San José, Costa Rica, August 31, 2022. On August 30, the Inter-American Court closed in Guatemala City, Guatemala, the first Seminar on Best Practice in Indigenous and Tribal Peoples’ Rights, the Right to a Healthy Environment and Human Rights Defenders.

More than 50 officials from various public bodies ensuring the protection of human rights in Guatemala participated in the meeting, including the Constitutional Court, the Judiciary, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Human Rights Ombudsman (PDH according to its acronym in Spanish), the Institute of Public Criminal Defense, the Presidential Commission for Peace and Human Rights (COPADEH), and the National Attorney General's Office (PGN), among other institutions that implement best practice in the protection of human rights in Guatemala.

The Seminar was led by lawyers Juana María Ibáñez Rivas, international consultant on human rights and international humanitarian law, Raquel Yrigoyen Fajardo, vice president of the International Institute of Law and Society-IIDS, Celeste Novelli, lawyer of the Secretariat of the Inter-American Court, and the lawyer Rogelio Flores Pantoja, director of the Institute for Constitutional Studies of the State of Querétaro, Mexico.

This first Seminar was part of the "Strengthening the Protection of Human Rights and the Rule of Law through jurisprudential dialogue, optimization of institutional capacities and compliance with the Judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras” project signed with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), through which it seeks to optimize the capacities of judicial administration officers for the application of International Human Rights Law and the case law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.