GUATEMALA CITY — A panel of unbiased specialists who make up the United Nations Human Rights Committee stated Thursday they discovered that Guatemala violated the rights of a 14-year-old woman who was raped and compelled to proceed her being pregnant.
A former director of a government-run daycare facility she had attended as a toddler raped her on a number of events starting in 2009 when she was 13 and now not attended the middle, however she was denied entry to abortion, pressured to hold out the delivery and look after the kid, therapy the committee in comparison with torture.
“No woman needs to be pressured to hold the kid of her rapist. Doing so robs her of her dignity, her future, and her most simple rights,” Committee member Hélène Tigroudja stated in a statement, including that “This isn’t only a violation of reproductive autonomy — it’s a profound act of cruelty.”
The committee screens international locations’ adherence to the Worldwide Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
When the woman’s mom discovered concerning the abuse she reported it to authorities. The person and his spouse tried to bribe and threaten the woman’s household into withdrawing the report. The case wound on in Guatemala’s justice system for 9 years, however the man was by no means punished.
“Guatemala didn’t correctly examine the rape, nor did it take efficient motion to prosecute the perpetrator,” the committee stated.
“Guatemala is without doubt one of the Latin American international locations with the very best charges of each pressured motherhood and systematic impunity for sexual violence,” the committee’s assertion stated. “Though the Guatemalan Legal Code permits abortion in particular conditions to keep away from a menace to the lifetime of the mom, entry to authorized abortion is sort of unimaginable in apply.”
The committee referred to as on Guatemala to ascertain a system to document and monitor such circumstances. Within the case of the woman, it stated the state ought to help her to finish greater schooling and attain her objectives.
Catalina Martínez, vice chairman for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Middle of Reproductive Rights, one of many teams that introduced the woman’s case ahead, stated there may be settlement in society that the safety of women is a precedence.
“However that promise is damaged after we don’t present entry to all well being companies, together with abortion, and we obligate them to imagine motherhood that they don’t need and for which they don’t seem to be ready,” she stated.