Human Rights court to rule on El Salvador abortion case

March 8, 2023

Women's rights activists called for the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to condemn El Salvador in a case brought a decade ago by a woman who died after being forced to carry a pregnancy, although the fetus could not survive.

Beatriz, who suffered lupus disease, she was told she would likely die if the pregnancy continued and anencephaly - a lethal condition under which parts of the brain and skull do not develop inside the womb - meant the fetus could not survive. She appealed to the Supreme Court and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR), but the Salvadoran court rejected her request for an abortion. The baby died hours after a C-section and Beatriz’s health deteriorated and she died four years later.

The IACHR is set to rule on the case on March 22-23 in Costa Rica.

As of last year, rights group estimated that more than 180 women had been prosecuted under El Salvador’s draconian abortion laws, considered some of the world's harshest, which ban abortion even when it is accidental, a result of rape or performed to save a woman's life.

(Reuters)

More Women

• U.S. abortion rights advocates this week met with their Latin American counterparts in Washington, D.C., to learn about the successful strategies they've used to dramatically increase access in several countries, reports Axios.

• Latin America’s Green Wave activism has been fruitful because the movement is united across countries and is not associated with specific political parties or organizations like it is in the U.S., said María Antonieta Alcalde, director of Ipas of Latin America and the Caribbean, an abortion rights organization based in Mexico. (Axios)

• LSE researchers identify “three key factors in the most successful countries in political parity: stricter gender parity electoral laws, proactive institutions focused on implementation and enforcement, and political pressure exerted by strong women’s movements and female politicians seeking greater representation.”

El Salvador

• El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is advancing with plans to cut the country’s 262 municipalities down to 50 — the move would centralize even more power in the executive branch and deflect increasing conflict between Bukele and local governments, reports El Faro English.

• While the idea of reducing municipalities has been around since the 90s, “if the move passes before the general elections of next year, it could also mean that Bukele’s party faces less risk of any punishment vote in local governments, perhaps the only front where they are politically underperforming.” (El Faro English)

Regional

• Climate change could cost Latin America nearly a fifth of its GDP by the end of the century without new policies to curb its impact, according to a new report by Moody’s. (Reuters)

• The latest issue of Nacla looks at the challenges faced by “Latin America’s current left-oriented governments, which are generally perceived to face far more limitations than their predecessors.”

• “This new round of left governments will most likely be shorter, more moderate, and stormier than the first. Nonetheless, what these governments manage to achieve in advancing rights and reducing the chokehold that extractivism has on much of the region will shape the agenda for what progressive politics in the region can achieve decades from now,” writes Linda Farthing in Nacla.

Caribbean

• British Labour MP Clive Lewis has called on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to enter negotiations with Caribbean leaders on paying reparations for Britain’s role in slavery. Speaking at a parliamentary debate on promoting financial security in the Caribbean, Lewis said the issue of reparations could not be dismissed as an obsession among a small group of “so-called woke extremists”. (Guardian, see Just Caribbean Updates for Feb. 8)

Regional Relations

• Colombia and Ecuador have launched a joint alert system meant to protect Indigenous Awa communities from attacks by armed groups in the border region between the two countries. Some 29,000 Indigenous Awa people live along the border and are subject to killings, forced displacement, land mines and recruitment of minors, among other ills, by armed groups.(Al Jazeera, Reuters)

• Two U.S. citizens killed in Matamorros are the latest “victims of relentless violence in Mexico that the government has been unable to contain,” reports the New York Times. The deaths might put pressure on the U.S. Biden administration to react, security analyst Alejandro Hope told NYT. “It feeds a narrative that Mexico is a lawless place, that Mexico has no capabilities of its own to deal with this and that the U.S. needs to do something.”

• Venezuela has laid out a work plan to increase crude production with Russian oil company Rosneft, reports Reuters.

Venezuela

• Ten years after Hugo Chávez’s death, “Venezuelans find themselves in a country that has largely fallen apart” and forced to confront the fact that his successor, Nicolás Maduro, is running the country very differently, reports the Associated Press.

Bolivia

• Reports that there is a significant shortage of dollars in Bolivia and that the Central Bank’s reserves are running low, though unconfirmed, have rumors of an economic meltdown in the works. — Latin America Risk Report

Colombia

• Colombian Senate President Roy Barreras, asked the Petro administration to suspend negotiations with drug traffickers, saying that these talks negatively impact the country's goal of “total peace.” The request from an ally of President Gustavo Petro, comes after a scandal alleges that members of Petro’s family money from accused drug traffickers, reports Reuters.

Paraguay

• About 7,000 Paraguayan campesinos protested President Mario Abdó's failure to comply with agreements from last year in which the government promised to support family farming, resolve the producers' debts, end evictions, regularize settlements, and improve communities' conditions. (Telesur)

Peru

• Peru's mines are starting to transport their copper concentrate to ports for export once again after three months of protests that impacted transportation, reports Reuters.

Music

• Peruvian YouTuber Ioanis Patsias put on a Rosalía tribute show, playing the avant-garde pop queen himself, for fans disappointed when she left Lima off a tour last year. (Guardian)