E/CN.4/2005/18/Add.2 page 5 Introduction 1. During his visit to Guatemala, from 28 June to 2 July 2004, the Special Rapporteur met with several of the country’s officials, including the Vice-President, Mr. Eduardo Stein, and the Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms. Marta Altolaguirre Larraondo. He also met with representatives of the Presidential Commission for Coordinating Executive Policy in the field of Human Rights (the Presidential Human Rights Commission in short, or COPREDEH), the Presidential Commission on Discrimination and Racism against Indigenous Peoples (CODISRA), the Office of the Human Rights Procurator and the Office for the Defence of Indigenous Women, as well as with Ms. Rigoberta Menchú Tum, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and goodwill ambassador for the peace agreements. In his desire to learn more about Guatemalan society in all its complexity and diversity, the Special Rapporteur also met with representatives of the Mayan, Xinca and Garifuna1 peoples and with representatives of civil society, religious communities, intellectual circles and the media. His consultations took place in the capital, Guatemala City, and elsewhere in the country, including in the city of Quezaltenango in the north-west, the administrative centre of the department of the same name, where a majority of the people are indigenous, and in the town of Livingston in the south, on the Caribbean coast in the department of Izabal, where the Garifuna and Maya-Quiché peoples live side by side. 2. The visit to Guatemala took place against a backdrop of the consolidation of the peace process. Government action, supported by the United Nations Mission for the Verification of Human Rights and of Compliance with the Commitments of the Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights in Guatemala (MINUGUA), seems to have laid the institutional and legislative groundwork for a solution to the economic, social, political, cultural, ethnic and racial conflicts in the country. The departure of MINUGUA in December 2004 was a staging post along the way to completing the complex and long-term work of gradually implementing the institutional, political, economic and social changes needed for peace to take root. The efforts of the field office of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guatemala to encourage the emergence of a human rights culture, combined with the activities of various specialized agencies of the United Nations in the field of peace and social and human development, especially those of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), link up with the groundwork that has been laid and that is being built on with a view to giving effect, through an updated system of governance and pluralist democracy, to the commitments entered into by the various protagonists and enshrined in the peace agreements. The Special Rapporteur believes that the fragility of the peace-building process, the continued violations of human rights and the marginalization of groups that suffer from discrimination as a result of weak legal protection would justify the rapid return to Guatemala of the field office of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 3. Most of the people from both the Government and civil society with whom the Special Rapporteur met welcomed his visit and thought that it was taking place at a particularly crucial time, when the parts of the peace agreements relating to human rights in general and the identity and human rights of indigenous peoples and people of African descent in particular were in need of a boost. The Special Rapporteur would like his visit to be seen as a critical, forward-looking contribution to the implementation of the agreements, particularly with regard to racism and discrimination.