Francisco Villagrán Kramer

Francisco Villagrán Kramer is a Guatemalan legal scholar and social democrat who served as vice president under General Romeo Lucas García beginning in 1978. He resigned from office on September 1, 1980, before his term ended, citing differences with the Lucas regime and disapproval of Guatemala's worsening human rights situation [http://www.cidh.oas.org/countryrep/Guatemala81eng/chap.9.htm] . He then went into voluntary exile in the United States, taking a position in the Legal Department of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Villagrán Kramer has been elected to and served on the Inter-American Juridical Committee of the Organization of American States (OAS) and on the United Nations' International Law Commission. In 1994 he was elected to the Guatemalan Congress, where he served as president of the Committee on Human Rights.

In 1997, he was nominated for a seat on the OAS's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The nomination raised strong criticism based on the allegation that death squads had been active in Guatemala during his time as vice-president.

Villagrán Kramer has authored more than two dozen books and dozens of articles on international law and Guatemalan history and politics. In "Biografía Política de Guatemala" he describes his involvement with the Lucas government as a failed attempt to exert a moderating influence on a rightist regime.

External links

* [http://www.cidh.oas.org/countryrep/Guatemala81eng/chap.9.htm History of Guatemala chapter 9, (includes text of resignation)]
* [http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/guatemala/1998-Guatemala.html worldpolicy.org]
* [http://www.oas.org/cji/eng/inter_american_juridical_committee.htm Inter-American Juridical Committee]