Human Rights Talk: Seeking justice for victims, survivors and the disappeared in Guatemala

Blanca Blanco, Trócaire's Head of Region for Central America will deliver this year's Trócaire Human Rights Talk, in conjunction with Féile an Phobail. Blanca will share Trócaire's involvement in landmark human rights cases in Guatemala pursuing truth and justice. This includes the recent landmark 2016 court case, when 15 courageous indigenous women who were poor, elderly and illiterate, from the Sepur Zarco area of Guatemala broke their years of silence. 
  
In court they had their truth heard about the sexual violence and domestic enslavement they suffered at the hands of the Guatemalan military. They also sought and achieved justice for the murder and disappearances of their husbands in the early 1980s during the internal armed conflict. Their landmark case was so important as it recognised that sexual violence against women had been used as a weapon of war, and found former members of the Guatemalan military, guilty of crimes against humanity.