The organizations explained in a press conference that Governmental Agreement 207-2014 was published on Diario de Centro America in August 2014 establishing the passing of the National Modified Living Organisms Biosafety Policy (OMV) 2013-2023. Last year, Otto Perez Molina´s administration had to suspend the law that incorporated the New Plant Varieties Rights to the Guatemalan legislation as a response to the rejection by rural and agroecological movements of the country, who considered it a threat against local species and varieties.

After the conference where the risks implied by the resolution were explained, an event was held where the organizations started to build alternatives for the protection of biodiversity and the agroecological peasant economy, members of CEIBA told Real World Radio.

One of the specific goals of the National Biodiversity Policy, included in the resolution of August 2014, is to create a national security system for the use of modified living organisms and to establish guidelines to identify the regulatory framework necessary for their development, use, handling, transportation, release to the environment and transboundary movement.

The National Network for the Defense of Food Sovereignty in Guatemala (REDSAG), which gathers the organizations that oppose this regulation, considers that the cultivation, commercialization and direct use of GMOs as human food or animal feed represents a violation to the human rights of the population and demand Guatemala, a place of origin for many species, to be declared a territory free from GMOs.