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.”
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
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”.
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.
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.
Close on the heels of the online petition to the Bohra Muslim high priest to stop the ritual of female circumcision in the community, doctors have voiced their concerns about the procedure and its consequences. They say the ritual is often performed clandestinely by inexperienced people, leading to serious medical complications.
The World Health Organisation defines female circumcision or female genital mutilation (FGM) as ‘a procedure that intentionally alters or injures female genital organs for non-medical reasons.’ “I have met at least 20 mothers who have come with their daughters, months after the khatna has been performed, complaining that their daughters have got urinary infections, sepsis, and in a couple of cases, severe haemorrhage,” a gynaecologist who runs a private clinic near Crawford Market said. “Most of the times, it is done by older women in the family using a razor. The antiseptic cream applied later at times increases the chances of infection,” she said.
Bukwo When Mr Zakaria Cherukut wanted to circumcise his 14-year-old daughter in 2010, he chose to take her over to Kenya among the Sabaot tribe, and the little girl was circumcised. Mr Cherukut is not alone, many traditional Sabiny who still value female genital mutilation but were confronted by the new anti-FGM Law in Uganda have had their daughters either circumcised in the bush or in neighbouring Kenya where the law was non-existent. However, Kenya might cease to be a safe haven after its governemnt proposed a law, still in waiting, against the vice. A study sponsored by Reproductive Education and Community Health programme (REACH) released in October says female mutilation is increasing across borders yet border police have done little to stop the practice.
The rate of female circumcision dropped from 28 to 26 percent between 2005 and 2011, according to the fifth Multiple Indicator Demographic and Health Survey in Senegal (EDSV-MICS), conducted under the auspices of the National Agency of Statistics and Demography (ANSD).
According to ANSD, which presented the preliminary results of the survey here Wednesday, the survey was based on levels of fertility, sexual activity, fertility preferences, as well as knowledge and the use of family planning methods, among others.
'With regard to the practice (circumcision), nearly 26 percent of all women surveyed are reported circumcised. In 2005, this practice was 28 percent,' said ANSD.
A group of teachers and students from Alliance Girls High School and Dartmouth University in the United States have launched an anti-Female Genital Mutilation campaign in Marakwet district.
The campaign is aimed at educating communities on the importance of discarding the outdated cultural practice, which they say has affected girl-child education.
After a decade of failed attempts to stop female genital mutilation (FGM) or female circumcision in Egypt, the practice is finally becoming less common.
In 1996 the Egyptian government banned FGM in hospitals but because licensed practitioners were still allowed to perform the surgery elsewhere, it continued. A 2006 survey of 3730 Egyptian girls, conducted by Mohamed Bedaiwy of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio and colleagues, found that 85 per cent of the girls had been subjected to FGM since the ban. In June 2007, the government banned FGM altogether.
To see if the new law has made a difference, Salah Rasheed at Sohag University in Egypt, a member of Bedaiwy's team, asked 4150 girls and women aged between 5 and 25 years if and when they had undergone FGM. Interviewing them between 2008 and 2010, he found that, overall, 89 per cent of the females had been subjected to FGM in their lifetime, with the procedure typically being conducted on girls of 8. Annual rates seemed to have dropped following the complete ban, however: around 11.5 per cent had undergone the procedure in 2005, but the proportion dropped to 8 per cent for 2007 and 7.7 per cent in 2009 the latest year considered in the survey.
The Maendeleo ya Wanawake organisation has challenged the Njuri Ncheke council of elders to step up its sensitisation programme on the negative effects of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
Organisation chairperson Rukia Subow said despite the council making a public declaration against the cultural practice two years ago, its effects were yet to be felt at the grassroots.
Speaking when she visited seven girls who are recuperating at Mutuati sub-district hospital after they were forcibly circumcised on Monday, Ms Subow said the elders failure to reach the grassroots had contributed to the thriving of the cultural practice.
“In 2009 the elders publicly declared war against FGM. It is still happening. We feel the elders should make their declaration felt on the ground. We would wish to have a dialogue with the elders since the effects are not being seen,” said Ms Subow.
The practice of "female circumcision" is widespread, affecting an estimated 140 million women worldwide. It is also unspoken. Even its euphemisms evoke images too uncomfortable to talk about in some social settings.
