V.C. v. Slovakia (dec.)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 120

June 2009

V.C. v. Slovakia (dec.) - 18968/07

Decision 16.6.2009 [Section IV]

Article 3

Degrading treatment

Inhuman treatment

Sterilisation of Roma woman allegedly without her informed consent: admissible

Article 8

Article 8-1

Respect for family life

Respect for private life

Sterilisation of Roma woman allegedly without her informed consent: admissible

In 2000 the applicant, a Roma woman, was sterilised in a public hospital during the delivery of her second child by Caesarean section. The sterilisation consisted of severing and sealing her Fallopian tubes in order to prevent fertilisation. The applicant’s delivery record contained a clear reference to her ethnic origin together with a request for sterilisation along with her signature. However, the applicant claimed that she had not understood the term “sterilisation”, and that she had signed the request while in labour and after being told by the hospital staff that if she fell pregnant again either she or the child might die. According to the applicant, she had been put in a so-called “Gypsy room” separate from non-Roma women and had been prevented from using the same bathrooms or toilets. She unsuccessfully sought redress in civil proceedings, arguing that her sterilisation had been in violation of national legislation and international human-rights standards and that she had not been duly informed about the procedure, its consequences or alternative solutions. The Constitutional Court dismissed her constitutional complaint because she had failed to invoke a violation of her procedural rights under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention in addition to the matters set out in her complaint.

The Government argued that, by failing to rely on appropriate provisions of the Convention, the applicant had prevented the Constitutional Court from examining the way in which the ordinary courts had assessed the facts complained of. However, reiterating that the exhaustion rule must be applied with some flexibility and without excessive formalism, the Court observed that, both in the proceedings before the ordinary courts and the Constitutional Court, the applicant had complained of a violation of the same Convention rights as those she had subsequently complained of to the Court. She had thus afforded the domestic authorities the opportunity to redress, by their own means, the violation of her Convention rights in issue. In sum, the Court considered that subjecting the constitutional review of the case to a requirement that the applicant invoke Article 6 of the Convention had amounted to excessive formalism.

Admissible under Articles 3, 8 12, 13 and 14 of the Convention.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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