Amílcar Méndez Urízar is a

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...

n human rights activist and former

Congressman A Member of Congress (MOC) is a person who has been appointed or elected and inducted into an official body called a congress, typically to represent a particular constituency in a legislature. The term member of parliament (MP) is an equivalen ...

(1996–2000). In July 1988 he founded the Council for Ethnic Communities "We Are All Equal" (CERJ). In 1990 he was the recipient of the

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, was created by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial in 1984, now known as the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights to honour individuals around the world who have shown great courage and have made a significant contr ...

and the Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize. In October 2003, the

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (the IACHR or, in the three other official languages Spanish, French, and Portuguese CIDH, ''Comisión Interamericana de los Derechos Humanos'', ''Commission Interaméricaine des Droits de l'Homme'', ...

requested that Guatemala adopt precautionary measures to protect the life and person of Méndez in the wake of death threats made against him and the murder of another CERJ activist. On 17 August 2007, his son José Emanuel was murdered in Guatemala City.Asesinan a hijo de Amílcar Méndez
''El Periódico'', 2007-08-18.

References

External links

Living people Guatemalan human rights activists Nonviolence advocates Guatemalan activists Members of the Congress of Guatemala Year of birth missing (living people) Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award laureates {{Guatemala-politician-stub