Guest Speaker Dr Nusta Ko

Department of Political Science Speaker Series presents:

Nusta Ko (University of Baltimore)

Together We Fight: Surviving Peru’s Campaign of Coercive Sterilizations

Friday, March 20, 2026

12:30-2:00pm

Hall Building, Room H-1226

Disguised as a family planning program during Peru's internal armed conflict, a campaign was launched by the government of Alberto Fujimori that resulted in the forced sterilization of thousands of women of poor, rural, and Indigenous-language-speaking backgrounds. Together We Fight explores Indigenous and non-Indigenous women's brutal experiences of forced sterilizations and their subsequent activism for reproductive rights and justice. Drawing on a vast trove of first-person testimony, Ñusta Carranza Ko highlights the understudied voices of victim-survivors, unpacking their ideas of justice and examining the work of allies that have accompanied them in their activism. Focusing on the stories, struggles, and lived experiences of victim-survivors, Carranza Ko argues that the campaign was genocidal.

Ñusta Carranza Ko is an Associate Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore. Her research focuses on transitional justice in Latin America and Asia, historical women’s rights violations in Korea, and Indigenous peoples’ rights in Peru. She is of Indigenous (Quechua-speaking peoples from the Northern Andes of Peru) and Korean descent.