Caribbean & Central America - November 2022

In early October the United Nations (UN) Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), a panel of experts, concluded its consideration of the fourth periodic report of Guatemala. Among other things, experts questioned claims of progress by the government led by President Alejandro Giammattei to address malnutrition - a declared priority by the Giammattei administration which took office in January 2020 given Guatemala has one of the worst malnutrition rates in the region. The issue has long been attributed to structural inequalities and since made worse by the impacts of Hurricanes Eta and Iota in late 2020, the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, and more recently increasing prices of energy, fertiliser, and agricultural inports stemming from the Ukraine war.

According to a UN press release dated 4 October outlining the CESCR’s questions and responses by the Guatemalan delegation, which was headed up by Ramiro Contreras, the executive director of the presidential commission for peace and human rights (Copadeh), 45% of children under the age of five suffered from malnutrition in Guatemala, as did 61% of indigenous children. When asked what policies were in place to support the right to food for the most vulnerable groups, Contreras cited among other things, the government’s implementation of Gran Cruzada por la Nutrición (GCNN) - a platform which seeks to unite all of the country’s sectors with the aims of improving access to health service networks and promoting good nutrition, access to food, safe water, and sanitation.

In response to questions from committee experts, the Guatemalan delegation said that to combat malnutrition, the government was strengthening prenatal care for mothers and care for new-borns. It claimed that over 200,000 children had benefited from nutritional support programmes in 2021, with 35 pilot “health brigades” established in areas where chronic malnutrition was highest. The delegation claimed the State had reduced child mortality through those actions from 21% in 2000 to 14% in 2020, a figure expected to fall to 11.6% in 2022.

However, these claims of progress were repeatedly called into question by the experts who said strategies for addressing food security had seemingly not done enough to support the most vulnerable groups. This was also suggested the previous month by Guillermo Castillo, the director of local business conglomerate Castillo Hermanos, who announced a US$15m investment in a five-year social initiative, ‘Guatemaltecos por la Nutrición’, to address malnutrition in the country. He cited concerns that, despite investment, indicators in Guatemala have not changed. The initiative’s executive director, José Silva, told reporters that the new initiative, which was unveiled on 6 September, would include mobile clinics supplied by Spanish company ARPA, and is based on five components: attention to primary health, nutritional support, water and environmental sanitation, strengthening the family economy, and access to food. He said that the initiative would be rolled out in Quiché and Huehuetenango, two departments where food scarcity is particularly rife.

• Sofi report

The latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report, which was published in early July by various UN agencies, revealed that Guatemala topped the list of Central American countries in terms of the highest prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity (55.9% of the population in 2019-2021, up from 42.7% in 2014-2016), although figures were not available for Nicaragua or Panama. In second place was Honduras (49.9%, up from 41.6%) followed by El Salvador (46.5%, up from 42.2%).

• Cases of acute malnutrition

According to health ministry (MSPAS) figures, released during epidemiological week 39 (25 September-1 October), the government reported a cumulative total of 16,611 cases of acute malnutrition in children aged under five years and 46 deaths so far this year. Malnutrition sharply increased in 2020 owing to the economic shock of the Covid-19 pandemic and the hurricanes Eta and Lota. In 2021, Guatemala reported a total of 61 deaths in children under five from acute malnutrition, up from 50 in 2020.