The societies in which the practice occurs -- a swath of Africa from Senegal to Egypt, plus pockets of west and south Asia -- are traditional, patriarchal and conservative. They also are predominantly, but only coincidentally, Islamic. The partial or complete removal of the clitoris, female genital mutilation in United Nations parlance, dates back 2,000 years, and it is practiced in both faiths in the region.
Attempts have been made from time to time to stamp out the practice: by missionaries in colonial times, U.N. proclamations, even laws to ban it, all to little effect. From all this history, Molly Melching, founder of an organization in Senegal called Tostan, derived a lesson.
Gynaecological hospital, Keren, Ethiopia. Women frequently suffer complications from genital mutilation
The European Union has reiterated its commitment to the eradication of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) worldwide calling it, “an exceptionally brutal crime.”
Drafted by the EU’s High Representative Catherine Ashton and European Commission Vice President Viviane Reding, the statement marking the International Day of genital mutilation on 6th February read: “This is an opportunity to remind the world that the European Union condemns the abhorrent practice that severely violates the human rights and the dignity of hundreds of thousands of women and girls.”
Nana Ouattara, a tall and elegant Harlem mother of two, grew up never thinking anything was wrong with her body.
Until the West African immigrant was examined at Metropolitan Hospital during her pregnancy in 1994.
Only then did it begin to dawn on her the trauma that was forced upon her body when she was 3 years old.
"I called my mother in Mali and said, 'Mommie, why did you let this happen to me?'" said Ouattara, 43, her eyes thick with tears and rage.
This is the delicate subject of female genital cutting - or circumcision of young girls - a ritual in many African countries seen as a celebration, a rite of passage, a protection against promiscuity.
It is also a practice that is a federal crime in the U.S and was the focus of a national conference hosted by Harlem Hospital and the Sauti Yetu Center for African Women & Families last week.
Officials from eight West African countries are meeting in Guinea to boost fight against female genital mutilation in the region.
Participants also include religious leaders from Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Liberia and Guinea.
Burkina Faso First Lady Chantal Compaore co-chaired the opening ceremony on Wednesday alongside her Guinean counterpart Jeneh Conde.
A young woman who experienced genital cutting. The number of immigrants from the countries where the practice is most common has increased.
In a high school classroom in Brooklyn with walls adorned with algebra problems, a 15-year-old girl born in the West African nation of Guinea was talking recently with her friends, after the school day had ended.
It feels incongruous to be sitting in a cafe in Kendal a town they call "the gateway to the Lake District" discussing women's rights in the Rift Valley. And yet it couldn't be more relevant: because Cath Holland, the down-to-earth Lancashire midwife I'm with, has managed almost singlehandedly, and in her spare time, on a tiny budget, to steer an entire province of northern Kenya towards eradicating a practice that surely rates as the most extreme example of male domination today.
Holland a nurse and midwife who works on the labour ward at Furness General Hospital first went to Kenya with VSO back in 1998. She was in her late 40s: her two sons were in their early 20s, and she felt she wanted an adventure.
She was sent to be a midwifery tutor at a nursing school in the Cherangani Hills in Pokot, an area of Kenya that the Lonely Planet Guide describes as "East Africa's best-kept secret".
File | NATION Nominated Member of Parliament Sophia Abdi Noor was barely eight years old when her mother ‘blessed’ her to undergo the rite of passage that would cleanse her and make her acceptable for marriage according to tradition. The ordeal she underwent and the consequences made her launch a campaign against the female cut.
Nominated MP Sophia Abdi Noor tends to speak forcefully on most issues she is concerned about. But when she rose to contribute on the Bill to outlaw female circumcision in Parliament last week, her voice dropped as the House went silent.
It feels incongruous to be sitting in a cafe in Kendal a town they call "the gateway to the Lake District" discussing women's rights in the Rift Valley. And yet it couldn't be more relevant: because Cath Holland, the down-to-earth Lancashire midwife I'm with, has managed almost singlehandedly, and in her spare time, on a tiny budget, to steer an entire province of northern Kenya towards eradicating a practice that surely rates as the most extreme example of male domination today.
Holland a nurse and midwife who works on the labour ward at Furness General Hospital first went to Kenya with VSO back in 1998. She was in her late 40s: her two sons were in their early 20s, and she felt she wanted an adventure. She was sent to be a midwifery tutor at a nursing school in the Cherangani Hills in Pokot, an area of Kenya that the Lonely Planet Guide describes as "East Africa's best-kept secret".
