Firm Secures Hearing Before International Rights Commission on Sexual Violence Against Bolivian Girls

Hughes Hubbard helped obtain and organize a thematic hearing on March 18 before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on sexual violence against adolescent girls in Bolivia. 

As co-counsel Equality Now recently reported, "Bolivia has the highest rate of child sexual abuse in Latin America: one in three girls is sexually abused before age 18."  Hughes Hubbard and Equality Now organized a panel of advocates from Bolivia working to help girls, and especially those from indigenous communities, to explain to the commission the dire situation and the need for legal and educational reform. 

Pablo Menacho, the attorney general of Bolivia, appeared before the commission to respond on behalf of the Bolivian government and promised to work with civil society organizations like HHR clients Equality Now and Centro Una Brisa de Esperanza (CUBE) on those reforms. 

Saturday's hearing was Sunday's headline in the largest newspaper in Bolivia. Hughes Hubbard, Equality Now, and Professor Beth Stephens of Rutgers Law School are representing a young woman before the Inter-American Commission who was a victim of repeated sexual violence as an adolescent, and the thematic hearing is part of the strategy to call attention to the case and the underlying problem. 

Scott Christensen, Steven Hammond, Alyssa Johnson, Susie Park, Alexandra Eagan, Ekaterina Botchkareva and Norma Velez are working on this matter.