Hivos partners win gender equality award
Woman’s Rights organisations Demus and Cladem have won an Gender Justice Uncovered Award. They received the Bronze Gavel Award 2009 for the Karen Llantoy vs. Peru-case, a groundbreaking case establishing that denying access to legal abortion violates women’s most basic human rights
Karen Llantoy, a Peruvian girl, was 17 years old when doctors told her that the baby she was carrying was fatally impaired and would die soon after birth. Peru allows abortion under these circumstances, but health officials refused to perform an abortion, despite the risks that such a pregnancy posed to her physical and mental health. Llantoy was forced to carry to term. The baby died after four days. She then fell into a deep depression. In 2005, the United Nations Human Rights Committee found that Llantoy’s suffering was foreseeable and amounted to inhumane treatment. Her case was the first time that an international human rights body held a government accountable for failing to ensure access to legal abortion services.
The case was brought before the United Nations Human Rights Committee by The Center for Reproductive Rights in partnership with the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights (
CLADEM) and the Center for Studies in Defense of Women’s Rights (
DEMUS). The awards were given out by
Women’s Link Worldwide, an international human rights non-profit organization working to advance gender justice. The organization selected the best and the worst judicial decisions related to gender justice in Spain, Latin America and the Caribbean.
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