UN Human Rights Committee meeting, UN Building, Geneva 2022
A panel of independent experts who make up the United Nations Human Rights Committee found that Guatemala had violated the rights of a 14-year-old girl who was raped and forced to continue her pregnancy. The Committee monitors countries’ adherence to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
A former director of a government-run daycare facility that she had attended as a child raped her on multiple occasions beginning in 2009 when she was 13 years old and was no longer attending the centre, but she was denied access to an abortion and forced to give birth to and care for the child, treatment that the Committee compared to torture.
“No girl should be forced to carry the child of her rapist. Doing so robs her of her dignity, her future, and her most basic rights,” Committee member Hélène Tigroudja said in a statement, adding that “This is not just a violation of reproductive autonomy — it is a profound act of cruelty.”
When the girl’s mother found out about the abuse, she reported it to authorities. The man and his wife tried to bribe and threaten the girl’s family into withdrawing the report. The case wound on in Guatemala’s justice system for nine years, but the man was never punished. “Guatemala did not properly investigate the rape, nor did it take effective action to prosecute the perpetrator,” the Committee said.
“Guatemala is one of the Latin American countries with the highest rates of both forced motherhood and systematic impunity for sexual violence,” the Committee’s statement said. “Although the Guatemalan Criminal Code allows abortion in specific situations to avoid a threat to the life of the mother, access to legal abortion is almost impossible in practice.” The Committee called on Guatemala to establish a system to record and monitor such cases. In the case of the girl, it said the state should support her to complete higher education and attain her goals.
SOURCE: Halifax City News, by Sonia Perez D./Associated Press, 5 June 2025. PHOTO: CCPR Centre, UN Building, Geneva, June 2022.