The United Nations declares forced sterilizations of Peruvian women to be a “crime against humanity.”

After finding that the state policy might be considered a “crime against humanity,” a UN commission has called on Peru to pay compensation to women who were forcibly sterilized in the 1990s. Alberto Fujimori, the president of Peru at the time, used forced sterilization as part of a program in the last four years until he stepped down in 2000 after ten years in government.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been impacted, according to the United Nations committee on the eradication of discrimination against women. After considering a joint complaint submitted by five victims who were forcibly sterilized between 1996 and 1997, the 23-member committee released its conclusion. It stated in a statement that the victims’ physical and mental health suffered grave and long-lasting effects as a result of the forced sterilizations they endured.

The experts urged Peru to implement a “comprehensive reparation program for victims” and condemned the country for failing to adequately investigate the abuses and provide compensation to the victims. “Systematic or widespread forced sterilization may be a crime against humanity,” it stated. Committee member Leticia Bonifaz said in the statement that the women, who presented their case to the committee in 2020, detailed “a consistent pattern of being coerced, pressured, or deceived into undergoing sterilisations at clinics lacking proper infrastructure or trained personnel.”

Without their full knowledge or agreement, she described it as a “systematic and generalized attack against rural and Indigenous women.” The committee discussed the case of a woman from Pichgas, central Peru, who said that in October 1996, medical professionals stopped her on the street. The statement claimed that after the woman, who claimed to be illiterate and to have never signed anything, was put to sleep, nurses informed her that “we’ve cured you, so you won’t be having children now.”

“She felt strong pains in her abdomen but was immediately discharged and had to walk back home without any post-operative care,” it said.

“When her husband found out that she had been sterilised, he abandoned her.” The committee determined that the programme constituted “sex-based violence against women”.

Its opinions and recommendations are not enforceable.

While Peru had argued the sterilisation programme was part of a broader reproductive health policy, with procedures carried out on both men and women, the experts noted that 25,000 men were forcibly sterilised, compared with over 300,000 women.