2009
Untold Truths: The Exclusion of Enforced
Sterilizations from the Peruvian Truth
Commission's Final Report
Jocelyn E. Getgen
Cornell Law School, jeg17@cornell.edu
JOCELYN E. GETGEN*
ABSTRACT:: This Article argues that the exclusion of enforced sterilization cases from the Peruvian Truth Commission's investigation and Final Report effectively erases State responsibility and decreases the likelihood for justice and reparations for women victims-survivors of Statesponsored violence in Peru. In a context of deep cultural and economic
divides and violent conflict, this Article recounts how the State's Family
Planning Program violated Peruvian women's reproductive rights by
sterilizing low-income, indigenous Quechua-speaking women without
informed consent. This Article argues that these systematic reproductive
injustices constitute an act of genocide, proposes an independent inquiry, and advocates for a more inclusive investigation and final report
for future truth commissions whose goals include truth, accountability,
and justice for all victims-survivors of state-sponsored violence. Leaders
responsible for the enforced sterilization of more than 200,000 Peruvian
women, including former President Alberto Ken'ya Fujimori, must be
held accountable for past violations in order to fully realize future reconciliation and justice in Peru.
"[E]very society has the inalienable right to know the truth about past
events, as well as the motives and circumstances in which aberrant crimes
came to be committed.. .. "
INTRODUCTION
Does time heal all wounds? Can a transitioning democratic society
move forward without fully facing the human rights violations that
plague its past? Or can only truth and justice reconcile large-scale
abuses? Difficult lessons from the recent past have taught societies and
nations that legitimate democracies require political and personal accountability reinforced by the rule of law.2 International human rights
treaties thus impose upon states a duty to investigate, criminally prosecute, and punish perpetrators of crimes against humanity.3 Although
state actions taken in response to gross violations of human rights are
never truly adequate when communities, families, and individuals suffer irreparable harms, inaction is invariably worse. 4 A state's failure to
respond appropriately and justly to gross human rights abuses can give
victims the sense that their perpetrators emerged either victorious or
with clean hands.5
The Peruvian government's response to twenty years of human
rights abuses from 1980 to 2000 included creating a truth commission
with a broad mandate to "promote national reconciliation, the rule of
justice and the strengthening of the constitutional democratic regime." 6 By forming the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CVR),7 the State initiated a process of achieving national reconciliation through an attempt to correct the historical record, provide
a collective memory and preserve the possibility of criminal account ability and justice.
More:
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2077&context=facpub
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