Forced sterilisation is in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has found.

In a ruling last week, the ECHR found that forced sterilisation constituted “a major interference with a person’s reproductive health status” and as such was in violation of article 3 and 8 (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment and right to respect for private and family life) of the Convention.

They also held that it was not necessary to examine separately the complaint under article 12 (right to marry and to found a family) of the Convention.

The case, V. C. v. Slovakia was the first of a number of cases brought before the European Court by several women of Roma ethnic origin who have been sterilised in public hospitals in Slovakia since 1999.

The applicant alleged that she was the victim of a forced sterilisation during the delivery of her second child in 2000 at the Prešov Public Hospital.

She claimed that in pain and fear she signed the sterilisation consent form but, at the time, she neither understood what sterilisation meant nor the nature and consequences of the procedure.

Furthermore, the applicant claims that her Roma ethnicity was a deciding factor in her sterilisation and that segregation according to ethnic origin in the gynecology and obstetrics ward was a common practice.

Her case was heard in March 2011 of this year.

The Court held that “the sterilisation procedure grossly interfered with the applicant’s physical integrity as she was thereby deprived of her reproductive function. At the time of her sterilisation the applicant was twenty years old and therefore at an early stage in her reproductive life”.

A number of other cases along similar lines are pending before the court.

In the I.G., M.K. and R.H. v. Slovakia case, three women of Roma ethnic origin claim to have been sterilised without their full and informed consent (the first applicant on 23 January 2000, the second one on 10 January 1999 and the third one on 11 April 2002).

In the N.B. v. Slovakia case, another woman of Roma ethnic origin has been sterilised by tubal ligation during the delivery of her second child, without her full and informed consent, on 25 April 2001.

In the Gauer and others v. France case, five young mentally handicapped women, who were under the responsibility of an association for young and adult handicapped, were sterilised by tubal ligation without their consent between 1995 and 1998.