Gwendolyn Albert
Summer 2011
Series Number: 71
Editors’ Note: Recent years have seen a disturbing increase in violence against Romani people in Europe, along with other groups of people considered socially marginalized. Police brutality and forced relocations of Romani communities have received some coverage in the United States – but far less attention has been paid to the issue of forced sterilization. In this issue of DifferenTakes, human rights activist Gwendolyn Albert writes about the history of reproductive violence against Romani communities in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, and shares new International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) guidelines on sterilization for reproductive justice activists to publicize and use.
–Katie McKay Bryson and Betsy Hartmann
Note: Since publication of this article, the European Roma Rights Centre has corrected the original information provided. Hungarian law does require informed consent before sterilization.
