The constitution stipulates a four-year presidential term and prohibits reelection. In August 2023, anticorruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo of the center-left Movimiento Semilla won 58 percent of the second-round vote, defeating former first lady Sandra Torres to become president. Though the results were generally deemed credible by international observers, the election period was marred by significant irregularities. During the campaign, several presidential candidates were barred from contesting the election on arbitrary grounds.

Following the 2023 election, some government officials and the Public Prosecutor’s Office made repeated attempts to undermine the democratic process. Such efforts included attempting to use judicial institutions to ignore, delay, or reverse the certification of results; intimidate electoral authorities and Movimiento Semilla members and candidates; and cast doubt on the electoral results. That July, the Constitutional Court briefly suspended the results of the first-round vote after a group of defeated conservative parties complained of alleged irregularities. A partial recount held in response did not change the result of the polls.

Efforts to prevent Arévalo from taking office did not stop after his August 2023 election win. Prosecutors repeatedly requested that Arévalo be stripped of his political immunity and called for the annulment of the elections. Arévalo denounced these actions as “a slow-motion coup” in the making.

Following significant delays caused by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and some lawmakers attempting to prevent his swearing in, Arévalo was ultimately inaugurated in January 2024. Efforts by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to obstruct and interfere with his administration continued throughout 2024.

Members of the unicameral, 160-seat Congress are elected to four-year terms. Legislators were elected in June 2023. Movimiento Semilla won 23 seats, the center-left National Unity for Hope (UNE) won 28 seats, and outgoing president Alejandro Giammattei’s Vamos party won 39 seats. The Cabal party won 18, and the remaining 52 seats were split between 13 parties. The 2023 election results were deemed credible, but observers noted some political violence on election day.

Since the 2023 legislative election, Movimiento Semilla and its representatives have faced targeted, politically motivated attacks by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and incumbent legislators. Movimiento Semilla’s legal status as a political party has been repeatedly suspended. While the party’s suspension does not invalidate its congressional seats, after its suspension, elected party members were designated as independent legislators, preventing them from being recognized as a bloc, chairing committees, and holding leadership positions in the legislature. In January 2024, Movimiento Semilla deputy Samuel Pérez briefly held the presidency of Congress, but was forced to step down due to the party’s legal status.

The Guatemalan legal framework provides the basis for holding democratic elections. However, many controversial decisions by Guatemalan courts and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) in 2022 and 2023 favored the ruling party and other conservative parties. In 2023, approximately 10 percent of candidates were arbitrarily prevented from contesting elections on dubious grounds, reducing genuine competition and prompting concern about the courts’ impartiality and the fairness of the elections.

Electoral authorities were the target of intimidation, threats, and undue legal actions by the Public Prosecutor’s Office during 2023. That December, Congress stripped four TSE magistrates of their immunity from prosecution in yet another attempt to obstruct the transfer of power to Arévalo.

Elections take place within an inchoate multiparty system in which new parties are frequently created, often without sufficient resources and infrastructure to gain broad support. Poor enforcement of party finance regulations has allowed some candidates and parties access to vast resources.

Since 2023, the authorities have made concerted efforts to suppress Movimiento Semilla through intimidation tactics and politically motivated legal proceedings. In July 2023, the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested the suspension of the party’s legal status due to alleged “anomalies” in its creation. The suspension was finalized that November and Movimiento Semilla members were designated as independent legislators, preventing them from holding leadership positions in Congress.

In January 2024, the Constitutional Court upheld the party’s suspension. Judge Fredy Orellana issued a ruling that extended the suspension of Movimiento Semilla’s legal status in July; the court ruling also allowed for the party’s bank accounts to be frozen. In November, Congress approved a legal reform to prohibit criminal court judges from suspending or canceling the registration of political parties. However, before the reform came into effect in December, Orellana ordered that Movimiento Semilla’s legal status be canceled. Representatives of the party filed appeals to stop the judge’s cancelation order, and the legal status of the party remained unclear at year’s end.

Guatemalan politics are volatile, and power rotates between parties frequently. New parties have routinely gained significant quotas of power in recent years.

