About the Organization
Number of survivors served in a year
Less than 20
Groups most commonly served
Indigenous peoples, communities, or nations Refugees, migrants, or internally displaced persons Rural communities Women Youth, children, or adolescents
Type of organization
Grassroots/community-based organization Volunteer-led organization
Program model(s)
Rights-based economic justice Systemic change through strategic partnerships
Successes and Impact
“[The women] have managed to get their [employment] benefits paid. They have entered into negotiation and while in some cases they haven’t recovered 100% of [what they were owed], they have managed to negotiate for 75%, 80%, or 90% [of it].”1
Mujeres con Valor Construyendo un Futuro Mejor (MUVACOFUM) has established itself as a key reference point for supporting survivors of gender-based violence to achieve economic security and economic rights. Using a peer-led model, they have successfully supported women survivors working in agribusiness, textile factories, domestic work, and the informal economy in securing wrongfully withheld wages, alimony payments, and legal recognition of their children by absent parents.
Winning critical legal victories for survivors through supportive accompaniment
To secure important legal victories that directly impact survivors’ economic security, MUVACOFUM pays particular attention to equipping survivors with the knowledge and support to file complaints and secure their rights. MUVACOFUM accompanies clients to court for as long as necessary to complete the cases and secures additional legal expertise from trusted partners. Thanks to their step-by-step support that centers the economic autonomy and security of survivor clients, MUVACOFUM has earned regional recognition and trust, leading to many community-based referrals.
Part of their legal accompaniment strategy includes providing psychosocial support to survivor clients, some of whom may feel intimidated by the legal process. MUVACOFUM emphasizes that their peer to peer model, where survivors who have gone through their own legal claims processes guide and accompany new clients, has successfully supported clients in feeling less stressed and overwhelmed by the legal process. As a result, survivors gain access to important economic assets in a supportive environment—for example, they recently won eight paternity cases. Other clients who have won their labor cases have been able to secure between 75-90% of the benefits that they were owed. One client was able to buy land using the payout from her settlement.
Building collective power to challenge the status quo on economic rights and access
MUVACOFUM’s reputation has enabled them to build robust support networks between local, regional, and national organizations, creating greater access to resources and legal expertise for survivors. This collaborative approach has also built political leverage. Through advocacy efforts, they achieved municipal recognition and participated in creating the 2022-2028 municipal policy for comprehensive women’s development. “There we appear in the policy as an organization that defends women’s labor and economic rights,” the organization notes, highlighting how their grassroots work has translated into systemic change.
Innovative Solutions for IPV Survivors’ Economic Security
“We listen to women workers. We study and analyze [a] case and refer it to the appropriate agency, because there are different organizations that also help us in the legal area. For the initial follow-up, we as [the organization] provide support and advice until the case is closed.”
About the Program
MUVACOFUM began in 2005 when a handful of women textile workers organized to support themselves and 90 of their colleagues navigating precarious working conditions at below minimum wage. They have since evolved into a nimble and regionally recognized grassroots organization that connects survivors to the resources they need to access their economic and labor rights, thus providing a pathway to building long-term economic security.
The organization’s approach centers comprehensive accompaniment for women, girls, and adolescents who are survivors of economic, labor, and domestic violence. Using a peer to peer accompaniment model and strategic partnerships to access needed resources, MUVACOFUM is able to provide legal counseling, emotional support, and training in human and labor rights. As a survivor-led organization, MUVACOFUM knows that intimate partner violence, gendered labor exploitation, and economic precarity often overlap and compound one another, limiting survivors’ options for seeking safety and establishing economic security.
Program Development and Key Strategies
MUVACOFUM’s programming has evolved through continuous adaptation and learning, based on the direct experience of survivors. Over the years, the organization has refined their approach to ensure that their services respond to the community’s needs. The following key strategies have been fundamental to the program’s success:
- Comprehensive and flexible accompaniment to secure economic rights and assets
- Strategic partnerships to support survivors and strengthen political leverage
- Building expertise through lived experience
Comprehensive and flexible accompaniment to secure economic rights and assets
Advancing labor cases and securing benefits for survivors
MUVACOFUM supports women in reporting labor abuses, such as unjustified dismissals or failure to pay employment benefits, to achieve favorable outcomes that provide essential financial compensation. Through a survivor-centric approach, the organization provides legal advice, emotional support, and training on human and labor rights to ensure survivor workers are not left stranded in the legal system. They note that some of their clients are internal migrants without extended family nearby to help with childcare, and thus pursuing cases to gain their rightful wages or rightful child support can provide an economic lifeline.
In the words of a team member: “We invite them [our clients] to participate in the organization and we see what their needs are, and we accompany [them]. We go to present [their] cases to the family court. . . . We have formed alliances with other organizations for legal assistance.”
Adapting programming to meet survivor workers’ realities
Understanding the economic and family constraints facing their participants, MUVACOFUM schedules most activities and meetings on weekends when working women—both clients and volunteers—can attend without missing work and losing income. “The women who are members, who are the backbone of MUVACOFUM, are women who work in maquilas, but also domestic workers or workers in the informal economy.”
Strategic partnerships to support survivors and strengthen political leverage
As MUVACOFUM does not yet have all the legal resources and expertise in house, the organization has developed a strong network of local, regional, and national organizations that help them report and achieve economic justice for cases related to economic, labor, and intimate partner violence. These partnerships allow collective knowledge sharing and enable more effective and comprehensive support for survivors. One participant explains: “They come to us, they are referred to us by women’s organizations. . . . We know that the work we do is important because we have created institutional support networks.”
Their robust grassroots network and strong reputation have also helped them build a constituency with political leverage since their inception in 2005. Through collective organizing, joint advocacy, and individual legal victories, MUVACOFUM pushes the government to uphold its laws and regulations while also participating in the creation of public policies at the municipal level that promote women’s well-being and economic security.
Building expertise through lived experience
MUVACOFUM’s founding members have developed a sophisticated understanding of legal processes through years of accompanying cases and learning from allied organizations—despite having completed limited schooling. As one team member explains: “The two members of the team that follow up on legal complaints of violence against women, girls, and adolescents . . . have been developing their expertise based on their own experiences in reporting workplace violence and the training processes carried out at MUVACOFUM and other allied organizations that have specialized personnel in legal processes.”
This experiential learning model has proven remarkably effective. They have won eight paternity cases and numerous labor disputes without in-house legal staff, demonstrating how lived experience as survivor workers combined with strategic partnerships can build formidable expertise.
Survivor Leadership
“Our focus is on listening to the person, to our peers, because we are all survivors of violence. We listen to them, we understand them, and we make them aware of their rights.”
Survivor leadership is a fundamental pillar of MUVACOFUM, where 100% of the management identifies as survivors and organizational members and clients are also integrated as programmatic decision-makers. This shared leadership approach not only strengthens the work but also promotes survivor autonomy.
Survivors as advisors and volunteers ground the work
Survivors play a key role in managing and directing activities. The organization notes that many participants become advisors and volunteers within the organization to share their experience and knowledge with others. This approach not only creates an environment of mutual support but also reinforces the importance of leadership in the community. By being an integral part of decisions that affect the organization, survivors’ needs are always at the center of MUVACOFUM’s work.
Survivor well-being and solidarity supports organizational sustainability
MUVACOFUM also witnesses the struggles of their members, such as inconsistent participant or volunteer attendance due to intimate partner violence or economic difficulty. As a survivor-led organization, they intimately understand the responsibilities and trauma that survivors face. Given this, the organization does their best to hold spaces for rest and play. These include workshops on self-care, activities to experience playfulness and joy, and other recreational or therapeutic avenues for a change of pace and emotional release.
Through participation in the organization, survivors develop a sense of belonging and solidarity that helps them support each other, deepen their self-confidence, and continue fighting for their rights.