Having undergone rape by her husband while her uncles pinned her down, 19-year-old Mary Solio continues to struggle for her rights in an indigenous community in Kenya where illegal rites of passage like female circumcision persist.
MPs yesterday commended debate on a Bill that seeks to punish those found practicing Female Genital Mutilation. The motion which was moved by Mt Elgon MP Fred Kapondi received the backing of all legislators who stood to contribute saying it was time the country effected laws to curb FGM.
Kapondi told the House that FGM was interfering with women sexuality. He said the act has been a major factor undermining development noting that it had inhibited the education of the girl child in many parts of the country.
MPs Ekwe Ethuro (Turkana Central), John Mututho (Naivasha), Aden Duale (Dujis) said Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Bill 2010 will go along way in protecting the girl child. "FGM affects the child birth for women, FGM affects infertility and cause trauma," said Duale while supporting the motion.
A rural village in southern Ethiopia, Africa, has vowed to try and end the practice of female genital mutilation.
While it is a tradition in the village of Senbata Lencho, people are beginning to realise the long-term impact female genital mutilation can have, reports Radio Netherlands Worldwide in Africa.
Local woman Radia Ledamo told the news provider: "We, the mothers, have taught our children these hurtful habits."
"It is now our duty to prevent them from doing it and inform them of its consequences," she added.
Berhanu Tufa, director of the African Development Aid Association, said the key to eradicating female genital mutilation was getting religious leaders involved.
The Kenyan parliament is set to debate a proposed bill outlawing female genital mutilation in the African nation.
Any person who subjects a woman to the practice will receive a punitive punishment if the bill, submitted by Mt. Elgon MP Fred Kapondi, goes through.
People who force women to undergo female genital mutilation could face a prison sentence of three years and a fine of around one million shillings (£7,350).
Under the proposed bill, people who bring women from other African countries in order to undergo the practice in Kenya will also face punishments.
Recently, non-governmental organisation Tostan told AFP the representatives of nearly 90 villages in Senegal and Mali were meeting together to discuss ways to outlaw the practice in the African countries.
In the rural village of Senbata Lencho in southern Ethiopia people are fighting the obstinate local tradition of female genital mutilation. More and more young men are marrying uncircumcised girls and even receiving the blessing of the Church and Mosque.
Radia Ledamo, a middle-aged woman from the village, shares her experiences in great detail during a community discussion. “We would put two wooden poles in the ground to which we would attach the girl’s legs,” says Radia.
“The other women would hold her arms and head, but it wouldn’t prevent things from getting messy: the girls would put up a good fight. I have miss-cut and hurt myself many times.”
The government has been urged to establish anti-Female Genital Mutilation clubs in schools to combat the outdated cultural practices in pastoral communities in Northern Kenya.
Merti Intergrated Development (MID) coordinator Abdulah Shande said the clubs will help reduce cases of discrimination against those non-practising in primary and secondary schools in the region.
He said the clubs will discourage young girls from accepting to go through the rites as the case where almost 90 per cent of students go through the practice during the December holidays when schools were closed. MID is sponsoring more than 80 girls from poor families to secondary education in Isiolo and Garba-Tula districts.
Shande said his organisation is advocating to come up with inter-sectoral collaboration programmes aimed at eliminating FGM in the society.
The practice in some cultures of female genital mutilation (FGM) in young girls is, and should remain, illegal in Australia in all of its forms, according to Dr Ben Mathews, an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
Associate Professor Ben Mathews
In an article published in this month's Medical Journal of Australia, Dr Mathews clarified the Australian legal position on FGM. His analysis was in response to media reports in 2010 that doctors were discussing the possibility of medicalised FGM, or "ritual nicks", as a way of protecting girls from more severe forms of the practice. (The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists later stated it did not support medicalised FGM).
Dr Mathews said there were significant numbers of people settling in Australia from nations in which FGM was customary, so doctors may be presented with situations where a patient requested the procedure.
IN my December 15, 2009 New Vision article titled Sensitise girls on female circumcision, I foresaw what happened recently - a violation of the law criminalising female genital mutilation (FGM). A total of 120 girls were recently circumcised in Bukwo district despite the ban on FGM.
In my opinion, the policy passed to criminalise FGM was rushed and inadequately planned. Statitistics on FGM clearly portray a responding community to awareness programmes. So, this means that passing a policy criminalising FGM or banning it signified that there was difficulty in influencing behavioural change.
