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The practice of forced sterilisation is not a new one and in fact it has been going on throughout history and around world according to Priti Patel in a journal article published in Public Health Reviews.
Priti further writes that the "practice targets marginalised populations, including people diagnosed with a mental illness or disabled persons, racial minorities, poor women, and people living with specific illnesses, such as epilepsy" and in some African countries women who have HIV/Aids are also subjected to the practice according to a dissertation by Farida Mamad.
The video above details how Peruvian women are being subjected to sterilisation without their consent and that this practice is government sanctioned. According to Pass Blue which is is an independent, women-led digital publication, "President Alberto Fujimori authorised large-scale involuntary tubal ligation to be carried out on mostly poor women," and these sterilisations were first presented as "the Voluntary Surgical Contraception program," to provide the poor access to birth control. According to BBC News former President Alberto Fujimori argued that a lower birth rate would reduce poverty.
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A quota was even created and as a result the sterilisations were often rushed to meet the quotas reports Pass Blue.
These quotas "were set by the Ministry of Health, leaving victims with complications or permanent health problems; in some instances, anesthesia ran out but surgeries went on" which was painful and traumatic to women and in some cases resulted in death.
President Alberto Fujumori has since been arrested for crimes relating to "corruption and human-rights abuses, but he has never been charged for authorising the forced sterilisation program," reports Pass Blue.
In some African countries including South Africa, forced sterilisation is a reality that many women have suffered through. In 2014 the City Press reported that women that were HIV-positive were sterilised in the years between 1996 and 2011. Some of these women reported to City Press that doctors "ordered them to sign consent forms while they were in labour or while being wheeled to theatre for Caesarean sections."
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It is without question that forced sterilisations violate the rights of women. These rights among others as stated by Pitri Patel in her journal article Forced sterilisation of women as discrimination are:
- the right to health;
- right to information;
- right to liberty;
- right to be free from cruel and degrading treatment.
It is quite devastating that women are subjected to such harmful treatment. They are either tricked, coerced or forced to undergo these treatments. And there is hope that these women will get the justice they deserve when we speak about what happened to them and force governments to own up up.
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