Bringing holistic care to survivors of violence in rural Guatemala

For survivors of gender-based violence in Ixcán, Guatemala, the road to care and justice is long— literally and figuratively.

To access health-care services, survivors must travel hours from their remote municipality, on poorly maintained roads.

But instead of accepting the status quo, women have spent the past decade fighting to bring services closer to home, through the Asociación Red de Organizaciones de Mujeres del Ixcán (ROMI).

For more than 20 years, ROMI, an alliance of women’s groups—mostly Indigenous Mayan women—that we have worked alongside for decades, has been the local resource for women who have experienced gender-based or sexual violence.

ROMI centres women’s dignity, autonomy and rights in their care. The organization supports survivors to triage their health needs, navigate the legal system and offers mental health and emotional support—sometimes providing safe places to stay. ROMI members accompany survivors to distant health or medical centres, police stations and courtrooms.

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Ten years ago, cases of gender- based violence began to outpace ROMI’s capacity—and survivors were still forced to travel hours away for adequate treatment and support. Ixcán needed its own services. With Inter Pares support, ROMI started advocating for a Centro de Apoyo Integral para Mujeres Sobrevivientes de Violencia (CAIMUS) in the municipality: a government- funded centre where ROMI could expand their work and survivors could access holistic care services closer to home. The services would be for women, by women from their own communities.

To this end, ROMI engaged in advocacy with the national government to approve the project, lobbied male-dominated municipal committees and held community demonstrations to voice their demands.

“We made clear that a CAIMUS would provide better attention to women victims of violence,” recalls Ángela González, a member of ROMI’s leadership.

In 2024, ROMI’s advocacy paid off: the Guatemalan government approved their request for a CAIMUS.

The journey is far from over, but ROMI has already transformed the experience of survivors in Ixcán. And thanks to their perseverance over the past 10 years, local holistic feminist health care is just around the corner: care that meets women where they are and restores the safety they often have been denied.