Numerous candidates were disqualified for arbitrary reasons during the 2023 election period. The Public Prosecutor’s Office, headed by Attorney General María Consuelo Porras, led efforts to obstruct Arévalo’s rise to the presidency and to suspend and disqualify his party. The suspension of the party was blocked by the courts until the official electoral period finished. Despite repeated delays by legislators, Arévalo was sworn in as president in January 2024. Ultimately, efforts to prevent the transfer of power to Arévalo were unsuccessful, and the inauguration was conducted peacefully and according to Guatemalan law.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office has continued to work against Arévalo and Movimiento Semilla. The 2023 suspension of the party’s legal status was upheld by the Constitutional Court in January 2024, and extended in July. Movimiento Semilla and the Arévalo administration were nevertheless able to organize and achieve some policy goals during the year. In November, Congress passed a legal reform to prevent criminal court judges from suspending or canceling political parties, but before the reform was enacted, a judge ordered that the party be canceled. Movimiento Semilla has appealed the decision.

Score Change: The score improved from 2 to 3 because the country experienced a transfer of power in which Bernardo Arévalo, an opposition candidate who ran on an anticorruption platform, assumed the presidency.

Verbal harassment and physical violence against voters are common during elections. Weak and arbitrary enforcement of campaign finance regulations has permitted lopsided resource advantages, as well as financing of candidates by special interests and organized criminal groups, distorting citizens' political choices. Direct vote buying and the use of public funds to influence the outcome of elections are also common, particularly in rural areas. Observers reported that armed groups and criminal organizations have attempted to sway the results of local races.

Members of ethnic and other minority groups struggle to fully exercise their political rights. There are no affirmative measures in place to promote the election of representatives of Indigenous peoples, who are underrepresented despite accounting for approximately half of the population. Women are underrepresented in politics; women deputies hold 20 percent of the total number of legislative seats.

The elected government and legislature determine government policies, but they are frequently subject to influence by outside interests. Former military officials continue to wield significant power.

Following the 2023 elections, incumbent officials made numerous attempts to reverse the election results and prevent Arévalo from being duly installed in office. The Public Prosecutor’s Office, led by Attorney General María Consuelo Porras, has since launched numerous politically motivated investigations of Arévalo and Movimiento Semilla, impeding the freely elected government’s ability to effectively govern. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has made at least six attempts to have Arévalo stripped of his immunity in order to pursue politically motivated charges against him.

Arévalo’s attempts to pass a legal reform that would allow him to fire Porras were unsuccessful, as was his February 2024 request that Porras’s immunity be removed, which was rejected by the Supreme Court in August. A second attempt by the Arévalo administration to lift Porras’s immunity remained under review by the Supreme Court at year’s end.

Corruption, which is often related to organized crime, remains a serious problem. Authorities continue to obstruct the fight against corruption, stall prosecutions, and dismantle cases put forth by anticorruption bodies such as the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). For years, judges, prosecutors, journalists, and civil society actors committed to tackling corruption have increasingly been targeted with physical attacks, threats, malicious lawsuits, arrests, and defamation campaigns.

Attorney General Porras has fired, transferred, or initiated frivolous cases against numerous anticorruption prosecutors and independent judges. During 2023 and 2024, the Public Prosecutor’s Office pursued politically motivated legal actions in an apparent attempt to delegitimize the elections and prevent Arévalo from taking office.

The United States has sanctioned several former and current Guatemalan government officials for corruption-related offenses, including former President Alejandro Giammattei, Attorney General Porras, and at least ten judges and prosecutors.

President Arévalo ran on an anticorruption campaign; since his election, Arévalo has sought to tackle corruption in public institutions and has ushered in new initiatives seeking to curb rampant corruption in the country, particularly in the executive branch. However, though his initiatives have achieved some success, they have also been obstructed by some judges, Congress, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Public information offices frequently fail to publish data about public expenditures as required. The Law on Access to Information is poorly enforced; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) continue to file grievances over this lack of enforcement and work to encourage the government to adhere to the law’s provisions. Contracting and budgeting processes are opaque and racked with corruption.

