In a landmark ruling issued in March 2026 in a case in which Debevoise & Plimpton LLP and Global Justice Center filed an amicus curiae brief, the the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a landmark judgment in Ramos Durand et al. v. Peru, holding Peru responsible for the forced sterilization and death of Ms. Celia Edith Ramos Durand and thousands of other Peruvian women in the 1990s under the Peruvian Government’s National Reproductive Health and Family Planning Program.

Debevoise, together with Global Justice Center, filed the amicus curiae brief before the Court in June 2025 in support of victims and survivors, urging the Court to recognize forced sterilization as a specific form of reproductive violence and to consider the mass, State-sponsored character of the harm in determining reparations.

In its March 2026 judgment, the Court expressly recognized reproductive violence as encompassing acts or omissions that affect reproductive health, including forced sterilization, forced pregnancy, measures to prevent births, forced abortion and forced contraception. The Court held that Ms. Ramos Durand’s sterilization qualified as reproductive violence because health workers used psychological pressure to override her will, leading to a surgical intervention that ultimately caused her death. The Court also found that Peru had operated a coercive State-sponsored sterilization program that disproportionately targeted indigenous, rural and poor women. Among other reparations, the Court ordered Peru to advance domestic investigations into Ms. Ramos Durand’s death, publicly acknowledge responsibility, compensate Ms. Ramos Durand’s family, provide scholarships to her daughters, and adopt measures to strengthen informed-consent standards and sexual and reproductive health protections.

The judgment establishes an important precedent by recognizing both forced sterilization as reproductive violence and Peru’s sterilization program as a form of institutional violence against women grounded in coercion, discrimination and structural inequality.

The Debevoise team included litigation partners Natalie Reid and Laura Sinisterra, London Head of Pro Bono Marika Somero, associates Monika Hlavkova, Nicole Marton, Federico Wynter, Iben Vagle and Naomi Sirrs and international disputes support lawyer Johan Rodríguez Fonseca.