The population of Guatemalans between the ages of 13-30 years old makes up approximately 30 percent of the total population.  Women comprise 51 percent, 60 percent are indigenous youths, and more the 60 percent live in rural areas.  These groups struggle with poverty, unemployment, education, health, recreation and, in general, a lack of basic development opportunities.

For many years, the Guatemalan youths have seen their opportunities for development restricted, due to a lack of vision of the different governments in power or simply a general indifference shown towards this segment of the population.  After the signing of the Peace Accords, different sectors began working on political proposals to benefit the population that historically had been overlooked  They began to suggest proposals on issues regarding indigenous peoples, women, farmers, settlers, children and youth.

Previously, various programs of interest in these highlighted areas were developed between 2000 and 2002 by GTZ (Pro-youth Program) with Integral Program of Adolescent Health through the Department of Health with support from PAHO in approximately the same period..  A similar initiative in the recreational and cultural scope was impelled with the help of UNESCO. However, in the three cases, sustainability has not been assured at this time. This would require consolidating efforts and obtaining effective impacts.

In this sense, youth organizations met in the Guatemalan Youth Coordination, in which during the 2003 electoral process, created the National Youth Agenda.  This document contained proposals for State reform on issues pertaining to youth, guidelines for driving public policies, and the proposal of a law for integral youth development. 

The current government and other political parties know of the agenda and have committed themselves to enforce it, from their respective state offices.  In this context the Guatemalan Youth Coordination assumed the responsibility of driving and participating in the implementation of the National Youth Agenda. Recently, they have submitted the proposal for the Integral Youth Development Law to Congress.

The National Youth Council is an organization that operates from the National Executive Office on youth-related themes, an organization under the Presidency of the Republic.  In theory, the National Youth Council should be able to achieve existing initiatives such as the Integral Youth Health Plan, the Eradication of Child Labor and other similar topics, but in actuality, this does not happen.  Instead the broadening of their efforts decreases their ability to obtain any sort of impact.

The second half of 2005, as well as in the next coming years, will allow for the strengthening of this new initiative that emerged from the civil society (the law project). This initiative would hopefully achieve, or not, improvements and denote (or not) relevant changes in the dynamics in these areas known up until now.

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