:
  • Citizens' participation at municipal/community level
  • quantitative and qualitative improvement in public services
  • advice on the formulation and implementation of local business strategies
  • improving disaster preparedness and management.

  Special attention is devoted to groups, such as women, youths and indigenous people, which until now have been marginalised and excluded from decision-making and receiving benefits.

• Conflict prevention and peaceful transformation
  Here German development cooperation consists of three components:
  • compensation and reconciliation
  • civil security
  • peaceful conflict transformation.

  The objective is to strengthen initiatives that can contribute to the prevention of social conflict, and to peaceful conflict transformation.

Education
It is the goal of German technical development cooperation to provide better access to education for poor and indigenous children and young people. At the same time, the quality of education is to be improved and oriented toward the values of a democratic, multiethnic society. Basic education is being promoted comprehensively to reduce existing inequalities of opportunity between social groups, and therefore diminish the structural causes of conflict which prevail in Guatemala.