However, the Arévalo administration has pushed for more transparency and accountability within the government. President Arévalo has been quick to hold his appointees accountable and has taken steps to promote transparency by opening inquiries into 1,400 public bids involving government funds in 2024. The administration implemented a new code of ethics for public officials within the executive branch in April, and in September, Arévalo launched the Executive Branch Integrity Network, saying that his government “does not tolerate corruption.” The network is intended to facilitate the coordination of officials in the executive branch, provide ethics training, and pave the road for a national anticorruption system. The Arévalo government’s other initiatives during the year include expanding Ministry of Education hotlines to report sexual violence in schools and creating a transparency office for the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism.

Score Change: The score improved from 1 to 2 because President Arévalo adopted initiatives that promoted transparency in the executive branch, including in the awarding of government contracts.

While the constitution protects freedom of speech, journalists self-censor when covering sensitive topics, including drug trafficking, corruption, organized crime, and human rights violations. Public officials, illicit actors, the police, and individuals aligned with companies operating on Indigenous lands routinely threaten media workers.

Attacks, threats, and false legal cases against journalists are an ongoing concern. In June 2023, the founder and president of elPeriódico, José Rubén Zamora, was sentenced to six years in prison on spurious money laundering charges. His conviction was overturned on appeal that October due to “procedural irregularities,” but he remained in jail awaiting a new trial. In September 2024, Guatemala’s Supreme Court scheduled a hearing for September 2025 to discuss a retrial. After more than 800 days in prison, Zamora was released under house arrest in October 2024. Zamora stated that he was tortured and received death threats while in prison. An appeals court ordered Zamora to return to prison in November; his lawyers have appealed the order, and he remained under house arrest through year’s end.

Zamora’s lawyers and several other journalists who have collaborated with elPeriódico have also been targeted with harassment and intimidation, and the newspaper was forced to close in 2023. A July 2024 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) noted that “a climate of fear and self-censorship” has driven journalists into exile in recent years. In October, the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) identified ongoing restrictions on press freedom, and accused the Public Prosecutor’s Office of attempting to silence the press. At least 20 journalists left the country between 2019 and 2024 due to arbitrary charges and accusations from the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Rural, Indigenous, and women journalists are afforded little protection from discrimination, threats, and frivolous legal action, and reporters covering regional news have been subject to attacks and detentions in the past.

The constitution guarantees religious freedom, and individuals are free to practice and express their religious faith or nonbelief.

Although the government generally does not interfere with academic freedom, scholars have received death threats for questioning past human rights abuses or continuing injustices.

Many Guatemalans take precautions when speaking about social and political issues outside of their homes due to a high level of insecurity in the country. Journalists and human rights defenders have reported incidents of harassment and surveillance, which, along with increased intimidation and harassment of perceived opponents by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, has encouraged greater self-censorship.

In November 2024, independent media outlet Plaza Pública reported that between 2019 and 2023, the Public Prosecutor’s Office investigated 117 of its perceived political opponents, including anticorruption activists and journalists.

The constitution guarantees freedom of assembly, but this right is not always protected. In past years, the police frequently threatened and, at times, used violence against protesters. In 2023, thousands of people across Guatemala participated in protests calling for the results of the August runoff election to be respected. The protests escalated that October as Indigenous leaders launched a national strike demanding the resignation of Attorney General Porras for allegedly trying to overturn the election results. Security forces occasionally used force, including tear gas, to disperse protests.

In July 2024, human rights group CODECA (the Peasant Development Committee) held a peaceful rally—without undue interference—to demand the dismissal of the attorney general and ask the government to alleviate the high cost of living.

The constitution guarantees freedom of association, and a variety of NGOs operate. However, Guatemala lacks a comprehensive public policy to protect human rights defenders, and legislation passed under the Giammattei administration targeted NGOs with new restrictions.

Groups associated with Indigenous, environmental, and human rights have faced violence and criminalization of their work. In 2023, the Unit for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in Guatemala (UDEFEGUA) recorded roughly 9,500 attacks against human rights defenders, nearly three times as many as were recorded the year prior.