There was need for mass sensitisation on the detrimental effects of FGM to those that continued to practice it rather than focus on sensitising the population on the would be offence (criminalising the act). This led to the creation of a violent group opposed to the policy. Criminalising the act implied that offenders would be prosecuted and once convicted could be sentenced to jail terms.
More than 100 teenage girls who had been identified for circumcision in Mt Elgon have been saved by Maendeleo Ya Wanawake officials.
The girls, who were set to face the knife in Kamuneru location are now being counselled at a secondary school.
Mt Elgon District Maendeleo ya Wanawake chairperson Jennifer Mbatian said some of the girls were traumatised as they had undergone preparations for the rite.
“Some were threatened with death if they tried to escape,” she said.
“We counsel and teach them of the dangers associated with the practice,” she said.
She said some of the rescued girls had been disowned by their parents.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) has been made a punishable offence in Switzerland.
The Swiss parliament voted last week to change the penal code in the country, attempting to outlaw the practice, according to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, reported by M&C.
Some 162 of the lawmakers in the national assembly voted for the changes to the code, with only two voting against.
The move will see the outlawing of all forms of female genital mutilation in the country.
As well as this, Swiss residents who carry out the practice overseas could face a heavy fine or up to ten years in prison for the offence, reports the news provider.
The Swiss parliament on Thursday voted to make the practice of female genital mutilation a punishable offence.
Lawmakers in the national assembly voted 162 for and two against a plan to changing Switzerland's penal code in this regard.
With the anticipated approval by the Cantons, all forms of genital mutilation involving females would be outlawed. This would also apply in cases where Swiss residents carry out the practice abroad. Penalties would range between a heavy fine and 10 years in prison.
Genital mutilation involves the partial or complete removal of the external sexual organs, without medical reasons.
Circumcised girls and women are exposed to great suffering and health risks, parliamentarians said. It is estimated that around 7,000 girls and young women in the Switzerland are at risk.
CAIRO: 44 percent of women have been sexually harassed, 75 percent were circumcised, and 37 percent married before the age of 18, revealed a survey of Egyptian youth conduced by the National Population Council.
The comprehensive survey, done in collaboration with the Information and Decision Support Center of the Egyptian Cabinet, revealed 88 percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 25 describe themselves as ‘religious,’ and 64 percent believe the tradition of female genital mutilation, also known as FGM or female circumcision, is important and necessary.
75 percent of women between the ages of 10 and 29 said they had been circumcised.
The survey found that only 16 percent of young people participated in the recent Parliamentary elections and 28 percent believe in the existence of nepotism and favoritism in getting jobs.
They came from all angles, clad in new attires as they longed to undergo a ritual that was supposed to change their lives for the better. The numerous girls had heard from their playmates that once they underwent that particular tradition, things would change for the better with lots of cash, food to eat and all they could hope for.
Poor them, if only they knew, they would have not longed for the event for instead of glory they found blood and ashes. Welcome, to the most horrifying ordeal of girls in Tarime, a district endowed with plenty but overshadowed by its ruthless act of mutilating girls for the sake of pride.
It was a blue Monday where everyone else was moving with their daily activities, but to me and my fellow journalists sent by the Legal and Human Rights (LHRC), the day was another test as we embarked on a crusade to probe on reports that at least 5,000 girls were to become mutilated in Tarime within December 2010 alone.
Uganda has called for the whole of Africa to stop the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM).
The country's state minister for gender Rukia Nakadama called for a widespread ban, claiming its own outlawing of the act could not be successful if its neighbouring countries continued the practice, reports New Vision.
Her appeal came following reports some girls had been taken to Kenya for female genital mutilation to be carried out on them.
"We have a law in place against the practice. Unless we ask our neighbours to put in place similar laws, our girls will cross over to be cut," Ms Nakadama said, reports the news provider.
The Ugandan government passed the anti-FGM law in December last year, and a ten-year jail term could be imposed on anyone caught practising it, but it reportedly still persists in the country.
THE Government has asked neighbouring countries to establish stringent laws to prohibit the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the region.
This follows reports that several girls cross to Kenya to be cut, following a ban on the practice in Uganda.
State minister for gender, Rukia Nakadama, on Monday said Uganda’s efforts to fight the practice would not be successful if neighbouring countries were not involved.
“We have a law in place against the practice. Unless we ask our neighbours to put in place similar laws, our girls will cross over to be cut,” Nakadama said.
The Government passed the Anti-FGM law in December 2009, but the practice has continued. Over 3,00 women and girls will undergo the ritual this month, according to the global AIDS body UNAIDS.
ACCORDING to the World Health Organisation, about three million girls in Africa are at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) annually.
Already 92 million girls aged 10 years and above are estimated to have undergone the practice. In Uganda, FGM is practised in Kapchorwa, Kween and Bukwo districts in the Sebei region.
FGM leads to several complications such as increased risk of complications during child birth.
But before we focus on the approach to eradicate FGM, it is imperative to appreciate the various reasons why it is practised in the first place. Some people believe that the clitoris and the labia are male parts, thus the removal of these parts enhances the femininity of a girl. Others believe that FGM reduces a female’s libido, thereby reducing their chances of having extra-marital affairs, hence stable marriages.
A woman has been sentenced to four months in prison for circumcising eight girls in Bukwo District.
Margaret Chemutai, 65, defied the law that bans practising Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Uganda. Appearing before court, she pleaded guilty to the charges but also had two defences.
One, it was her job to circumcise girls and she was ignorant of the law. Two, the girls' parents asked her to mutilate them. This means the fight against FGM cannot be won by the law alone. It is going to take education and sensitisation to change the people's mindset.
FGM has for years been part of the Sabiny culture. People cherish it as a rite of passage and are going to take the risk to defy the law. That explains why parent go to the extent of asking surgeons to carry out the operation on their daughters.
TUESDAY, November 30, marked Sabiny Cultural Day. It also marked the beginning of something tantamount to torture female genital mutilation (FGM) season.
During the month of December, each night, after the stroke of midnight, young Sabiny girls are taken from their homes and subjected to this excruciatingly painful act. They have no choice and the majority live in fear and dread this moment in their lives.
FGM is deeply rooted in tradition. In the districts of Bukwo and Kapchorwa, the Sabiny believe it is an essential rite of passage that will enhance a girl’s chastity and chances of marriage.
But this is not a symbolic ceremony. It is a violent act that can cause permanent damage both physically and mentally.
Young girls are cut with crude knives, and despite the need for critical medical attention afterwards, they are forced to walk back to their homes, often bleeding profusely. FGM can result in prolonged bleeding, infection, infertility and complications during childbirth. In some cases, it can be fatal.
According to the World Health Organisation, about three million girls in Africa are at risk of undergoing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) annually and already, 92 million girls of 10 years and above are estimated to have undergone the practice. In Uganda, it’s practiced in the Sebei region.
FGM involves all procedures aimed at partial or total removal of the external female genitalia. It’s vital to stress that FGM has no single health benefit for girls and women who undergo it. Instead, it has several complications: increased risk of child birth complications associated with new born deaths, need for surgeries to allow sexual intercourse and child birth by cutting again to create an opening and after birth, etc.
For whatever reason, FGM is a culture identity practice. The procedure is carried out as an initiation of a girl into womanhood. It is so well ingrained into the cultures that practice it that they believe the abolition of FGM would lead to the demise of their culture. In order to be able to eliminate the practice, we must eliminate the cultural belief that a girl will not become a woman and have all the benefits of womanhood without undergoing FGM.
THERE has been a lot of talk over certain cultural practices that politicians and human rights activists perceive as archaic and, therefore, deserving to be done away with.
Key among these is the Sebei culture of female genital mutilation, which, human rights activists say, demeans women.
However, we must never forget that most of our cultures did not occur with a stroke of a pen. Our fore parents had pertinent reasons why they did things the way they did them, and in most cases, their hypotheses were proven across generations.
For example, FGM was meant to initiate a girl into womanhood and there are a lot of rituals that surround it. So, even after realising that it has many disadvantages, this is not a culture you can simply dump in a political statement at a campaign rally.
Female genital mutilation continues unabated in Sebei even after Parliament enacted a law making the practice illegal.
The ritual, normally held in December, involves cutting off of a girl's clitoris as a rite of passage. The cruel and dehumanising character of female circumcision, as it is sometimes called, had made it a campaign target by civil society organisations for a long time, until late last year when a private member's bill resulted in a law outlawing it.
Under this law, those who abet female genital mutilation face imprisonment of five to ten years. But it was never going to be as easy as that. Just like old habits, old cultures die hard. For instance, reports surfaced early this month that female circumcision services are now being sought across the border in Kenya, which has no law similar to Uganda's.
