EL PAÍS offers the América Futura section openly for its daily and global information contribution on sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here.
It is impossible to separate the career of Julissa Mantilla (Lima, 55 years old) from the defense of women's rights. This Peruvian lawyer has spent more than three decades fully dedicating herself to this from all possible fronts. The academy, the courts, the investigation… The last scenario was the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), to which she joined as commissioner in 2019 and of which she served as president in 2022. Her face is one of the best known of the institution for its transparency and firm and vocal commitment to the right to abortion and the eradication of sexual violence and feminicide. “These have always been preventable deaths. “They are homicides in which the State could have done something and did not,” she says from her office in Lima in a video call with América Futura.
His vehemence has also cost him criticism from the most conservative voices on the continent. For many Peruvian experts and journalists, also the position. A week after the conversation, she will leave her position on the Commission after the Government of Dina Boluarte withdrew her name as a candidate for reelection on April 28, without giving hardly any explanations. Mantilla does not hide the discomfort and nostalgia that it causes him. “I would have loved to have continued working on many important issues for the region,” she will repeat on several occasions. “If respecting the regulations had a cost for the candidacy, which I do not know and cannot affirm, I will pay it.”
Along with Mantilla, Esmeralda Arosemena de Troitiño and Margarette May Macaulay say goodbye to the IACHR. And three new magistrates will take their place (Gloria Monique de Mees, Christopher Arif Bulkan and Andrea Pochak) and one re-elected, Edgar Stuardo Ralón Orellana. So much Mees and Ralón have been strongly criticized by the independent panel for lack of experience and for presenting a “regression with respect to rights protection standards,” respectively. Something that Mantilla says does not “worry him”: “The majority position is the legally correct one.” Additionally, for the first time in the institution's 60-year history, the Commission will have three of the seven commissioners from small countries in the region (Guyana, Suriname and Barbados). “It is a great opportunity for many treaties to be ratified and for the Commission to also incorporate and learn from such a different context,” he acknowledges.
In this review of the four years of his mandate, Mantilla appears satisfied and insatiable. Although she leaves office, she prefers not to comment on the release of Alberto Fujimori, but she warns of the authoritarian drift in several countries in the region, especially Guatemala, Argentina or Nicaragua. “We have to ask ourselves what we ask of democracies.” Mantilla, who never left teaching, is not afraid of what now?: “I will continue defending human rights from feminism and in the classrooms.”
Ask. Do you know anything more about Boluarte's decision today?
Answer. So far no one has given me an official answer. I found out about this decision through social networks. I was in a meeting with Xiomara Castro, the president of Honduras, and I had turned off my cell phone. When I left, I received many messages from Commission colleagues and friends and they all told me that they were very sorry. I swear I thought someone had died. I cannot affirm anything, what I can tell you is that I never violated my principles as a commissioner. I never shared any information about the cases that were taking place in Peru. First because he did not have the information and, second, because, if he had, he would not have given it.
Q. Do you think the Government expected you to be less impartial on certain matters?
R. I cannot say that the State expected that of me. What I know is that I never provided information. Never. But it would be interesting to ask Peruvian officials this.
Q. What do you think it means that the State of Guatemala, which has been quite critical of the Commission and even of you personally, re-elects someone like Commissioner Ralón?
R. I don't know what was going through the president's mind. [Alejandro Giammattei], but I do know that they have supported it 100%. Before and during his re-election. I respect him as I do all my colleagues, although we have had fundamental differences on these issues. Guatemala's election is legitimate, but it is a reflection of what is happening regionally.
Q. And what do the countries of the region have to do? Should they be more vocal?
R. For me, yes, I should be more vocal. They should really weigh what I want for the population. States cannot wait for the crisis to come to an end, as in the case of Guatemala. Now there is a consensus on the problems of due process and access to justice, but the Commission has been warning about this for several years. And the region now offers very worrying positions, of denialism, democratic setbacks, use of states of exception as tools of criminal policy…
Q. The role of the Commission is to guarantee rights in the States and choose which cases enter the Inter-American Court. During his mandate, women's rights have been clearly prioritized, despite the fact that not all commissioners had the same progressive vision. Has it been difficult internally?
R. When I arrived at the Commission, we had Flavia Piovesan and Antonia Urrejola and we were the first women's board in the history of the commission. We were three women working on that line and it was simple. When they came out, I can't say that it was more difficult, but I do say that a great effort had to be made to deconstruct and adapt the differential approaches. There are always difficulties with the issues, but in the case of women's rights there is always greater resistance. I respect all personal positions, but when a personal position violates a standard, it worries me.
Q. What was left pending?
R. A lot. (Laughs). We made a lot of progress regarding women searchers, but a resolution on the matter was pending. Also, I wish I had done more with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) in Colombia, especially in the macro case of sexual violence… Although a lot was done for women deprived of liberty, I would like to have done more about children born in prison. Or work to ensure that Nicaragua's testimonies can serve as a basis for a Truth Commission…
Q. One of the most important cases on women's rights that the Inter-American Court is studying is Beatriz vs. El Salvador. And this has sparked all kinds of ultraconservative reactions in the region. Even President Rodrigo Chaves recently said that in the event of a ruling in favor of the abortion cause, “Costa Rica has no option but to leave the treaty.” Why is the right over our bodies so scary?
R. This is one of the many cases we call “false dilemmas.” For example, when you defend the rights of people deprived of their liberty, it seems that you are in favor of criminals, when that is not the case. Something similar happens with this: it is being understood that when the interruption of pregnancy is a
llowed, the life of the unborn is being violated. And what must be understood is that this protection is not achieved by criminalizing abortion. In El Salvador, Honduras or Nicaragua, which, furthermore, it is no coincidence that they are in countries where there is absolute control in the Government, absolute criminalization does not protect anyone's life. What we have to do is develop health policies, control, nutrition, contraceptives, sexual education… We have to start measuring the democracy indices of a country based on whether or not they respect women's rights.
Q. As?
R. I am not a punitive, but why don't we invest in preventing teenage pregnancy? One of the big failures is that we are demanding from criminal law what only public policies can give us. One has to start looking at feminicide or teenage pregnancy further and worry about the girl born and not just the one she is about to be born. The response of criminalization and the army in the streets is spectacular, only for the tribune. So that everyone can say that you are doing something. The most effective thing is to try to prevent it.
Q. Nicaragua left the OAS, Guatemala and El Salvador have questioned the rigor of the institution. Why are they being criticized so much?
R. The system is doing its job. The question is not what is happening with the Commission, but what is happening with the States. Neither Nicaragua nor Guatemala made these decisions overnight, there were prior ones. And the Commission could have lowered Nicaragua a little so that it would not leave, but that was not the case. The IACHR was created 60 years ago to prevent human rights violations. We have been watching what is happening in the region for years. Or in Cuba, for example: we are the only hope for the Cuban people. We meet, we have hearings, we write to them… We are the only hope and we must defend them.
Q. And in what way can the IACHR help the island [expulsada de la OEA en 1962]?
R. What you can do with Cuba, Nicaragua or Venezuela… who turn their backs on the system, is to continue listening to the victims. History has shown us that things can be changed.
Q. Women in prison represent 8% in the Americas, a figure that has doubled in the last 22 years, to 56.1%, mainly due to the war on drugs. You always quote Judge Patricia Pérez when she says that men are imprisoned for committing crimes and women for committing sins…
R. Yes, here I have the book [lo muestra a cámara]. She thus analyzes imprisonment in general, from how women were locked up in convents or at home for having children out of wedlock or “waywards,” while men were only imprisoned for crimes. The gender perspective is simply an analysis methodology, to understand that everything can be questioned from a perspective of equality. And it has to do with gender roles and power. We have grown up in patriarchal societies where there are private spaces for women and public spaces for men. The gender perspective comes to offer you more options.
Q. I understand that he is going back to the academy now. How can human rights continue to be defended from there?
R. Always from feminism. I want to write from the law and from my own experience of all these years. I am lucky to have been on both sides, as a hinge, I have learned a lot and I come out very strengthened and very firm in what I told you: I never violated the regulations. If respecting it had a cost for the candidacy, which I do not know and cannot affirm, I will pay it.
#Julissa #Mantilla #worry #girl #born #born
