Forced Sterilization

The medical sterilization of a person carried out without their free and informed consent, historically imposed on grounds including eugenics, disability, ethnicity, or as a condition of release from institutional confinement, and documented in the twentieth century compulsory sterilization programs of numerous countries, including the United States, Sweden, and Nazi Germany, whose program targeted people with disabilities and members of groups the regime deemed racially undesirable. Forced sterilization is recognized under international law as a form of persecution and, when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on a civilian population, as a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and it has also been documented in more recent decades in cases involving indigenous women, women living with HIV, and people with disabilities in a number of countries, prompting ongoing reparations and accountability efforts.