Understanding Economic Harm in Context
Present-day Guatemala is home to over twenty-four Indigenous groups that make up 44% of the country’s population, yet deep divides exist in economic opportunity, justice, and political participation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Guatemalans.2 The gendered impacts of this discrimination are amplified by ongoing trauma from the state-sanctioned Mayan genocide of 1982.3 Within this context, MUVACOFUM has identified several key factors that shape how survivors experience economic harm:
- Gender-based discrimination and ineffective legal systems deny economic justice to survivors
- Economic insecurity is heightened for Indigenous and rural women
- Internal displacement and lack of political support fuels economic instability for survivors
Gender-based discrimination and ineffective legal systems deny economic justice to survivors
Existing legal protections for economic justice for survivors are rarely implemented
Despite the existence of laws designed to protect women, such as the 2008 Law Against Femicide and Other Forms of Violence Against Women, implementation of the protections laid out in these laws is weak, particularly for rural and Indigenous communities.4 MUVACOFUM comments: “The laws here . . . don’t protect women, even though they are written. The judges themselves . . . ‘advise’ that women give up.”
This lack of implementation frequently compounds survivors’ economic insecurity: without government enforcement of economic obligations, such as alimony or spousal support, survivors can be deprived of compensation even if they succeed in court. This is why MUVACOFUM’s legal accompaniment is so crucial: they accompany survivors all the way to the end of their cases, including to ensure they receive the compensation that is rightfully theirs.
Patriarchal norms limit women’s economic opportunities and legal recourse for economic harm
Patriarchal norms influence women’s economic security and opportunity in Guatemala through factors such as lack of minimum wage enforcement, limited work opportunities, and unreliable court verdicts—which are often partial toward male harm-doers. MUVACOFUM describes a common occurrence in the courtroom: “Many times, the family judges . . . tell [the women filing child support claims], ‘What do you want? He earns very little. Besides, he has another woman.’ . . . Then, they also tell them, ‘You are working. You can make a tiny effort.’ They say it like this, with blatant discrimination and misogyny, blaming the women. . . . On top of that, they take the side of the [harm-doers].”
Economic insecurity is heightened for Indigenous and rural women
A large proportion of the female workforce, particularly in rural areas, works in informal and low-paid jobs that often lack labor regulations and protections. Indigenous women in Guatemala are doubly marginalized, facing both racial and gender discrimination in the workforce. They also face systemic exclusion from basic services such as healthcare, education, and formal employment opportunities, which forces them into informal sectors where they have little job security or protection of labor rights. This combination of factors deepens their economic insecurity and increases their exposure to economic violence, both within their relationships and at work.5
Internal displacement and lack of political support fuels economic instability for survivors
Economic harm is further complicated by ongoing displacement issues in Guatemala due to violence and natural disasters, often pushing survivors and their children to live in precarious conditions. As families are forced to migrate internally or cross borders, survivors of gender-based violence face additional challenges in securing stable employment or financial independence, all while trying to prevent further harm.6 MUVACOFUM notes that Guatemala’s municipalities are unfriendly to migrants who attempt to build small food stands or sell on the street, requiring them to pay steep municipality fees and further destabilizing their attempts to build economic security.
These factors highlight the complex nature of economic harm in the context of IPV and the systemic barriers that survivors face in accessing economic security and justice. MUVACOFUM’s work in Guatemala underscores the importance of not only addressing immediate economic needs but also working toward broader systemic change.
Notes
- Direct quotes are slightly edited for style and flow.
- International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), “Indigenous peoples in Guatemala,” IWGIA, accessed October 3, 2025, https://iwgia.org/en/guatemala.html.
- IWGIA, “Indigenous peoples in Guatemala.”
- World Bank, “Gender-based Violence Country Profile: Guatemala,” Social Sustainability and Inclusion Global Practice: Latin America and the Caribbean Region, accessed October 3, 2025, https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099053023161523435/pdf/P1769790c58ba10f0a5830bf75b650f968.pdf.
- United States Department of State, 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Guatemala, U.S. Department of State, March 20, 2023, https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/guatemala/.
- Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), “2023 Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID),” IDMC, 2023, https://www.internal-displacement.org/publications/2023-global-report-on-internal-displacement-grid/.