While Tanzania outlawed female genital mutilation (FGM) in 1998, mass FGM ceremonies are still going on, in particular in the November-January season. Activists expect over 5,000 girls to be cut "this holiday season".
The government of Tanzania passed a law prohibiting FGM in 1998 and yet reports indicate that during the current holiday season, about 250 girls have already been cut and over 5,000 girls are at risk of being genitally mutilated in Tarime district of Tanzania’s Mara Region alone.
Faiza Jama Mohamed, Nairobi Office Director of the human rights group Equality Now asks, "What is the use of having a law against FGM if the government has no plans to implement it?"
An international human rights group has asked authorities in Tanzania to save about 5,000 girls who are likely to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) this holiday season in the north-eastern Mara Region, where ethnic groups cling to the antiquated practice.
The group, Equality Now, has reported that about 250 girls had already been cut but the government, including the police, bears the responsibility to protect girls from FGM and to prevent people from breaking the law that prohibits the practice.
Though in 1998 Tanzania passed a law proscribing FGM as cruelty to girls and women, the practice is still valued by specific ethnic groups in Dodoma, Singida, Arusha, Kilimanjaro and Mara regions.
The FGM national prevalence rate is put at 14.6 per cent but it is very high in the five regions.
SABINY women are flocking to Kenya to be circumcised. They are doing this because the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Act that was passed into law by Parliament in June makes the practice a crime in Uganda.
Offenders face jail terms ranging from five to 10 years or life imprisonment upon conviction.
FGM is internationally recognised as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. FGM has no health benefits for girls and women. Instead it can cause severe bleeding and problems when passing urine and later, childbirth complications and death of newborns.
Why are some Sabiny women risking prison, their lives and those of their unborn babies to be circumcised? It is not hard to see why. It is a classic clash between law and culture.
THE Government will build boarding schools in Sebei region to act as safe havens for girls against female genital mutilation, President Yoweri Museveni said yesterday.
Addressing thousands of supporters at his campaign rallies in Kween and Bukwo districts, the President observed that although the law barring the practice was now in place, some people were still practicing it. Some girls are crossing to neighbouring Kenya to be circumcised.
“We are going to build boarding schools so that we protect our children from these local surgeons,” Museveni told the cheering crowds at Kween district headquarters.
He described the practice as backward and ungodly.
“How can you oppose God? God wired human beings the way he wanted them to be. You cannot be more clever than God to change his creation,” he said.
The President urged the surgeons to form an association so that he could help them find an alternative source of income.
IN just four days of December, 120 girls were circumcised by the Sabiny in what the international community regards as female genital mutilation (FGM). This happened in spite of the new law against FGM.
The Police and community leaders failed to stop it partly because FGM is still treasured by the Sabiny as a cultural practice.
No one should think that enacting a law against FGM would be enough to stamp it out. A lot more is required, mostly in sensitising the masses about the evils of circumcising girls.
Apparently, it is people outside the region who are so bitter and cannot understand how parents can force their children to undergo such an inhuman, brutal and humiliating practice. But to the Sabiny, it is a cultural treasure that has survived generations and entrenched itself in the marrows and fabric of society.
As reported to the Centre for Islamic Pluralism by the non-governmental organization Stop FGM in Kurdistan, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq, on 25 November, officially admitted the wide prevalence in the territory of female genital mutilation (FGM). Recognition by the KRG of the frequency of this repellent custom among Kurds came during a conference program commemorating the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
Kurdish infliction of FGM distinguishes the local culture from most Muslim societies. FGM is most common in Black Africa, Egypt, southern Saudi Arabia, and among African, Arab, and Kurdish immigrants in Europe. It is also known in such pre-modern, isolated societies as that of the Embera, an indigenous community in Colombia, according to the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
FGM has no basis in the foundational texts of Islam but has been legitimised by clerics such as the notoriously retrograde Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Egyptian-born and based in Qatar. Al-Qaradawi has admitted that the supposed justification for FGM is based on unreliable reports of hadith, the oral commentaries of Muhammad. While Al-Qaradawi declared that FGM is not required in Islam, he supported it if a girl's parents wished it be done. FGM is typically carried out by midwives using unsterilized razors, and also may involve knives, scissors, broken glass, or pieces of tin. Girls who have suffered FGM may then have their vaginal openings sewn shut. Among Africans living in the Saudi kingdom, it is reported that genital "reopening" is necessary at childbirth and that further genital mutilations may be repeated.
