In yet another U-turn, the Peruvian judiciary has reopened the case on the forced sterilisation of women during the Fujimori government. On the recommendation of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), it was announced on 10 May that the case would be re-opened. Two former health ministers stand accused, Alejandro Aguinaga and Marino Costa Bauer, and eight other health officials.

Between 1996 and 1998 an estimated 300,000 women and some men were sterilised, in the vast majority of cases people from the poorest and most vulnerable backgrounds. Initially the programme was presented as forward-looking, providing women with the choice of how many children to have. It received the backing of USAID and some feminist organisations, opposition coming principally from the Catholic Church. It has now been established that over 2,000 of the women sterilised never gave their consent, and at least 17 died of complications.

The case of Mamérita Mestanza, who died in 1998 as a result of a botched operation, was finally taken to the IACHR in San José, Costa Rica. In 2003, during the first years of the Toledo government (2001-06) when there was still some appetite to redress the policies of the Fujimori regime, the government and the IACHR reached an agreement that the Peruvian courts would “investigate and punish those responsible.”

The Mestanza case was never followed up during the rest of Toledo’s term in office and, in 2010, the Court reminded the then government of Alan García (2006-11), that Peru had signed this agreement. This fell on deaf ears until the 2011 presidential campaign when the then candidate Ollanta Humala used the case to embarrass his main rival in the second round, Keiko Fujimori. He accused Keiko and her party of direct responsibility for the programme of sterilisations. She had been the first lady in the late 1990s and was therefore very exposed.

Neither she nor her aides were able to respond convincingly to accusations of being linked to the dark past of her father’s regime. Aguinaga, one of her spokesmen, was directly accused. Rafael Rey, a former minister under García and Keiko’s running mate in 2011, defended the procedures saying that rather than being against the women’s will, the actions taken had just been without their consent. Since Keiko Fujimori lost a close-fought election to Humala, many commentators concluded that the forced sterilisation issue had been pivotal in the last days of the campaign.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/17/peru-sterilisation-compensation

As soon as he was elected, Humala announced that the case would be reopened, and this happened in 2012. Only meagre resources were allocated to cover the costs of the investigation, making it difficult to pursue cases in places outside Lima where almost all sterilisations took place. In January 2014, the case was officially shelved for lack of evidence.
http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/01/24/actualidad/1390588949_715046.html

In October 2014, the IACHR ruled that the Peruvian government had failed in its duty by shelving the case. As the case now re-opens, the women continue to wait for justice to be done.