Rwandan mandatory sterilization kerfuffel

The impact of the internet on the processes of determining health policy, anywhere in the world, is worth studying in its own right. Case in point: last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) came out with a press report condemning a draft human reproductive rights law proposed to the Rwandan parlement. The draft, HRW alleged, contained a provision stating that individuals with intellectual disabilities were not to be allowed to reproduce. The Rwandan draft bill contained a whole lot of controversial material besides, especially pertaining to HIV/AIDS: compulsory premaritial HIV testing; requirement of a married individual to be tested for HIV if their spouse requests it; permission of doctors to test children or incapacitated persons for HIV without consent and then disclose the result to parents, guardians or other care providers. But it was the forced sterilization that really hit the internet, here and here and here.

Rwandan government officials scrambled to do what politicians (first) do when faced with a public relations nightmare: deny everything. Damascene Ntawukuriryayo, deputy speaker of the Rwandan parliament, denied the claims of HRW, said that there was never a proposal for forced sterilization, and that plans for HIV testing before couples get married were always to be strictly voluntary, not compulsory. Apparently thinking that a good offense is the best defence, Mr Ntawukuriryayo stated that HRW should check its facts before releasing reports into the wilds of the internet.

It does not take much effort to find views that contradict Mr. Ntawukuriryayo's statements. Back on June 23rd, before the HRW report hit the web, Focus Media in Kigali published a fairly detailed article by Sam Ruburika on the shortcomings of the draft legislation, including quotations of the original text. The proposed legislation on forced sterilization appears as Article 22: "The Government shall have the obligation to suspend fertility for mentally handicapped people as long as the handicap is still persistent and upon decision by a medical team comprising at least three medical doctors. An order of the Minister in charge of health shall specify the list and implementation modalities for diseases accounted for by this article." According to Ruburika, the Chamber of Deputies approved of the draft legislation, including its articles on sterilization and compulsory HIV testing, and it was only when it reached the level of the Senate that red flags started flying.

How are we to understand this? It goes without say that pregnancy and sexual relationships involving mentally handicapped persons is a very difficult and important issue. Why the hamfisted approach? One possibility is that there are members of the Rwandan government whose views on reproductive policy, while they might express certain draconian community sentiments, are at odds with the Rwandan constitution. Fortunately there are checks and balances enough to stop these sorts of unreconstructed proposals from becoming law, but it is striking that the draft survived in that form as long as it did. It survived long enough to be detected by the internet radar -- spelling its immediate demise.