Overview
- Judges concluded Peru’s 1996–2000 family-planning drive functioned as a state-run, coercive policy that disproportionately targeted rural, Indigenous and poor women, citing more than 314,000 female and 24,000 male sterilizations.
- Celia Edith Ramos Durand, 34, was pressured into a tubal ligation at a rural post lacking proper equipment, suffered a severe allergic reaction, and died after 19 days in hospital without a clear medical explanation to her family.
- The court found violations of rights to life, integrity, health, liberty, privacy, equality and access to information, and faulted authorities for delays and lack of due diligence in domestic investigations.
- Peru must pay reparations to Ramos’s family—reported at about $340,000 by AP—reopen and advance criminal inquiries, and cannot use amnesties or statutes of limitation to block accountability.
- Mandatory measures include consent safeguards for reproductive services, a national policy on sexual and reproductive health, registering victims in REVIESFO, and protections for NGOs representing victims such as DEMUS; victims’ families and rights groups urged swift compliance, while candidate Keiko Fujimori questioned the ruling’s timing and framing.