Latest news with #CentreforReproductiveRights
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
‘Historic milestone' as court hears the horrors of Peru's forced sterilisation programme
During the 1990s, Peru's government carried out a ruthless campaign of forced sterilisation, depriving hundreds of thousands of women of the right to bear children. Now, for the first time, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has held a public hearing on the abuses – a case hailed as a 'historic milestone': Celia Ramos vs Peru. Celia Ramos was, like most affected by the mass sterilisation scheme, a woman living in poverty. Houses in her village of La Legua, Piura, were made of canes and mud, had limited electricity and no sewage system. Yet despite the hardships, Ramos, a mother to three girls, was a woman 'full of life,' her eldest recalls. Then, in July 1997, 34-year-old Ramos was sterilised – despite repeatedly refusing – as part of the National Reproductive Health and Family Planning Programme. Nineteen days later, after suffering respiratory arrest from medication used during the operation, she died. 'It was very abrupt – she was young and healthy and cheerful,' said daughter Marisela Monzón Ramos, who was 10 at the time. 'The entire family was shaken. My grandmother had to be sedated because the pain was too great. We felt the impact at every level.' Ramos was one of at least 270,000 women sterilised under the national programme, launched and overseen by then-president Alberto Fujimori and his health ministers between 1996 and 2001. The Peruvian government has argued the sterilisation programme was part of a broader reproductive health policy, claiming it would decrease poverty, lower maternal and infant mortality rates, and curb fertility. But estimates suggest fewer than one in ten of those sterilised gave consent, while most of those affected were poor and indigenous, and often illiterate or non-Spanish speaking. Ramos' ordeal began with a visit to the local health centre for a routine check-up, where nurses encouraged her to undergo sterilisation – which she refused. According to family testimony, health workers then visited Ramos' home at least five times to 'harass' her into the procedure. 'They came insistently on several occasions,' said Monzón Ramos told the court on Thursday. 'I thought, why do they come so much looking for my mother? She didn't want to have the procedure.' Carmen Cecilia Martínez, an associate director for legal strategies at the Centre for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which represents the family, said that health workers were 'under pressure to meet 'goals' that were imposed to execute the national policy'. Lawyers say doctors were given compulsory sterilisation quotas and received financial incentives for performing the operations. 'The doctors obeyed a scale of orders that were controlled by the highest level of the country. We have evidence of the goals and quotas,' María Ysabel Cedano García, who also represents Ramos's daughters, told the Telegraph last year. Testimonies reveal that thousands of women were harassed and threatened into undergoing the procedures, with many blackmailed, and others tied down, blindfolded and knocked out with horse tranquilliser. Ramos underwent a tubal ligation on July 3. Her legal team – which also includes DEMUS (The Legal Study for the Defense of Women's Rights) and the Centre for Justice and International Law – insists she never gave consent. 'She was subjected to forced sterilisation,' said Martínez. 'The health centre was unfit for any medical procedure, the conditions were precarious, and she died.' Peru's Ombudsman's office has linked 18 deaths to the scheme. Last year, the Telegraph reported on the ongoing fight for justice. Florentina Loayza recalled how at the age of 19 she was sterilised under the pretence of receiving vaccinations. 'The doctor put a drip in my arm and I fell unconscious. That is when they mutilated me,' she said. 'Since then, I have been living in hell.' In another case, 27-year-old Mavila Rios De Rengiro, went to a clinic believing she was having a smear test. 'They told me I was having a pap smear, and then they locked us in,' she said. 'I was afraid. The doctor didn't speak to me. I woke up in terrible pain and with a lot of blood.' It took years for the scale of abuse in Peru to become public knowledge, partly because it unfolded against the backdrop of a brutal internal conflict that left nearly 70,000 dead. Many of Fujimori's supporters continue to deny that forced sterilisations ever took place. The Ramos case was first brought before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2010. In 2021, the Commission declared the Peruvian State responsible for violating Ramos' rights and recommended reparations. However, Peru failed to act, and in 2023 the case was referred to the Inter-American Court. 'This is a historic opportunity to establish the responsibility of the Peruvian state – not only for multiple human rights violations committed against Celia Ramos but also for the thousands of affected women,' said Martínez. In 2024, a landmark UN commission ruling concluded that Fujimori's policy amounted to sex-based violence and intersectional discrimination. It said that widespread and systematic forced sterilisation could constitute a 'crime against humanity' under the Rome Statute. Yet the CRR said that the Peruvian State 'adopted a denialist position' during Thursday's hearing. 