European Court of Human Rights says sterilisation of Roma woman breaches Convention

A Roma woman sterilised at age 20 has succeeded in her claim against Slovakia to the European Court of Human Rights ("ECtHR").

The Applicant had been in labour with her second child when Slovakian hospital staff warned her that if she had another child either she or the child would die. They presented her with a form with the words "patient requests sterilization" and asked her to sign it. She did.

The ECtHR noted that sterilisation constitutes a major interference with a person's reproductive health status, with repercussions for an individual's personal integrity and family life. The Applicant's Roma community had ostracized her. She and her husband had since divorced.

The Court found that asking the Applicant to consent to sterilisation in circumstances where she was supine, in labour and shortly before a Caesarean section, did not allow for her to take an informed decision. Such treatment breached Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (inhuman and degrading treatment). In reaching this conclusion, the ECtHR bore in mind that the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, which Slovakia had ratified, required informed consent to precede medical procedures.

The Court further found a violation of Article 8 (private and family life), in view of the fact that the Slovakian government did not provide safeguards to ensure protection for the Applicant, as a Roma woman, to enjoy her private and family life. The backdrop to this finding was a number of international reports which observed widespread negativity towards Roma births and observed a particular risk of forced Roma sterilisations in Eastern Slovakia. It was also relevant that the medical form entry under the Applicant's medical history simply stated "Patient is of Roma origin".

Interestingly, however, the Court did not find a breach of Article 14 (non-discrimination), reasoning that the facts did not demonstrate intentional racial motivation and that their finding under Article 8 sufficed. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Mijovic concluded "the applicant was 'marked out' and observed as a patient who had to be sterilized because of her origin, since it was obvious that there were no medically relevant reasons for sterilizing her. In my view, that represents the strongest form of discrimination".

Click here to view the decision.

Click here to view a piece by public interest law organization PILnet, whose former fellow acted as one of the Applicant's lawyers.

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