Summary

Summary

Four Latin American girls—Fátima (from Guatemala), Lucía and Susana (from Nicaragua), and Norma (from Ecuador)—were each under the age of 14 when they were raped and impregnated by older men in positions of power. 

Like many girls and women throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, these girls had little to no access to sexual and reproductive care, including abortion. Instead, they were forced to continue their pregnancies and give birth against their will, risking their health and lives. 

In 2019, the Center for Reproductive Rights and its partners filed these four cases on the girls’ behalf as part of a larger strategy within the Latin American movement  “Son niñas, no madres” (“They are girls, not mothers”). The movement aims to protect girls’ sexual and reproductive rights, especially those who have survived sexual abuse.

Victory came in January 2025 when the UN Human Rights Committee ruled in Lucía’s, Susana’s, and Norma’s cases, calling on the girls’ home countries—along with more than 170 others—to ensure abortion access and prevent forced pregnancies and motherhood. The final ruling, in Fátima’s case, followed suit in June 2025.

Thanks to these cases, new human rights standards have been set to ensure access to sexual education, safe abortion services, and other protections for sexual abuse survivors in countries around the world.

Background

Background

The four plaintiffs—Fátima, Lucía, Susana, and Norma—are all from rural, economically marginalized communities where they couldn’t access sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion care. Since they received little to no sexual education, some of the girls didn’t even realize they were pregnant. 

In addition, each of their home countries has strict abortion laws. In Guatemala and Ecuador, abortion is illegal with only very narrow exceptions; in Nicaragua, it’s criminalized in all cases, with no exceptions.

The girls’ horrific stories are part of a pattern throughout the region, where many face sexual and reproductive rights violations with no judicial recourse.

At the time these cases were filed, only 2.67% of women of reproductive age in Latin America and the Caribbean lived in countries permitting abortion on request. In El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, and Suriname, abortion is completely illegal, without exception. And even where abortion is technically legal, it’s often inaccessible in practice.

Latin America and the Caribbean is also the only region in the world where the number of girls giving birth under age 15 continues to rise. Most of those pregnancies result from rape, frequently by family members or other men close to the victims.

About the cases

About the cases

The Center and its partners filed these cases May 29, 2019, with the UN Human Rights Committee, seeking justice, reparations, and the creation of global human rights standards.

They asked the Committee to:

• Hold the governments of Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Ecuador accountable for violating the girls’ rights. 
• Promote the importance of reforming abortion laws to ensure that all persons, especially girls, can access essential health care without discrimination.
• Adopt measures that ensure survivors’ voices are heard and establish that forcing girls to become pregnant against their will constitutes torture.
• As well as to demand that States:
• Regulate abortion services through their health care system, not the penal system, in accordance with the World Health Organization.
• Protect girls’ health and lives by allowing health care personnel to provide abortions, and information about abortion, without fear of criminal prosecution.
• Guarantee the right to non-discrimination by amending legislation to make sure all girls can access abortion care on equal terms.
• Guarantee the right to a dignified life, including by making sure Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) is in all school curricula, so that girls can understand the implications of sexual relationships.
• Guarantee girls’ right not to be forced into motherhood.
• Consider the denial of safe, legal abortion services as a violation of the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

The cases also argued that any Human Rights Committee rulings condemning Ecuador, Nicaragua and Guatemala would set a precedent for other countries that have ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), an international human rights treaty.

That means all 173 countries that are member States of the ICCPR would be required to follow the Committee’s standard. The United States is a member of the ICCPR, as are countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and North America.

Case arguments

Case arguments

In these cases, the Center and its partners argued that:

• Forcing the girls to carry pregnancies to term against their will led to severe physical, mental and social consequences—violating their human rights. The four petitioners suffered serious psychological effects, like suicidal thoughts and struggling to create long-standing relationships with their children. Their social health also suffered: All four were stigmatized, bullied, and ostracized by their peers and dropped out of school after giving birth.
• When the girls tried to report their abuse, they were revictimized by the systems that were supposed to keep them safe. All of the girls gave their abusers’ names and addresses to their local justice system and traveled for hours to file complaints, but the abusers never faced any legal consequences.

Specifically, the cases argued that Guatemala, Ecuador and Nicaragua violated these rights under the ICCPR:

• The right to effective remedy, which “should be appropriately adapted so as to take account of the special vulnerability of certain categories of person, including in particular children” (ICCPR Article 2.3; General Comment No. 31).
• The right to life, which extends to life-threatening situations (ICCPR Articles 6 and 24.1; General Comment No. 36).
• The right to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which applies to mental as well as physical suffering (ICCPR Articles 7 and 24.1; General Comment No. 20).
• The right to liberty and security, which “includes an obligation for the State to protect against threats to the bodily integrity of persons, especially in the events of violence against certain categories of people, such as women and girls” (ICCPR Article 9; General Comment No. 35).
• The right to privacy. In previous rulings such as Mellet v. Ireland, the Human Rights Committee had declared that denying access to abortion violates the right to privacy (ICCPR Article 17).
• The rights of the child. According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), states must adopt measures of special protection for children (ICCPR Articles 24.1 and 17; CRC Article 19).
• The right to freedom of expression and information. UN Committees have previously insisted that information on sexual and reproductive health services must be accessible, acceptable, available, and good quality (ICCPR Article 19).
• The right to equal protection and nondiscrimination, which ensures that people are not deprived of their right to claim justice based on characteristics such as their race, sex, religion, and others (ICCPR Articles 26 and 3).

About the rulings

About the Rulings

On January 20, 2025, the United Nations Human Rights Committee issued rulings in three of the four cases: Norma v. Ecuador, Lucía v. Nicaragua, and Susana v. Nicaragua. The final ruling, in Fátima v. Guatemala, was issued June 5, 2025.

The far-reaching rulings set new human rights standards to ensure access to sexual education, safe abortion, and other protections for sexual abuse survivors—all of which will help prevent girls from being forced into pregnancy and motherhood.

In its rulings, the Committee said the States committed several human rights violations, asserting that:

• Criminalizing abortion harms health outcomes, especially in rural areas where maternal mortality and morbidity are already disproportionately high.
• By failing to ensure full access to sexual and reproductive health care, the States violated the right to life.
• By failing to guarantee the right to request abortion, the States violated the right to private life.
• By forcing the girls to become mothers—therefore creating barriers to personal, family, educational and professional objectives—the States grossly restricted their right to a dignified life.
• By criminalizing abortion, the States interfered in the girls’ decision-making—which is unreasonable, particularly given their age and status as victims of sexual violence.
• By failing to provide access to quality information about sexual and reproductive health care and about the right to give up a child for adoption, the States violated the right to information.
• By failing to protect the girls from sexual violence, forced pregnancy, forced maternity, and to provide access to specific health services for women, the States perpetuated violence against women and gender discrimination. Due to the intersection between the girls’ gender and age, this constitutes intersectional discrimination.

In addition to holding the States responsible for their human rights violations, the Committee called on them to:

• Change their legislation to ensure access to safe, legal, and effective abortion, especially in cases involving sexual violence or risks to the pregnant person’s life or health. That includes providing comprehensive health care services—including abortion—and removing existing barriers. 
• Take action to combat sexual violence, including education, awareness-raising, and training for health and justice professionals. 
• Provide comprehensive reparations for the survivors, including financial compensation, support to resume their education, psychological assistance, and other measures to help them rebuild their lives.

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