Under the administration of President Alberto Fujimori, Peru implemented a forced sterilization campaign as part of the National Population Program, primarily targeting impoverished and Indigenous women in rural Andean regions. This effort, regarded as the largest state-sponsored sterilization initiative in the Americas, was publicly presented as a progressive strategy for promoting reproductive health and economic development. However, it has been broadly denounced for its coercive methods and associated human rights abuses.

The program drew on long-standing eugenic doctrines and neo-Malthusian theories, which linked excessive population growth to poverty and national instability. These concepts were encapsulated in Plan Verde, a military strategy conceived during the Peruvian Civil War (1980–2000). Under Fujimori, these ideas were transformed into a systematic policy purportedly designed to reduce poverty and high birth rates.

Women were frequently sterilized without informed consent, sometimes under pressure or in exchange for basic necessities such as food or healthcare. Medical personnel received monetary bonuses—typically ranging from four to ten dollars—for each sterilization they conducted, and promotions were tied to achieving specific targets. Failure to meet these quotas could negatively affect a health worker's career. Between 1996 and 2000, an estimated 300,000 sterilizations took place, disproportionately impacting Indigenous communities.

Numerous international and domestic organizations have condemned the campaign as a crime against humanity, with some categorizing it as ethnic cleansing or genocide. Efforts to prosecute those responsible have encountered legal and political barriers, resulting in limited accountability. In recent years, victims and advocacy groups have sought formal recognition and justice, though significant hurdles remain in obtaining comprehensive reparations and ensuring full responsibility for those involved.

Radical eugenic measures, though previously proposed, were not enacted in Peru until the government of then-Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000). The systematic targeting of Indigenous women for sterilization, often without their informed consent during the Fujimori regime, affected peasant populations in the Peruvian highlands and reflected the belief that they were 'unfit' for reproduction according to the "imperatives of racial hygiene" and their perceived role as a barrier to national advancement.

In the 20th century, population control measures in Peru were closely tied to ethnicity. Public discourse on the so-called "Indian problem" portrayed Indigenous populations as obstacles to national progress while associating racial improvement with increased whiteness.

Eugenics, a theory that aims to improve the genetic quality of a human population, gained influence in Peru during the first half of the 20th century, reaching its apogee in the 1920s and 1930s. The government introduced pre-marriage examinations designed to prevent unions between individuals deemed "unfit".

Although concerns over population control persisted after the decline of the eugenics movement in the 1930s and 1940s, practices such as forced sterilization and eugenic abortion were not formally implemented during this period. However, there were also Peruvian authors who supported them, inspired by the policies applied in the United States and Nazi Germany. By the 1970s, after the atrocities of World War II, eugenics had largely fallen out of favor in both scientific and political discussions in Peru, becoming a taboo subject.