The election monitoring group Acción Ciudadana (AC; “Citizen Action”) undertook an observation focused on illuminating not only the realities of campaign finance and corruption, but also electoral violence, with a particular focus on violence against women in elections as well as violence targeting LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) and indigenous communities.

Over the course of the observation, AC, the Guatemalan chapter of Transparency International, was able to collect a great deal of information, in large part because they had created their forms with an intent to capture data that was disaggregated in a number of ways, including gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. In doing so, they created an observation that allowed them to see the effects of several types of marginalization — including the marginalization of women through VAW-E — and analyze their data through an intersectional perspective.

Observers were stationed in 20 municipalities across Guatemala, chosen for their history or likelihood of violence, particularly during elections. Observers in the pre-election monitoring effort sent regular reports to AC that recorded any violence that they had personally witnessed, as well as incidents of violence that were reported to them by formal committees of community leaders that they had organized, with whom they met to collect further reports of violence.