In Guatemala’s Western Highlands, the Women’s Justice Initiative (WJI) works with indigenous women and girls to help them understand their rights, access legal support and build their leadership and confidence.
In Guatemala’s Western Highlands, the Women’s Justice Initiative (WJI) works with indigenous women and girls to help them understand their rights, access legal support and build their leadership and confidence. Working alongside Maya Kaqchikel communities, this initiative is helping women and girls overcome some of the barriers that can limit their choices, safety and opportunities.
As a Heroes of Tomorrow: UN SDG Action Awards Resilience Finalist, WJI works across rural communities in Chimaltenango, where more than 90 percent of the population in its partner municipalities identifies as Maya Kaqchikel.
For many women in these communities, access to justice is not always straightforward. Language, distance, poverty and limited access to information can make it harder to understand legal rights or know where to turn for support. Many primarily speak Kaqchikel, an indigenous language of Guatemala, making accessible information and legal support in their own language particularly important.
When women know their rights and have access to education, the trajectory of their lives can shift. They are better able to identify harm, trust that support is available, make informed choices, and confidently advocate for themselves and their families.
WJI responds through a community-led model that combines rights education, free legal assistance, and leadership development. By providing information and services in both Kaqchikel and Spanish, the initiative helps women understand and exercise their rights in a language they are comfortable using. Women take part in training on gender equality, protection from gender-based violence, property and inheritance rights, communication and decision-making.
Some later become Community Advocates, sharing their knowledge with other women and connecting them with available support.
We are planting the seeds of transformation and empowering women and girls to become leaders and agents of change.
Programmes Director, Women’s Justice Initiative
The approach reaches across generations. WJI works with adolescent girls to strengthen their confidence, knowledge of their rights and aspirations for the future, while engaging families and community leaders around girls’ education, gender equality and the prevention of early and forced marriage.
Since its founding, WJI reports that more than 16,000 indigenous women and girls have participated in its programmes, including more than 4,600 women who have received legal representation and more than 5,600 who have taken part in its legal literacy programme.
WJI helped us acquire land titles for myself and my husband. I like that our land is not only in his name, because we both worked hard, struggled, and earned what we have.
WJI continues to expand opportunities for indigenous women and girls to access justice and lead change within their communities. They are scaling its impact beyond the Kaqchikel region by sharing their methodology with community-based organizations in Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. By working with girls, women and local leaders, the initiative seeks to create change that can pass from one generation to the next.
Its work advances the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), demonstrating what becomes possible when justice is accessible, culturally relevant and rooted in the communities it is meant to serve.
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