August marked the culmination of a four-year legal battle to secure the rights of Maria Mamerita Mestanza Chavez, an indigenous Peruvian woman who died after government officials coerced her into sterilization. After years of resistance and delay, the Peruvian government agreed to take responsibility for Mestanza’s death and compensate her family. The agreement paves the way for significant legal and policy reforms that will improve reproductive health care for women throughout Peru.
The Center for Reproductive Rights brought Mestanza’s case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), a regional human rights body, as part of our strategy to promote and advance reproductive rights as human rights.
The Peruvian government agreed to pay damages to Mestanza’s husband and seven children, as well as subsidize their health care, education and housing. In addition, the government pledged to conduct an in-depth investigation into the case and punish those responsible for violating both Peruvian and international legal standards.
The government also agreed to modify discriminatory laws and policies, and to implement the recommendations made by Peru’s Human Rights Ombudsman. These recommendations include:
- improving the pre-operative evaluations of women being sterilized;
- requiring better training of health-care personnel;
- creating a procedure to ensure timely handling of patient complaints within the health-care system; and
- implementing measures such as the enforcement of a 72-hour waiting period for sterilization to ensure that Peruvian women offer their genuine informed consent to sterilization procedures.
"This agreement has broad implications for the reproductive freedom of Peruvian women," said Luisa Cabal, the Center’s legal adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean and a co-petitioner in the case. "This sets a precedent for future cases involving reproductive rights violations in Latin America and beyond."
In October, Center legal advisers will meet with officials of the IACHR and the Peruvian government to determine a timeline for implementation of the settlement. The Center’s legal advisers will also brief the IACHR on the foundation for reproductive rights in the American Convention on Human Rights.
Mestanza’s case was part of a pattern of coercive sterilizations that primarily occurred from 1996 to 1998, during the repressive regime of President Alberto Fujimori.
In 1998, the Center published Silence and Complicity to document violence perpetrated against women in Peru’s public health facilities, such as rape. The report was issued in collaboration with the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (CLADEM) and the Flora Tristan Women’s Center. The report spurred an investigation by Peru’s Human Rights Ombudsman who confirmed that the violations were occurring as a result of governmental policies. In July 2002, the current Peruvian government apologized for the violations of the Fujimori Administration.
Estudio para la Defensa de la Mujer, CLADEM, the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos, and the Center for Justice and International Law joined the Center’s petition to the IACHR.
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