The Dutch government has imposed new obligations on the ‘Nu Niet Zwanger’ project. These obligations largely meet the demands of Bureau Clara Wichmann and the NJCM.
With the GGD’s Nu Niet Zwanger project, “vulnerable people” (in practice, mostly women) are actively approached by social workers to talk about their desire to have children. The program aims to help “vulnerable women” who do not want to become pregnant, through provision of contraception such as the “shot pill. Vulnerability is formulated in the context of this project as a combination of problems surrounding, among other things, mental illness, drug addiction, debt, intellectual disability or being undocumented.
At Bureau Clara Wichmann and the Dutch Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (NJCM), there were great concerns about whether the human rights and women’s rights safeguards were sufficiently taken into account in this project: who are identified as vulnerable? Also, is there enough room to say “no” to someone coming in from the government? Are privacy and the right to self-determination adequately taken into account?
The organizations did not see these safeguards reflected in the project, nor in the grant award from the central government (which allowed the project to be rolled out nationwide).
After several discussions and sending a scientific report containing the relevant human rights and women’s rights did not lead to change, Bureau Clara Wichmann and the NJCM saw no other option than to conduct proceedings. These proceedings were directed against the granting of subsidies. The two organizations were assisted in this by dedicated lawyers from the Stibbe firm, who conducted the case pro bono, and by PILP.
The proceedings led to a nice substantive result this summer. According to the minister, there may indeed be the possibility that a woman may feel compelled to give the answer she expects the professional to hear. Of course, this should never happen, because it amounts to the indirect exercise of coercion by the government in the very personal matter of a child’s desire.
The government has therefore imposed new obligations on the Now Not Pregnant project, including:
- the obligation that specific attention be paid to the human rights framework in training, framework and intervision for all those involved in the project;
- an accessible and widely known complaint hotline for participants; and
- mandatory training with attention to the human rights framework for the professionals conducting the interviews.
These commitments largely meet the demands of Bureau Clara Wichmann and the NJCM. The organizations are therefore pleased with this result and see it as a fine example of how strategic litigation can lead to results that could not be achieved by merely holding discussions or demanding (media) attention. The two organizations will continue to follow the ‘Now Not Pregnant’ project critically.
