COERCIVE AND CRUEL: Sterilisation and its Consequences for Romani Women in the Czech Republic (1966-2016)
COERCIVE AND CRUEL: Sterilisation and its Consequences for Romani Women in the Czech Republic (1966-2016)

Author(s): Michaela Stejskalová, Elena Gorolová, Marek Szilvási
Subject(s): Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Studies in violence and power, Health and medicine and law, Ethnic Minorities Studies
Published by: European Roma Rights Center
Keywords: Involuntary Sterilisation; coercive Sterilisation;
Summary/Abstract: The present report examines one of the most serious human rights violations against women – the practice of coercive sterilisation that was aimed at and programmatically performed on Romani women and women with disabilities starting from the 1970s until the 1990s. In Communist Czechoslovakia this practice was legally sanctioned by the 1971 Decree on Sterilisation. This Decree gave public authorities a more or less free rein to systematically sterilise Romani women and women with disabilities without their full and informed consent as a means of birth control. In 1979, Czechoslovakia also initiated a programme of financial incentives for Romani women to undergo sterilisations motivated by the need “to control the highly unhealthy Roma population through family planning and contraception”. An investigation into the practices of involuntary sterilisation of Romani women by the Czech Ombudsperson in 2005 estimated that, since 1972, thousands of women may have been involuntarily sterilised throughout the former Czechoslovakia. Female sterilisation was a state policy in Czechoslovakia until 1993 when the Sterilisations Directive was abolished. However, the practice of sterilising Romani women and women with disabilities against their will did not end with the abolition of the legislation which allowed it, but continued throughout the 1990s and 2000s, with the last known case occurring as recently as 2007.

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