A sheet of autarkic experts who marque up the United Nations Human Rights Committee says they person recovered that Guatemala violated the rights of a 14-year-old miss who was raped and forced to proceed her pregnancy
BySONIA PÉREZ D. Associated Press
GUATEMALA CITY -- A sheet of autarkic experts who marque up the United Nations Human Rights Committee said Thursday they recovered that Guatemala violated the rights of a 14-year-old miss who was raped and forced to proceed her pregnancy.
A erstwhile manager of a government-run daycare installation she had attended arsenic a kid raped her connected aggregate occasions opening successful 2009 erstwhile she was 13 and nary longer attended the center, but she was denied entree to abortion, forced to transportation retired the commencement and attraction for the child, attraction the committee compared to torture.
“No miss should beryllium forced to transportation the kid of her rapist. Doing truthful robs her of her dignity, her future, and her astir basal rights,” Committee subordinate Hélène Tigroudja said in a statement, adding that “This is not conscionable a usurpation of reproductive autonomy — it is simply a profound enactment of cruelty.”
The committee monitors countries’ adherence to the International Covenant connected Civil and Political Rights.
When the girl’s parent recovered retired astir the maltreatment she reported it to authorities. The antheral and his woman tried to bribe and endanger the girl’s household into withdrawing the report. The lawsuit coiled connected successful Guatemala’s justness strategy for 9 years, but the antheral was ne'er punished.
“Guatemala did not decently analyse the rape, nor did it instrumentality effectual enactment to prosecute the perpetrator,” the committee said.
“Guatemala is 1 of the Latin American countries with the highest rates of some forced motherhood and systematic impunity for intersexual violence,” the committee’s connection said. “Although the Guatemalan Criminal Code allows termination successful circumstantial situations to debar a menace to the beingness of the mother, entree to ineligible termination is astir intolerable successful practice.”
The committee called connected Guatemala to found a strategy to grounds and show specified cases. In the lawsuit of the girl, it said the authorities should enactment her to implicit higher acquisition and attain her goals.
Catalina Martínez, vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Center of Reproductive Rights, 1 of the groups that brought the girl’s lawsuit forward, said determination is statement successful nine that the extortion of girls is simply a priority.
“But that committedness is breached erstwhile we don’t supply entree to each wellness services, including abortion, and we obligate them to presume motherhood that they don’t privation and for which they are not prepared,” she said.