SUDAN/UK: Ending The Culture Of FGM

When I was "circumcised" I was five or six, but it happens to girls as young as four. It starts as a ceremony – the girl is bought clothes, gold earrings and bangles. She has henna put on her hands and feet: the preliminaries are regarded as a celebration where she is the centre of attention.

But later they take her and put her in a gadha, which is shaped like a deep dish. They lay her across it and hold her legs open; there are often three people holding her very tight when she's on the gadha, two holding her legs and hands, and one holding her chest and head.

The equipment is handmade: a sharp curved knife which is not sterilised. And the girl is given no anaesthetic. It is usually mostly women in attendance. They leave a little hole for urination. There are no stitches; they treat the wound with herbs, salt and water. It bleeds a lot and the victim is in great pain. I was horribly frightened and crying. The "ceremony" takes as little as 20 minutes or as long as an hour, depending on how much the girl struggles.

UGANDA: FGM Is A HUman Rights Violation

opinion

Uganda is a signatory to various human rights treaties and this has earned it a very positive image on the international scene as one of the countries that highly respect and observe human rights. However its biggest problem has always been implementation.

Women and children, given their vulnerability, have faced various human rights abuses at all levels, among which includes sexual exploitation, domestic rape, defilement, child labour, child sacrifice, domestic violence, child trafficking and female genital mutilation (FGM). However FGM has turned out to be more sensitive as the young women's health is put at risk when they undergo this practice.

Article 21 of the African Charter is on the rights and welfare of a child, protecting him/her against harmful social and cultural practices and this includes the elimination of all harmful practices affecting the welfare, dignity normal growth and development of the child.

ETHIOPIA: Saved From The Afony Of Female Circumcision

Millions of women around the world are subjected to genital mutilation. But, in Ethiopia, the practice is slowly disappearing, writes Paul Vallely

PAUL VALLELY

Hanna Abera with her aunt, Tijitu Obsu, who saved the seven-year-old from being circumcised

This is Hanna Abera. She is seven. Her mother and grandmother wanted to slice off part of her genitals. But she was saved by an extraordinarily brave intervention from her aunt after a British charity launched a programme of education on the consequences of female circumcision – which is still widely practised throughout parts of Africa and the Middle East.

GAMBIA: More URR Communities Abandon FGM/C

UGANDA: FGM Banned In Uganda, Other African Nations Ponder The Option

FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION is under fire from international humanitarian organizations, the international community and the United Nations. Calls to ban the dangerous and painful practice, which serves no useful purpose, have intensified and Africa, a continent where the ritual is most predominant, has started responding.

Senegal and Burkina Faso were among the first African nations to announce that the practice will be banned in their countries. Recently, Uganda too announced that FGM has been banned. We bring you a Ugandan newspaper report in which the parliamentarian who tabled Prohibition Bill in the Ugandan Parliament is interviewed by journalist Madina Tebajjukira of the Ugandan SUNDAY VISION. His responses provide food for thought for countries still procrastinating about outrightly banning Bondo.

DOWNLOADABLE FILM: The Cut

PUBLICATION: Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting - UNFPA Report

Global Consultation on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting

Empathy and Rage: Female Genital Mutilation in African Literature

EMPATHY AND RAGE:
Co-Edited by Tobe Levin and Augustine H. Asaah

This collection is a first - scholars analyse this subject as a theme in literature.

In an unusual symbiosis, activism and scholarship join hands to hasten the end of this egregious
human rights abuse.

The collection examines representations in creative writing by African and African-Americans including Nura Abdi, Mariama Barry, Calixthe Beyala, Osman Conteh, Waris Dirie,
Nuruddin Farah, Fatou Keita, Fadumo Korn, Ahmadou Kourouma, Christian Mambou, Nawal El Saadawi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Awa Thiam and Alice Walker. et al.

In their efforts to end FGM, the governments of Germany, the UK, Italy and the European Union (Brussels) have drawn on the expertise of Tobe Levin who has written many articles and chapters for
books on FGM.

Empathy and Rage - these words bracket a spectrum of feelings people confront when they think about the millions of women and girls who have undergone bolokoli, takhoundi, tukore, or gudni’in - names in local languages for a procedure that mutilates women’s private parts or Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

Contributors to the collection include: Anne V. Adams, Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, Muthoni Mathai, Marianne Sarkis and a translation from the French of contributor Herzberger-Fofana’s obituary placing it in the context of the work as a dedication to Sembene Ousmane, a true African pioneer of the exposure of this practice through film.

Tobe Levin is a Professor at the University of Maryland College in Europe, an adjunct to the University of Frankfurt, and non-resident Fellow, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University. Levin became an activist against FGM in 1977 and co-founded FORWARD - Germany, a registered charity modelled on FORWARD
UK, in 1998.

Augustine H. Asaah is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Ghana where he teaches African Francophone Literature and has pioneered research into African feminist literature and gender-based violence in African fiction.

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