Claudia Paz y Paz

Claudia Paz y Paz (2016)

Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey (* 1967 in Guatemala ) is a criminal law expert, academic, judge and trial attorney, former senior public prosecutor and the first elected female attorney general in Guatemala, initially under the presidency of Álvaro Colom for two years , then under President Otto Pérez Molina .

Her focus is the prosecution of human rights violations, organized crime and corruption , as well as the creation of constitutional structures.

Career

Paz y Paz initially worked in academia and worked as a human rights lawyer. As the attorney general of Guatemala from December 9, 2010 to May 15, 2014, Paz y Paz held the office of Fiscal General de la República de Guatemala , of which she was the 10th official. Paz y Paz led several investigations into war crimes committed during the civil war . Her inauguration took place through the government Álvaro Colom Caballero , under whose successor Otto Pérez Molina her mandate was continued until 2014. She gained general notoriety in particular with investigations into allegations against the former Guatemalan head of state Efraín Ríos Montt . The defendant was placed under house arrest. The focus was, among other things, on the events that led to the violent death of 252 people in the Dos Erres massacre . Four defendants were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. In the course of this and other taking of evidence, she was repeatedly exposed to threats against her person.

Another focus of her work was the fight against drug-related crime : in the first six months of her term in office she managed to arrest more drug traffickers than in the entire previous ten-year period. Under her leadership, five of the ten most wanted drug bosses in Guatemala could be found and the clearance rate of misogynistic acts of violence and homicides was ten times higher than among all previous incumbents.

After Thelma Aldana succeeded her in the Attorney General's Office in 2014 , Paz y Paz was awarded the Human Rights Prize of the Washington Office on Latin America - WOLA (Oficina en Washington para Asuntos Latinoamericanos). WOLA also made her a Senior Fellow . Paz y Paz is now also a member of the Iniciativa de Liderazgo de la Justicia . She announced that she would return to her previous academic work when her mandate expired. At this point in time, she also expressly renounced a later political candidacy.

Since her resignation came prematurely after a decision by the Constitutional Court, it is suspected that Paz y Paz had ventured too close with her investigations to the environment of the incumbent President Otto Pérez Molina, who was a senior member of the Guatemalan armed forces at the time of the civil war.

International recognition

In August 2013 Forbes Magazine named Paz y Paz "one of the five most powerful women who change the world". Also in 2013 she received the Judith Lee Stronach Human Rights Prize. In the same year she was on the list of nominees for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize , but the decision of the committee fell in favor of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons , based in The Hague . Paz y Paz also received public approval from the then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton . Paz y Paz received further honors from the Latin American Studies Association in Pittsburgh , in collaboration with Oxfam , for her academic work and her tireless commitment to human rights . In 2013 a documentary portrait of Paz y Paz appeared in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) multi-format series 100 Women . In 2015, her commitment was awarded the Civil Courage Prize of the John Train Foundation, which she received together with the Guatemalan judge Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar , who had convicted Efraín Ríos Montt.

Fonts (selection)

• (Ed.): Justicia militar. Participaron en la investigación. La Fundación Myrna Mack, Guatemala 1997.
• La tipificación de violaciones en contra de derechos fundamentales y los hechos de violencia vinculados al enfrentamiento armado. Fondo de Desarrollo Democrático de CECI, Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales de Guatemala, Guatemala 1998.
• Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey, Silvina Ramírez: Gestión de la conflictividad local en la Guatemala de la post guerra. ICCPG, Guatemala 2007.
• Ileana Arduino, Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey: La nueva regulación de la violencia sexual en Guatemala. Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales de Guatemala, Ciudad de Guatemala 2010.
• Transforming justice in Guatemala. Strategies and challenges investigating violent deaths 2011–2014. Georgetown University, Washington, DC 2016. ( Digitized ; PDF; 2 MB; English).
• Politics, institutions, and the prospects for justice in Guatemala. In: Stephen Henighan, Candace Johnson (eds.): Human and environmental justice in Guatemala. University of Toronto Press, Toronto / Buffalo / London 2018, ISBN 978-1-4875-0389-5 (book contribution).

In 2015 the Dutch filmmaker Joey Boink released a 54-minute documentary Burden of Peace , which won an award in France (FIPA) in 2016.

Web links

Commons : Claudia Paz y Paz  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Claudia Paz y Paz in the bibliographic database WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Meet Claudia Paz y Paz, Guatemala. In: nobelwomensinitiative.org. Nobel Women's Initiative, 2015, accessed October 29, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Mike McDonald: Quiet Guatemalan prosecutor takes on dictator, drug gangs . In: Reuters . May 29, 2012 ( reuters.com ).
3. ^ Mark Tran: Guatemala: one woman's campaign against violent crime and corruption . In: The Guardian . October 8, 2013, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com ).
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} Carrie Kahn: Guatemala's First Female Attorney General Takes On Country's Biggest Criminals. In: National Public Radio . Retrieved October 29, 2019 . 
5. ^ Claudia Paz y Paz: Latin America and the Caribbean Global Leadership Awards. In: Vital Voices - Global Partnership. Retrieved October 29, 2019 (English, archived website of the NGO Vital Voices Global Partnership, based in Washington DC). 
6. ↑ Peter Gaupp: Guatemala's shining light booted out - Guatemala's attorney general has been forced to resign early. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . March 3, 2014, accessed October 30, 2019 . 
7. ^ Susan McPherson: The 5 Most Powerful Women Changing The World In Politics And Public Policy. In: Forbes Magazine. August 12, 2012, accessed October 29, 2019 . 
8. ↑ Guatemala's First Female Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz to speak about the challenge of violence and organized crime in post-conflict Guatemala. George Mason University - Latin American Studies, November 5, 2013, accessed October 29, 2019 . 
9. ↑ OCLC 950613895

predecessor	Office	successor
María Encarnación Mejía García de Contreras (interim)	Attorney General of Guatemala December 9, 2010–16. May 2014	Thelma Aldana