The Quipu Project is designed to collaborate with women and men who were sterilised in Peru in the mid-1990s. Predominantly from impoverished or indigenous communities, many were forced, coerced, or not given enough information to decide whether sterilisation was what they wanted.
Since then, some have become activists, campaigning for acknowledgement, apology and compensation. But from remote regions with no access to the internet, in many cases illiterate and Quechua rather than Spanish speaking, they have struggled to make themselves heard by those in power. Legal cases have been shelved several times and, as yet, there has been no reparation for the sterilisations.
The Quipu Project, a collaboration between and of the University of Bristol and Chaka Studio, was set up to help their stories reach a wider audience and, it is hoped, encourage the Peruvian government to listen again to their testimonies.
Working with Chaka Studio and Peruvians who were sterilised, Dr Brown and colleagues have developed a free telephone line that collaborators in Peru can use to record themselves speaking about their experience of sterilisation.
The phone line operates like a web forum, and the collaborators can also listen to others’ testimonies and record responses, so people who were sterilised can offer each other support and solidarity, as the archive of testimony grows.
A team of collaborators in Peru travel to towns and villages and promote the Quipu Project by talking to people, handing out leaflets and speaking on the radio. Once recorded, testimonies are moderated, transcribed and translated.
Dr Brown said: “The testimonies will be uploaded to an online archive, where you will be able to listen to them and, if you choose, record a message in response. In many cases, this will be one of the first times these experiences will be heard outside the collaborators’ own communities. At the same time, if you leave a message, your voice will be one of the first internationally to recognise the collaborators’ testimonies.
“Our hope is that through global recognition and by creating a record of the sterilisations, we can help the collaborators find the acknowledgement they have been fighting for.”
To watch a short film about the project and support the campaign, visit the