President Bernardo Arévalo stressed on Monday that as a Government they assumed the challenge and took a step forward to lead a State policy that allows progress towards comprehensive human development, and considered it necessary to work together to leave behind misery and malnutrition and impact those populations that suffered historical abandonment by successive national administrations.

During the first meeting of the National Food and Nutrition Security Council in mid-March, the president described it as unacceptable that 50 percent of children under five years of age suffer from acute malnutrition. “It is the clearest sign of the failure of a society, of the uselessness of the State, whose authority cannot be justified if it cannot prevent the loss of a life for a cause that is, evidently, avoidable,” he expressed, and emphasized: “It is not a problem of individual decisions, but rather the sum of many collective shortcomings, political decisions and many injustices.”

The Minister of Social Development, Abelardo Pinto, said that to reduce poverty and malnutrition they would progressively coordinate the interventions of different entities in selected territories based on public data. He added that the initiative will focus on seven municipalities in the departments of Huehuetenango, Quiché, Totonicapán, and Chimaltenango.

Official figures warned of more than 25,000 children with acute malnutrition last year in Guatemala, an increase of almost 26 percent compared to 2022.

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