The development and institutionalization of intercultural bilingual education programs coincided with the 36-year Guatemalan Civil War. The peace accords, signed in December 1996, ended the war which had displaced the Mayan population. The 1996 peace accords were in part the country's renewed commitment to sustaining Mayan culture, and the revitalization of the Mayan language was centrally to the new political and cultural discourse. One of the five sets of peace accords, "The Accords on the Identity and Rights of the Indigenous Peoples", devotes one of its three sections to Mayan rights. Signed on March 31, 1995, this agreement divides Mayan rights into "Cultural Rights" and "Civil, Political, Social and Economic Rights". In "Cultural Rights", language is included in the broader concept of culture. This section enumerates measures which would elevate the status of Mayan languages, with bilingual education listed as a means of giving the Mayan languages a status equal to Spanish. The seven measures to encourage Mayan-language use as a cultural right are "constitutional recognition; bilingual education and Mayan language education; the use of Mayan languages in government services in Mayan communities; informing the indigenous peoples of their rights; training bilingual judges and interpreters; fostering appreciation of indigenous languages; and promoting the officialization of indigenous languages." The peace accords mandate bilingual education, diverging from early attempts at indigenous assimilation into a dominant society by explicitly promoting Mayan-language education.
