FORCED STERILISATIONS: A PATH TO JUSTICE 25 SUB ENG

• Report rights infringement
• published: 20 Jun 2017
• views: 144

From 1996 to 2000 the government of President Alberto Fujimori implemented across Peru and in the context of a national family planning programme an unprecedented sterilization programme targeting indigenous and peasant women as well as men. It is estimated that some 314,600 women and 24,580 men were sterilized. Although the authorities claimed that they had obtained the written consent of the victims, it has emerged that the vast majority of the women were unable to read what they were signing and did not understand what they were agreeing to. It has also emerged that the sterilized women suffered serious and multiple consequences: they were abandoned by their husbands, stigmatized by their communities, and many suffered from a number of health problems that left them unable to work. The issue remained hidden for many years. Feeling shame, few women organized around it and human rights organizations long tended to focus their attention on the atrocities committed during the internal armed conflict. Only now do the conditions seem to be in place for systematic work to be conducted on the issue of these sterilizations. Investigations have also revealed the methods (blackmail, threats, house-to-house visits, financial incentives, etc.) used to meet the numerical targets for tubal ligations. The Latin American and Caribbean Committee for Women’s Rights (CLADEM) has concluded that only 10% of the women that were sterilized over the period in question had actually given their “genuine consent”. In 2000, the case of Mamérita Mestanza – one of the women who died following forced sterilization – was taken to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and in 2003 the Peruvian government reached an amicable settlement, admitting “international responsibility for the acts described and pledging to take steps for material and moral reparation of the harm done.” It also promised to initiate a thorough investigation and trial of the perpetrators and take steps to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents in the future and to ensure the respect of women’s autonomy. As a result a Register of Survivors of Forced Sterilization (REVIESFO) was created and a legal framework was put in place for the free of charge provision of legal assistance, psychological support and comprehensive care. However, very little has happened on the ground in terms of reparation and remedy of the affected women’s situation. The victims have therefore started to organize and a coordinating collective – the Group for Reparation for Forced Sterilisations (GREF) has been set up of which ONAMIAP is a member, together with other support organizations such as the Institute for Legal Defense (Instituto de Defensa Legal, IDL) and Amnesty International. The aim is to promote the right to truth, justice and full reparation for those people, particularly women, who were affected by forced sterilization. However, in order to mobilize the victims who live both in the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands of Peru, and raise public awareness, the lack of access to information has been identified as a major problem: with respect to the women victims, the information on how to gain access to REVIESFO has been inadequate as it is given in Spanish (most of the victims only speak Quechua or other indigenous languages) and its scope limited since it has not been spread out to the communities where the victims live; many victims are therefore not yet aware of their rights. With respect to public institutions and civil society organizations, they are generally unaware of the rights that were violated by the National Reproductive Health and Family Planning Programme (PNSRPF)