'It denied that forced sterilisations were systematically committed and questioned the existence of human rights violations affecting thousands of women,' it said. Nancy Northup, the president of the CRR said that the 'decades of silence have only prolonged the cruelty'. 'Every survivor, and those like Celia Ramos who tragically did not survive, deserves her day in court.' Ramos's legal team have requested the court declare the Peruvian state responsible for committing crimes against humanity and for violating multiple rights, including the right to life, personal integrity and health, reproductive autonomy and protection of Ramos and her family. María Elena Carbajal, who was also a victim of the programme, said that the 'road to justice is long'. 'It's been over 28 years of uncommitted and unaccountable governments,' she said. Monzón Ramos said she and her sisters hoped that 'after nearly three decades since our mother's death, the truth of what happened will be acknowledged'. 'That justice will be done, that a real and thorough investigation will be opened, and that the State will recognise and repair the harm we have suffered,' she said. Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump spurs global rollback on the rights of women and girls
A global rollback of women's rights was already underway before US President Donald Trump took office. But now it's in hyper speed. Trump's actions, including his broad slashing of international aid, both cause direct harm and encourage other world leaders to walk away from women's rights. For years, most mainstream politicians saw advancing the rights of 'women and girls' as a priority, even if the reality did not always match the rhetoric. Doing so often seemed uncontroversial and bipartisan, including in the UK. Foreign Secretary William Hague and Angelina Jolie in 2014 opened an initiative on sexual violence in armed conflict. The same year, the UK's coalition government held a 'Girl Summit' promising global leadership to end child marriage and female genital mutilation. In 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that girls' education globally was a top priority. And just last month, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced the appointment of Harriet Harman as UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls. Her job: to champion gender equality worldwide. The 2023 US Agency for International Development (USAID) Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Policy was also unequivocal: 'Gender equality is a human right.' This statement reflects international law – 189 countries, the vast majority of the world, have agreed to be bound by the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The #MeToo movement went viral in 2017. Women around the world shared experiences of gender-based violence and demanded solutions. No one was naïve about the challenge of dismantling centuries of patriarchy, but there was a feeling that women's legitimate demands could not be denied. Yet today we are struggling to slow the loss of rights attack on women's rights within the US has already gravely damaged respect for reproductive rights and is having a much broader impact on the health and economic rights of women and girls inside the United States. Abortion is now illegal in 12 of the 50 US states, according to the Centre for Reproductive Rights. But his policies' harmful impact stretches far beyond the US. First, there are the aid cuts themselves. The Trump administration has drastically slashed US government funding for international aid, including to programs focused specifically on assisting women. The US had been the world's largest aid donor. Women and girls are dying as a result and many more will die unless these policies are reversed. The Trump administration has also cut crucial research on women's health. They have dismantled parts of the US government that were responsible for developing aid programming, including teams to end gender inequality. The administration has cut over US$500 million in Labor Department grants to uphold international labour standards in 40 countries, including programs to support gender equity and women's participation in the workforce, and to combat human trafficking – which disproportionately impacts women and girls. Women and girls will suffer The Trump administration's broader assault on what it refers to as DEI – efforts to redress inequities based on historical and current forms of racism and other forms of discrimination – is having a deeply chilling impact. Even the word gender seems to be an anathema to the US government, with, for example, the US mission to the UN seeking to remove this word from every UN resolution. Decades of hard work went into helping the aid sector be more cognisant of and responsive to how inequalities intersect. For example, if a population is facing a famine, donor governments and aid groups need specific strategies to get food to women and girls who, among other obstacles, face greater difficulties in accessing distribution centres. During conflicts, women and girls face gendered impacts that often include sexual violence, but also affect their livelihoods, access to education, safety, freedom of movement, and care-giving roles. Forced displacement often exposes them to further violence. These gendered impacts are further complicated when they intersect with other forms of marginalisation, including based on race, ethnicity, age, and disability. The disproportionate impacts that women and girls face exist across the entire range of human rights issues. Trump's crackdown on 'DEI language' makes it