Guatemala has a vigorous labor movement, but workers are frequently denied the right to organize and face mass firings and blacklisting. Trade union members are also subject to intimidation and violence, particularly in rural areas. Labor laws obstruct union membership and impede strikes.

The judiciary is hobbled by corruption, inefficiency, and the intimidation of judges, prosecutors, and witnesses by outside actors and influential judicial figures. Those overseeing high-profile corruption and human rights cases have been removed, transferred, or prevented from taking their posts; some have been subjected to threats, faced criminal prosecution, or forced to leave the country. Dozens of judges, prosecutors, and former CICIG officials were reportedly in exile as of 2024.

Under Attorney General Porras, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has actively sought to prosecute its perceived opponents and undermine elections, pursuing arbitrary and politically motivated attacks against President Arévalo. Attorney General Porras has also repeatedly blocked high-profile corruption investigations and increasingly weaponized the justice system against prosecutors, lawyers, and judges involved in the fight against corruption.

Corruption has affected the selection of new Supreme Court and appellate court judges, which came to a halt in 2019. In October 2024, Guatemala’s Congress appointed 13 new Supreme Court judges that will serve until 2029. Observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations warned that the appointment process was marred by interference from the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Although the constitution guarantees due process rights, those rights are inconsistently upheld, due in part to corruption in the judiciary and an ineffective police force in which many officers routinely violate the law and the rights of citizens. Access to justice remains difficult, especially for Indigenous people. Conviction rates are low.

Judges and prosecutors have reported facing threats and harassment, smear campaigns, and malicious criminal and disciplinary complaints in apparent retaliation for their work on sensitive cases related to corruption and human rights abuses.

High levels of violence, kidnappings, and extortion at the hands of the police, drug traffickers, and street gangs continue. Links between the state, politicians, the military, and illicit actors complicate a cohesive response to the country’s security challenges. The country’s homicide rate is persistently high. Prison facilities are grossly overcrowded and rife with gang- and drug-related violence and corruption. Efforts to bring perpetrators of past human rights abuses to justice have been significantly hampered by intimidation campaigns against those involved in the process.

Equal rights are guaranteed in the constitution, but minorities continue to face unequal treatment. Indigenous communities suffer from high rates of poverty, illiteracy, and infant mortality. Indigenous women are particularly marginalized. LGBT+ people face discrimination, violence, and police abuse and are unprotected by legislation. The constitution prohibits discrimination based on gender, but women continue to face gender-based inequality; women are usually paid less for their labor than men, and sexual harassment in the workplace is not penalized.

While there are no permanent restrictions on free movement, violence and the threat of violence by gangs and organized criminal groups inhibit this right in practice and have prompted the displacement of thousands of people. Movement is regularly restricted due to government-imposed states of siege and prevention.

Protections for property rights and economic freedom rarely extend beyond those with wealth and political connections. Land protections are especially limited for Indigenous people, particularly Indigenous women, despite a series of Constitutional Court rulings in 2020 that reinforced communal landholding rights in Indigenous communities. Forced evictions of Indigenous communities continued in 2024, including that of approximately 160 Q'eqchi’ Mayan people in Buena Vista and Santa Rosita. Criminal activity, including extortion and fraud, hampered business activity. An inefficient state bureaucracy, rife with unclear and complicated regulations, also contributed to difficulties in establishing and operating a business.

Physical and sexual violence against women and children remains high, with perpetrators rarely facing prosecution. The law permits abortion only when a pregnancy threatens the life of the woman. However, legal abortion care is difficult to access in practice. Teenage pregnancy rates remain high, including among girls under the age of 15. Underage marriages are outlawed, but the law is not effectively enforced.

Indigenous peoples’ access to economic opportunities and socioeconomic mobility remains limited, with more than 70 percent of the population living in poverty. Income distribution is among the most unequal worldwide, with the wealthiest 10 percent of the population receiving nearly 50 percent of the total income nationally. Significant barriers to accessing education persist, particularly for girls, Indigenous children, and rural residents. Child labor persists, especially among Indigenous children. Sexual exploitation particularly affects vulnerable groups, including children, LGBT+ people, and Indigenous people. Gangs often force children and young men to join their organizations or perform work for them.