We welcome Malta’s change in law that finally criminalises the forced sterilisation of women and girls with disabilities. After its approval on 23 February, Malta becomes the 10th EU Member State to explicitly criminalise forced sterilisation.
The change in the law was made at the initiative of the Minister for Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector, Julia Farrugia Portelli. It includes specific provisions against the forced sterilisation of persons with disabilities.
We commend this initiative from Malta. Now that the EU-level Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence shamefully failed to criminalise forced sterilisation, we call on remaining Member States to follow Malta’s example.
We now call on the remaining Member States that we identified has explicitly allowing forced sterilisation of persons with disabilities in their law to criminalise it: Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and Slovakia.
Pirkko Mahlamäki, the chair of the EDF’s Women’s Committee, stated:
We congratulate the Maltese government for this historic decision. We now call on Malta to become a champion in banning forced sterilisation across the European Union!