Call for government to compensate victims of forced sterilisations

South African HIV-positive women who are victims of forced sterilisations performed between 2007 and 2023 did not get the requisite support from government, according to a recent study conducted by the University of South Africa (Unisa).

The study found that all the more than 100 women whose uteruses were removed illegally have been negatively affected and the government did not discuss the way ahead, before or after the procedure.

The report calls for immediate legal and policy reform.

According to the study, titled Bodies at the Altar of Forced and Coerced Sterilisation, most of the affected women are from Mpumalanga, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), Eastern Cape, Limpopo and North West.

Forced sterilisations on HIV-positive women

Professor Thenjiwe Meyiwa, one of the researchers, said government needed to interact with all the affected women to discuss the future and to compensate them.

“The study exposes a deeply troubling practice that has violated the dignity, autonomy and reproductive rights of HIV-positive women in South Africa since 1997.

“These rights are inclusive of rights to equality, freedom from discrimination, dignity, bodily integrity, freedom and security over their bodies, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, including sexual and reproductive rights, and to be free from cruel, torturous or inhuman and degrading treatment,” said Meyiwa.

“Health professionals’ time of operating under the shadow of systemic negligence and abuse is over.

“The report demands accountability, transparency and cessation of these violations carried out without consent.

“It recommends clear legal consequences for violations and that policymakers prioritise reproductive justice.”

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Meyiwa said this issue only affected black, impoverished HIV-positive women, who are in a difficult situation as they can no longer have children.

She urged South Africans to challenge societal norms that perpetuate stigma and to demand systemic change.

One of the victims, who cannot be named, said she was only 19 when she was sterilised without her consent.

“It was in 2007 when these people made me barren and now I feel I am half a woman.

“Life became difficult because it is hard to tell a man that you are barren, especially cultural men who want children. They took a lot of things from me. Even mentally I have not been okay since that day.

“My dream is to see the government stop destroying women’s lives because of this practice.”

Demand for compensation

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, in the fifth periodic report on SA, had also expressed concern over the forced sterilisations of women with HIV/Aids in public health facilities, Meyiwa said.

The UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls highlighted that “coerced sterilisation, particularly of ethnic minority and indigenous women, is also an outcome of the discrimination and violence experienced by women and girls living in poverty”.

Dr Sethembiso Mthembu, founder of Her Rights Initiative, a group representing these women, said: “We demand government stop this. We need the health system to change so this human rights violation is stopped.

“We also demand those affected be compensated.”

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