— Peru’s Minister of Health issued an apology on Wednesday for the forced sterilization of indigenous women during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori. The apology follows a report from Peru’s Congress confirming the violations and recommending that sterilization be banned as a method of family planning. The Center for Reproductive Rights is pleased that the current Toledo government is acknowledging the systematic coercive sterilizations that occurred during the Fujimori regime. However, the Center for Reproductive Rights is concerned that Wednesday’s apology is part of a right-wing strategy to limit family planning options in Peru. High-ranking officials in the current government are known to be tied to ultra-conservative Catholic Church groups.
"If it proves true that the Peruvian government is using these horrific violations as a tactic to diminish women’s family planning options, low-income and indigenous women’s rights will be violated for a second time," said Luisa Cabal, legal advisor with the Center for Reproductive Rights' international program. "Women deserve voluntary, comprehensive reproductive health services and the government of Peru has an obligation to ensure access to all methods of family planning," added Cabal.
Women’s rights groups brought to light these violations several years ago and have been urging the government to conduct an in-depth investigation and make reparations to the victims ever since. The Center for Reproductive Rights, the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM), and the Flora Tristan Women’s Center first documented various forms of violence against women being perpetrated in Peru’s public health care facilities in 1996.
Peruvian women’s organizations, as well as Peru’s human rights ombudsman office, an independent government agency, have expressed concern over the government’s announcement and its claim that over 200,000 women were forced to be sterilized. The ombudsman’s office released its own report in 1998 documenting these practices.
"Speaking as an organization that has worked closely with Peruvian women’s groups since the mid 1990’s, we know the Fujimori government violated women’s reproductive rights," said Kathy Hall Martinez, acting director of the Center for Reproductive Rights’ international program. "We call on the Toledo government to ensure justice for those women whose rights were violated while the Fujimori policies were in place and to ensure appropriate, unbiased reproductive health services, including voluntary sterilization for all Peruvian women," added Hall Martinez.
In 1998, the Center for Reproductive Rights and CLADEM released Silence and Complicity, a report that included several cases of forced sterilization. As a result of this report and a second CLADEM report specifically on forced sterilization, several organizations filed a case with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights involving a young mother who died of post-surgical complications. In 2001 the Peruvian government agreed to settle the case and acknowledged its legal responsibility for the victim’s unlawful sterilization and death.