harder even to discuss these issues. During the first Trump administration, some countries, led by the Netherlands, filled gaps in international aid created by the already deeply harmful but far less drastic cuts. This time around, we see the opposite. Even among countries pledging to maintain their aid budgets there is no talk of increases, and often the news is much worse. Under US pressure to boost military spending and concerned that their security pact with the US is breaking down, European countries that have seen themselves as leaders on women's rights are sharpening their axes. The UK Labour government cut the already reduced aid budget again, a total reduction since 2021 of more than half, alongside a wave of cuts by other European countries. The Netherlands government is among those cutting. Make no mistake – women and girls suffer as a result. The World Health Organization – one of the UN bodies the US is withdrawing from – warns that the cuts have made the goals on reducing maternal mortality almost unachievable. Funding cuts are closing down some of the few facilities providing emergency medical care to survivors of rape in war zones. Programs around the world that provided life-saving assistance are closing their doors. Trump is leading the way to a cruel new world order in which women and girls are among the first victims. Governments everywhere have a duty to push back. Heather Barr is associate women's rights director at Human Rights Watch Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Khaleej Times
26-01-2025
- Politics
- Khaleej Times
Trump targets abortion access at home and abroad
President Donald Trump took aim at abortion access in the United States and overseas on Friday, after promising activists rallying in Washington that he would protect the "historic gains" of the anti-abortion movement. Trump revoked two executive orders signed by Joe Biden protecting abortion access, which the former president put in place after the Supreme Court's seismic decision to overturn the constitutional right to the procedure in 2022. Biden had moved to protect access to abortion pills and women's ability to travel to states where the procedure is not banned for care, among other things. But Trump — who has been enthusiastically backed by the self-described "pro-life" movement — undid those protections with his own order on Friday. He also cut off US funding to foreign civil society groups that provide abortion services, and put the United States back into an international statement opposing abortion rights. A White House memo issued on Friday reinstated the so-called Mexico City Policy — known by critics as the "global gag rule" — which bars foreign NGOs from using American aid to support abortion services or advocacy. The policy, first instituted by Ronald Reagan in 1984, has been implemented by every Republican administration since, and rescinded by every Democrat in the White House. Separately, the Trump administration announced it would rejoin the "Geneva Consensus Declaration", a 2020 statement of countries saying they hope to "protect life at all stages." The original statement was spearheaded by Trump's then secretary of state Mike Pompeo, an evangelical Christian, but rejected by Biden. Those moves "are direct assaults on the health and human rights of millions of people around the world", Rachana Desai Martin of the Centre for Reproductive Rights said in a statement. Biden had signed two orders following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn abortion rights. His July 2022 order aimed to expand access to emergency contraception and protect women's health data, pushing back against any attempts at digital surveillance. The order responded to concern that women's data such as their geolocation and apps that monitor their menstrual cycles could be used to go after those who have had abortions. The July order also sought to protect mobile clinics deployed to the borders of states that have banned abortion. Trump rescinded that, as well as Biden's August 2022 order that aimed to help women travel out of state to access abortion services. The moves are part of a flurry of orders Trump has issued since returning to the Oval Office shoring up his right-wing agenda. Earlier, Trump had addressed the Washington rally, the 52nd annual March for Life on the National Mall, which also featured masked neo-Nazis. "In my second term, we will again stand proudly for families and for life," Trump said in a pre-taped video message broadcast to the crowd. Trump, who was touring natural disaster zones in North Carolina and California, vowed to "protect the historic gains" made by the anti-abortion movement. At least 100 members of the Patriot Front, a white supremacist group, marched in military style to the sidelines of the rally and stood in columns holding US flags, Christian symbols and banners reading "Strong families make strong nations." Their leader Thomas Rousseau — flanked by two men with white bandanas covering their faces — told AFP he believed in "patriotic principles", including the "restitution of the American family unit". Some rally attendees were angered by the group's presence. Trump has touted himself as the "most pro-life president ever" and in 2020 became the first sitting commander-in-chief to attend the March for Life. But he has a spotty record on the issue and refused to back a federal ban during his election campaign. "Praise God for President Trump. He's not our Saviour, though," said David Makovey, who flew from California for the march.