Community-focused initiatives are proving effective in reducing the incidence of female genital cutting in Kenya and a few other African countries, the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) says in a new report.
Efforts that address cultural and social dimensions of the practice have yielded better results than have blanket condemnations or appeals aimed at individuals, Unicef finds.
The report cites an eight-year-old project in Mosocho in Kisii Central District as having created "a safe environment that supports individuals to make their own decisions to abandon [female genital cutting], free from judgment and social pressure." Organisers have sought to involve all segments of the Mosocho community in the project, with emphasis on participation by boys and men.
In 2005, Unicef notes, almost 50 former practitioners taking part in the German-sponsored project took an oath promising never to cut girls again. The practice had been "almost universal" among the Kisii, and was usually performed on girls between the ages of three and eight, the report says.
Disclaimer: I come from a community where Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), sometimes sanitised as female circumcision, is unheard of. So, well, I’m intact. But I am a woman. I am human. I have rights and my sensibilities are in place. When I read harrowing tales of the brutality that certain cultures inflict upon women, my heart bleeds.
This traumatic eyewitness account of FGM in Somalia I came across on http://sibelmj.blogspot.com, pierced my very soul: “…after separating her outer and inner lips, the operator, usually a woman experienced in this procedure, sits down facing the child. With her kitchen knife the operator first pierces and slices open the hood of the clitoris. Then she begins to cut it out. While another woman wipes off the blood with a rag, the operator digs with her sharp fingernail a hole the length of the clitoris to detach and pull out the organ. The little girl, held down by the women helpers, screams in extreme pain; but no one pays the slightest attention.
THE Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) has given five vehicles to the districts of Kween, Bukwo and Kapchorwa to fight female genital mutilation (FGM) in Sebei region.
Musa Bungudu, the UNAIDS Uganda Country Coordinator, said the donation was in response to the Saturday Vision story of Saturday 4, about 120 girls circumcised in Sebei region. The story indicated that the law was inadequately implemented due to lack of vehicles by the Police and the local administrators.
“After reading that painful story, I felt a lot of anger and I had to do something to save other girls,” said Bungudu. He said the vehicles would help the Police and community development officers in the region to sensitize the people.
Public health practitioners recently gathered in Abuja and x-rayed the ills of the dreaded practice of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) and came out with a firm verdict that it must end. In unison, they related the obnoxious practice to possible infection of HIV, Vesico Vagina Fistula, difficulty with passing urine and persistent urinary tract infections which can lead to kidney problems or kidney failure, difficulties with menstruation, acute and chronic pelvic infections. These can lead to infertility, sexual dysfunction/psychological/flashbacks, complications during pregnancy, chronic scar formations (fibrosis) and other life-long consequences on the victims.
In his presentation at the meeting facilitated by USAID ACQUIRE Fistula Care Project, Dr. Sa'ad Idris, Zamfara State Commissioner for Health, described FGM/C as all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for cultural reasons. Idris said between 100 and 140 million girls and women in the world are estimated to have undergone such procedures. He added that it is often done as young as 7days old (so many did not know that they have FGM). He added that about 3 million girls stand the risk of undergoing the procedures every year in Africa and according to UN Report, 91 million girls and women are living with the consequences globally.
Though the Indonesian government banned female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) four years ago, experts say religious support for the practice is more fervent than ever, particularly in rural communities.
A lack of regulation since the ban makes it difficult to monitor, but medical practitioners say FGM/C remains commonplace for women of all ages in this emerging democracy of 240 million - the world’s largest Muslim nation.
Although not authorized by the Koran, the practice is growing in popularity.
With increased urging of religious leaders, baby girls are now losing the top or part of their clitoris in the name of faith, sometimes in unsanitary rooms with tools as crude as scissors.
The Chairman, Senate House Committee on Health, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo Bello, has attributed the partial spread of HIV/AIDS to female genital mutilation(FGM) especially when its done in group of girls.
She explained that since most female genital mutilation is carried out by traditional medicine men and traditional birth attendants who have no knowledge of sterilization and the basics of disease prevention, an instrument that is used on an infected girl may again be used on other girls which will aid the spread of HIV.
