International Pressure Forces Peru To End Sterilization Program

By Austin Ruse

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM) In the wake of growing international criticism of Peru's aggressive sterilization program, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced before a US Congressional subcommittee on Wednesday that the Peruvian government has promised to end the program completely. 

     At briefings earlier in the week in Washington, the Population Research Institute presented documentation of the Peruvian government's co-ordinated campaign of coercive sterilizations. According to Peru's Health Ministry, state doctors last year performed 110,000 sterilizations of women, most of them poor and of aboriginal or mixed-blood descent. 

     Dr. Hector Hugo Chávez Chuchon, the president of the regional medical federation of Ayacucho, Andahuaylas, and Huancavelica, located in the poorest area of Peru, provided evidence that doctors were being forced to meet government quotas for sterilizations. Any such quotas would be in explicit violation of the terms of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).  

     The doctor also charged that women undergoing sterilization in his region were not properly informed about the consequences of the operations. He also said the sterilizations were performed in substandard facilities, and that the medical personnel performing the procedures were often insufficiently trained. 

     Victoria Esperanza Vigo Espinoza, a 34-year-old mother of two, broke down and sobbed as she recounted how she was sterilized without her knowledge after suffering a miscarriage in a state-run hospital. Avelina Sanchez Nolberto, 46,  told of being repeatedly pressured to undergo a tubal ligation that left her with punctured intestines. Other women are known to have died from complications from identical operations. Coercive sterilizations, and those undertaken without a woman's full and informed consent, are both explicitly banned by the ICPD's final documents. 

     Within Peru, the government's sterilization program has been condemned by Church authorities, opposition parliamentarians, and a broad range of Peruvian civil society groups, including feminist NGOs. As well, USAID and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), both of which are major supporters of Peruvian "family planning" and "reproductive health" programs, have recently expressed concern to the Peruvian government about the sterilization allegations. 

     UNFPA has been involved in promoting population control in Peru since 1972. The UN agency is currently committed to spending US$11 million to fund Peruvian programs during through the year 2001. Of that sum, $6.5 million will go to "reproductive health care" programs, and another $1.5 million will be spent on "advocacy" campaigns. 

     The remaining $3 million will be used to develop additional population control strategies in conjunction with the Peruvian government.

 

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter