Women protesting in Lima, Peru. Image from IWHC´s blog.
In April 2016, the people of Peru will vote for a new president. The cast of characters is quite familiar—former presidents and the daughter of an ex-president who has run, unsuccessfully, for office before. All the leading candidates are conservative and talk about economic growth as being high on their agendas. In most respects, it doesn’t look so different from past elections. Something, however, is different this year. There is at least one issue where a more progressive outlook is starting to take root.
Recently, when a candidate declared that he opposed abortion, a journalist inquired, “But what about in the case of rape?” Such a question would have been inconceivable in past presidential campaigns, despite the fact that Peru has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the region. A shocking 1 in 5 women experience sexual violence before the age of 15, and 9 out of 10 pregnancies of girls under the age of 15 are the product of incest. Researchers estimate that 35,000 pregnancies occur every year in Peru as a result of rape.
