In the municipality of Colotenango, in the northwestern province of Huehuetenango, the country's president, Bernardo Arevalo, will lead, along with officials from various agencies, the event that will mark the beginning of the mechanism.
In his speech the previous day, the President emphasized that they as a government have taken on the challenge and taken a step forward to lead a state policy that allows progress towards comprehensive human development.
Aiming to leave behind misery and malnutrition and impact a population that had suffered historical abandonment by successive national administrations, Arevalo considered joint action necessary.
He expressed his appreciation to the ministries and presidential secretariats, as well as civil society, the private sector and every citizen of Guatemala.
He commented that just last week, Mides president Abelardo Pinto publicly condemned how this portfolio was being cleaned up and restructured.
The 65-year-old politician said that this aims to overcome the clientelist practices in which he was working, which betrayed the spirit of social support in which this organization should operate.
He expressed his full confidence in the commitment of the executive institutions that will participate in this initiative and those that will join in working to impact the rates of multidimensional poverty and malnutrition.
When participating in the first meeting of the National Council for Food Security and Nutrition in mid-March, the President described it as unacceptable that 50 percent of children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition.
It expressed the clearest sign of the failure of society, of the futility of the state, whose authority could not be justified if it could not prevent the loss of life for a cause that was clearly avoidable.
The sociologist by profession, diplomat and former writer stressed that this is not “a problem of individual decisions, but rather the sum of many collective shortcomings, political decisions and many injustices.”
Pinto, for his part, then announced that in order to reduce poverty and malnutrition, they would progressively coordinate the interventions of different entities in priority areas based on public data.
The minister explained that the plan will focus on seven municipalities in the departments of Huehuetenango, Quiché, Totonicapán and Chimaltenango.
Official figures warned that more than 25,000 children were suffering from acute malnutrition last year in Guatemala, an increase of approximately 26 percent compared to 2022.
L/Zn