One reason for the Peruvian Ministry of Health’s (MOH) chronic mistreatment of women in family planning programs is that abused women have little or no effective recourse. Rocio Villanueva Flores, an official with the Defensaria del Pueblo (the Peruvian ombudsman) and who specializes in women’s rights, maintains that most of the abuses committed in Peru’s ongoing sterilization campaign, including those documented in this issue of PRI Review, are against the law. The problem, according to Flores, is that there is a “gap” between Peruvian law as written and its enforcement.
In August 1999, the Defensario issued a report detailing 157 cases of women who have been abused in family planning programs since 1997. Because Defensario investigations are expensive, each case reported likely represents many more which the Defensario lacked resources to investigate.
Flores indicated that the Defensario is currently investigating cases from 1999, including three deaths from sterilization complications and abuse.
But there is no effective mechanism for enforcing the law, No doctor has ever lost his license because of malpractice in a family planning program, Flores said, even when women have died as a result.
In addition, there are insufficient resources in Peru to inform women of what constitutes an abuse. The Defensario has published, with the help of the US Agency for International Development, at pamphlet titled “Woman You Have the Right to Decide.” Written beneath two cartoon figures of women on the pamphlet, is the assertion: “Without women’s rights there are no human rights.”
The pamphlet urges women to “remember that you have a right to have a pregnancy and birth in good conditions .… You have a right to decide the number of children you want to have and when you want to have them… . [T]he state has to inform you about all the methods of family planning.”
The pamphlet apparently has a very limited circulation. The first — and last — one we saw was in the Defensario’s Lima office. Even if it were widely distributed, the information it conveys would be of no use to the many women who are illiterate. Even for women who can read the pamphlet, it still falls short. Granted, the pamphlet addresses general rights, lists the addresses for the Defensario’s offices all over the country, and states that “if you don’t want to use a family planning method, no one can force you.” Yet no specific abuses are mentioned in these pamphlets. Women are not told that they have a right not to he insulted, given misinformation, threatened, or coerced.
If USAID were serious about ending abuses, a media campaign using radio broadcasts, addressing specific risks and abuse, would be a much more effective means of reaching families and women. But even a radio campaign would be ineffective without enforcement. The only way to achieve real reform in Peru’s family planning programs would be to cut off’ its US funding. As long as USAID continues to fund the Peruvian MOH, its abusive campaign will only be strengthened.
