Site facelift

After 17 years being online, this website is finally receiving a facelift with many new features, articles, resources, and network information.

If you would like to add your name to the list of  websites or resources/organizations, please let me know, and I will be happy to add you to the list. You may email me from following the Contact Link: http://www.fgmnetwork.org/mail/index.php

The new website should be launched in the next two weeks, so please stay tuned for details!

Best,

Dr. Marianne Sarkis, Director

KENYA: Mbeere District Schoolgirls Circumcised Secretely

BY Reuben Githinji

HUMAN rights lobby groups in Embu have raised concern over the violation of the rights of school-going children in Embu by their parents and grandparents in secretly circumcising them.

The human rights groups asked the government through the provincial administration to ensure secret Female Genital Mutilation is stamped out. They said the worst hit area is Mbeere North and South districts where girls are usually circumcised during holidays.

Secretary to the Embu Urban Local Forum Mary Wawira Njue, a consortium of local civil society in Embu county said the practice is negatively affecting the girls' education. She said her organisation is creating awareness on the irrelevance and dangers of the practice to end it. She said incidents of the practice come to the fore only when an operation aborts or becomes soar. She cited the case of a 12-year-old girl who was recently admitted at the Embu Provincial General Hospital bleeding from a circumcision exercise gone soar.

The standard six girl who had visited her great grandmother at Ishiara in Mbeere North district was allegedly forced by the great-grandmother to undergo the ritual. Wawira at the same time decried the increase in bhang trafficking, abuse of drugs and illicit drinks in the area among youth.

She said within this month alone bhang worth millions of shillings had been recovered by police in Embu town and Kamiu where a farmer was found growing it. Wawira said even as the local youth fight for their rights they should do so by being responsible in their behaviours. She blamed much of the woes affecting the youth to poor leadership from local leaders. She called on the local leaders to ensure they lead in establishment of local industries which are lacking in the area.

SOURCE: AllAfrica.com
DATE: December 5, 2011

KENYA: It is the high season for circumcision as the new law against FGM fails to bite

By PETER MWAURA Posted Friday, December 16 2011 at 20:00

In most communities in Kenya, this is the high season for circumcision for both boys and girls.

The law, however, prohibits female circumcision and lays down harsh punishment for offenders. But that has not stopped communities from circumcising their girls.

The reason is very simple: Laws that do not fit into the social system are like square pegs in round holes, and most of the time they are disobeyed, ignored or conveniently forgotten.

The law against female circumcision, the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act, is just such law, as illustrated by a story published in the Daily Nation of December 8.

The story carried the headline “Villagers ignore the law and go on girl circumcision frenzy”.

SOMALIA: MPs summon Puntland Ministers on FGM motion

GAROWE, Somalia Dec 13 2011 (Garowe Online) - Some Members of Parliament agreed to summon four ministers in Puntland State of Somalia due to a motion that has been regarded controversial that banned Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Puntland, Radio Garowe reports.

Puntland MPs met in the capital Garowe today to discuss summoning four Puntland Ministers that they felt broke certain religious rights of Muslims when they had passed a motion to ban FGM in Puntland.

UGANDA: Rights Activists Push for FGM End

Kapchorwa — Human rights activists have called upon the East Africa bloc to honour the commitment to end female genital mutilation, describing it as a discriminatory and a harmful practice to girls.

While addressing delegates from Kenya and Uganda and traditionalists at the 12th Sebei Culture Day celebrations on Monday held at Sebei College Tegeres, the Speaker of Parliament, Ms Rebecca Kadaga, said ending FGM is crucial to the success of two of the Millennium Development Goals: Improving maternal health and promoting gender equality.

BOOK: Girl with Three Legs by Soraya Mire

The Girl with Three Legs by Soraya Mire

When Soraya Miré was thirteen years old, the girls on the playground would taunt her, saying she could not play with them—not as long as she walked with three legs. Confused and hurt, she went to her mother, who mysteriously responded that the time had come for Soraya to receive her gift. Miré too soon discovers the horror of the “gift,” female genital mutilation (FGM), whereby a young girl’s healthy organs are chopped off not only to make her acceptable to a future husband but also to rein in her “wildness.”

In The Girl with Three Legs, Soraya Miré reveals what it means to grow up in a traditional Somali family, where girls’ and women’s basic human rights are violated on a daily basis. A victim of FGM and an arranged marriage to an abusive cousin, Miré was also witness to the instability of Somalia’s political landscape: her father was a general for the military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, and her family moved in the inner circles of Somalia’s elite. In her journey to recover from the violence done to her, Miré realizes FGM is the ultimate child abuse, a ritual of mutilation handed down from mother to daughter and protected by the word “culture.”

DOWNLOADABLE FILM: The Cut

PUBLICATION: Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting - UNFPA Report

Global Consultation on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting