“I was forced to get sterilised while giving birth,” says one woman from the district of Zurite in northern Peru.

“The nurses were insistent and telling me to get sterilised, that ‘you have several children already and you’re going to have more because you’re young’, and they sterilised me at the age of 27. That was 18 years ago now, but I [still] don’t have my full strength,” she says down the phone line.

Hundreds of thousands of women and men – many poor and indigenous – were forcibly sterilised under the presidency of Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s. Many continue to suffer emotional and physical pain from the operations, which were often botched.

“I was sterilised when my daughter was one month old,” says another women, from Piura. “When I went to the clinic, they wouldn’t give me the paperwork I needed to register her in Sondorillo. They wouldn’t give me the certificate unless I agreed to get sterilised.”

The testimonies of these women are among 130 so far collected for the interactive oral history Quipu project, which records the experiences of people who have been sterilised.



Quipu is a system of counting and communication using strings and knots. Photograph: Mireille Vautier/Alamy

The name Quipu derives from a method of communication employed by the Inca and other Andean civilisations, using tied knots on pieces of string to keep records and transmit information.

Those who experienced forced sterilisation are being invited to record their stories on a free-to-call voice messaging service, which are then uploaded on to a website under coloured “knots”. Listeners have the chance to record their own responses to the stories. The stories can be heard in Quechua, Spanish and English.

The Quipu project was conceived in 2011 by co-directors and executive producers Rosemarie Lerner and Maria Court and executive producer Sebastian Melo, from Chaka Studio. Ewan Cass-Kavanagh joined them as creative technologist on the project. The team originally set out to produce a documentary about forced sterilisation. But the scale of the abuse and the sheer number of people involved made them change direction and create “something interactive … where they [survivors] can tell stories in their own words”, says Lerner.

Funding was secured from the React (Research and Enterprise in Arts and Creative Technology) knowledge exchange hub, and the project was developed in collaboration with the people affected.

“The funding allowed us to come up with an idea. First we researched the idea, but it was based on assumptions. So we arrived [in northern Peru] and had workshops with them,” says Lerner. “We co-created a system with the women to fulfil their needs.”

At least 300,000 people – the vast majority women – are estimated to have been sterilised between 1990 and 2000, ostensibly under a government family planning programme.

Fujimori, who is in prison for human rights abuses and corruption, claimed he wanted to reduce the birth rate to alleviate poverty. The former president, and others in his government, have always denied anyone was forcibly sterilised. In a recording from the fourth world conference of women in Beijing in 1995, played on the Quipu website, Fujimori is heard denying accusations of wanting to “mutilate and kill poor people” under a new law that had allowed tubal ligation and vasectomies.

The women targeted under the programme were usually poor, indigenous Quechua-speakers, who were often told they would not receive food or other support if they, or their husbands, did not consent to be sterilised. Many of the women continue to suffer emotional and physical pain from the operations, which were often badly done and in unsanitary conditions.

The Quipu project is dedicated to Giulia Tamayo, a human rights lawyer and activist, who championed the fight for justice for the women. She helped connect Lerner, Court and Melo with many of the survivors.

“A lot of people affected by the [sterilisation] policy didn’t even know this had happened outside their communities,” says Lerner. But as a result of the project “they can connect with people from other parts of the country. Two groups have gathered and met, and listened to each other’s stories.”

Lerner says the women appreciate hearing the responses recorded by listeners. “They were finally being heard and recognised in other countries,” she says. “They know it’s important in the fight for justice … They really value that and think it’s good support for them.”



A woman who was sterilised joins a meeting in Lima, December 2015, to seek justice and reparation from the Peruvian government. Photograph: Ernesto Arias/EPA

The creators hope the project, launched in Lima on 10 December, will be cathartic for those involved, but they are also keen for it to be used in the battle for recognition and compensation for survivors. After two shelved inquiries, the government announced a new investigation into forced sterilisation under Fujimori, and in November established a registry for survivors to officially log their experiences.

Lerner and Court plan to launch a national radio campaign to promote the Quipu project as widely as possible, especially during the run-up to April’s presidential elections when each candidate will be invited to listen to the recorded stories.



“This topic was really not very well known until recently. In Peru, a lot of people still deny this happened, or justify it. We want to create space for dialogue and for the state to acknowledge what happened … hopefully we’ll prevent this from happening again,” says Lerner. “People who were affected by this are indigenous people, [who are] still [living] in the same conditions, who don’t have access to the internet or to make their voices heard … or are not aware of their basic rights,” she says.

Court adds: “We’re not giving them a voice. They have a really powerful voice and their stories to tell … This is a tool for them to make their stories heard in the whole world, hopefully.”

• This article was amended on 7 January 2016 to include the name of another member of the creative team behind the project.