image copyrightPaolo Aguilar / EPA
"It was like a splash of cold water."
This is how Margarita Rojas received the news that the Peruvian Prosecutor's Office ordered the archive of the investigation into the forced sterilizations of more than 4,000 women between 1990 and 2000, during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori.
The case was closed in application of a controversial amnesty law promoted by Fuerza Popular, the party of Keiko Fujimori, current president and daughter of the late president.
Rojas was one of the victims of a demographic control policy by which more than 24,000 men and more than 314,000 women were sterilized—often through coercion, threats and deception—mainly, "indigenous people, from areas of great poverty," as concluded by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) in the ruling in which it condemned the Peruvian State for these events.
Victims' associations have been denouncing for years that several of these women died due to malpractice and lack of conditions in the interventions, among them Celia Ramos Durand, whose emblematic case was the one that led to Peru's conviction in the Inter-American Court in November of last year.
From her home in the indigenous community of Lluto Kututo, in the Andean mountains of the department of Cusco, Margarita recalled her experience and that of her neighbors in conversation with BBC News Mundo.
"It was 1996. I was 18 years old and had just had my second daughter. Then the nurses from the Llusco health post began to arrive to pressure us and tell us that Fujimori did not want us to have more children."
"They talked to us as if we owed money to the bank, and they told us that the tubes could be untied later." According to her story, she underwent an intervention that was not properly explained to her and the consequences of which she only discovered during a gynecological examination with another doctor.
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Since 2013, when, advised by human rights defense organizations, she finally reported the facts to the Prosecutor's Office, she has waited for justice, something that she sees a little further after the latest decision of the Public Ministry.
What the Prosecutor's Office said
On October 22, the Fourth Human Rights Prosecutor's Office issued a ruling ordering the file of the case and declaring that all possible criminal responsibility for the acts of the 52 investigated has expired, among whom are three Ministers of Health during the government of Fujimori Sr.: Marino Costa Bauer, Eduardo Yong Motta and Alejandro Aguinaga, who is today a senator for Fuerza Popular.
Prosecutor Jesús Víctor Dávila Rojas recognizes in the provision, to which BBC Mundo has had access, that "forced sterilizations bring together, according to international criminal law, the elements of a crime against humanity, having been committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against a sector of the civilian population in execution of a State policy."
Image source, Jimena Rodríguez Romaní / Bloomberg
However, it concludes that the case must be archived and criminal liability declared prescribed in application of Law 32107, the amnesty law promoted by Fuerza Popular and approved in 2024, during the presidency of Dina Boluarte.
The decision of the Prosecutor's Office orders to archive the investigations of the cases of serious injuries followed by the death of five victims and the serious injuries suffered by 4,172.
It is the last chapter of a long judicial battle in which no high authority of the Peruvian government has been convicted.
Former minister Alejandro Aguinaga told BBC Mundo that "all the investigations have been archived because in Peru there was no forced sterilization program" and "those people have lied because economic benefits have been proposed to them."
The latest resolution of the Prosecutor's Office leaves open the possibility of raising civil claims.
What the Amnesty law says
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Law 32107 declared war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Peru before July 1, 2002, when the Rome Statute, which created the International Criminal Court, came into force in the country.
Victims' associations and NGOs rejected it because they consider that it opens the door to leaving serious human rights violations unpunished.
Tania Pariona, from the National Human Rights Coordinator, a local organization, told BBC Mundo that "the amnesty seeks to impose a policy of forced oblivion on the events that occurred between 1980 and 2000, when there are families who have been waiting for decades to receive justice."
The law has been the subject of a complex legal controversy between the Peruvian courts themselves.
In November 2025, the Constitutional Court rejected a lawsuit regarding the alleged unconstitutionality of the law and concluded that the prescription criteria in force in Peruvian laws at the time of the events should be applied, but the Supreme Court decided to disapply the law in a ruling last March because, in its opinion, it contravened the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights and the doctrine of the Inter-American Court that has declared crimes against humanity imprescriptible.
image copyrightErnesto Benavides / Getty
What can happen now
The forced sterilizations are one more of the complaints of human rights violations that overshadowed the legacy of Alberto Fujimori, whom his supporters admire for his economic management and because during his term he managed to put an end to the Shining Path attacks.
Her daughter and heir to her political movement, President Fujimori has not referred to the decision to file the Prosecutor's Office.
BBC Mundo asked the Presidential Press Secretariat for comments on the archiving order, but did not receive a response.
In March 2026, Keiko Fujimori told Canal N that "the so-called sterilization plan was actually a reproductive health program, it educated and gave the possibility to thousands of women to decide how many and when to have their children." He also criticized that the ruling of the Inter-American Court was announced shortly before the Peruvian elections.
In conversation with BBC Mundo, the former Minister of Health and today Senator Aguinaga also defended the need for the program to respond to "the disastrous situation of reproductive health in Peru at that time."
Sigfredo Florián, a lawyer who represents nine women who denounced forced sterilizations, told BBC Mundo that he has appealed the file decision to the Superior Human Rights Prosecutor's Office.
"The decision of the Prosecutor's Office implies impunity. We are clear that from a strictly legal point of view it should be reversed, but we are also facing a political issue," he stated.
Jennie Dador Tozzini, director of Amnesty International Peru, said in a statement that "there is still an opportunity to reverse this decision. Civil society organizations will seek all avenues to guarantee that the authorities fulfill their duty to listen to the victims and guarantee their right to access justice."
The victims' organizations announced that they would appeal again to the Inter-American Court, although it would not be the first time that the Peruvian authorities ignored its resolutions since Fujimorism became the dominant political force. It already happened with the release of Alberto Fujimori in December 2023 by virtue of a pardon previously annulled by the court.
Valeria Reyes, from the Democracy and Human Rights Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, concluded in a recent article that the strategy of resorting to the Inter-American Human Rights System "is found in a State that decisively confronts the decisions of the Inter-American Court."
Image source, Courtesy of Margarita Rojas
The president of the Peruvian Constitutional Court, Luz Pacheco, said in January 2026 that her country's judges should not submit to the resolutions issued by the Court if they are contrary to national laws. "We are not obliged to submit to that mandate because it has no legitimacy," he said.
And Fernando Rospigliosi, the Fujimori congressman who promoted the amnesty law, defined the Inter-American Court as "a tentacle of the international caviar mafia" (the term "caviar" is used colloquially in Peru to disqualify leftist sympathizers who enjoy a well-off position).
Rospigliosi also advocated that the National Board of Justice, the body that controls judges in Peru, sanction those who do not apply the law he promoted.
BBC Mundo requested an interview with Rospigliosi and did not receive a response.
Margarita, despite everything, does not throw in the towel.
He says that sterilization changed his life. "My husband abandoned me because I couldn't give him the son he wanted," she says.
"Fujimori hurt us and now that his daughter is president they want to hurt us too."
"We are going to continue seeking justice."
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