At the Women's Empowerment, Domestic Violence, and Female Circumcision national seminar held last week in Abuja, Senator Obasanjo- Bello said curbing FGM will eliminate a potential source of spread of HIV, adding that ending it will aid in achieving the MDGs.
The mutilation of female genital has in no small measure helped in spreading the deadly HIV/AIDS virus, the chairman, Senate House Committee on Health, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo Bello, has said.
Speaking at a two-day seminar on female genital mutilation cutting and achieving MDGs 4, 5 and 6 organized by AQUIRE fistula care project, Senator Iyabo Obasanjo said the virus is easily spread when groups of teenage girls are mutilated.
She explained that since most female genital mutilation are carried out by traditional medicine men and traditional birth attendants who have no knowledge of sterilization and the basics of disease prevention, an instrument that is used on an infected girl may again be used on other girls which will aid the spread of the virus.
According to her, curbing FGM will eliminate a potential source of spread of HIV, adding that ending it will aid in achieving the MDGs. Her words, "We must shine the light on this hidden ritual and talk about it openly. We must understand the thinking of the perpetuators and try and enlighten them by debunking each of their reasons for continuing with this outdated and unnecessary custom.
There are giggles and shouts as little children play boisterously in the dusty street by the Hadad family home in the village of Abu Nashaba.
Just inside the front door, however, a mother dressed in black is sitting on the floor weeping silently. It is less than a month since the death of her 13-year-old daughter, Nermeen.
The girl died in a nearby health clinic and was buried without a permit from the local authorities.
After an anonymous tip to a government telephone hotline, her doctor has been arrested on suspicion of carrying out an illegal operation to circumcise her.
This case in the Nile Delta governorate of Menufiya has raised fresh concern that, despite a ban passed two years ago, female genital mutilation (FGM) remains a widespread practice.
"She was a very good girl who never lied or gossiped, and she was an excellent student," says Nermeen's grandmother as she shows off her school certificates and English exercise books.
A total of 300 Sabiny girls in Bugiri district have acquired skills to fight female genital mutilation in a campaign dubbed “alternative right to passage”.
Under the campaign, the girls are given skills annually to serve as an initiation rite, instead of undergoing female circumcision as required by the Sabiny culture.
The training is aimed at empowering the girls to choose between what is good and bad in their culture.
Speaking at the passing-out ceremony of the girls at Iwemba Primary School recently, Dalton Chemasuet, the coordinator of adult reproductive health, said there is an urgent need to sensitise the community about the recently passed Female Genital Mutilation Bill.
Chemasuet said many people were not aware of the Bill and continued with the practice.
“Some elderly surgeons are still carrying out the painful practice on the girls,” he said.
“I remember the day of my circumcision very well indeed,” said Tahani Omar Ali, a mother with a young family. “I was five years old and it was a painful day. I stayed in bed for 15 days, after which it healed, but for the rest of my life I suffered.”
Ms. Ali and her family live in a remote and sparsely populated region of northern Sudan, where female genital cutting is common. Her expression is calm while recalling her experience with the practice, but it masks great pain.
Harmful traditions
The roots of female genital cutting are tangled deep in Sudan’s social and religious traditions. They also reflect stark inequalities in the status of women and girls. The Arabic word to describe an uncut girl, for example, is a word of shame.
UNICEF is working with the support of the European Union to end female genital cutting within a generation. Here in Sudan, the ‘Saleema’ programme celebrates girls who are not cut.
The scene is grim, a blood-stained floor and a grieving mother. This was the seen three years ago when Mona wanted to have her daughter circumcised. The operation was a failure and the 10-year-old girl was killed.
The performing doctor fled the scene, Mona says three years later, and “the police did very little at the time to do anything about it. I was devastated.”
Female circumcision, or Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), is not a new phenomenon in Egypt, having been conducted for generations, but new legislation had seemingly made the practice diminish.
The practice, however, was brought back to the forefront over the weekend after a 13-year-old girl died after a local doctor in the Nile Delta’s Menoufiya governorate failed in the operation.
Local media said the doctor was arrested soon after when an unknown good Samaritan phoned a hotline service set up to report on female genital mutilation incidents.
The number of cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) reported in London has risen and some procedures are taking place in the city, a doctor has said.
Dr Comfort Momah, who runs a clinic in Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, said she sees 350 women and children a year.
The Met said it was aware that FGM was taking place in London and had intervened in 122 cases since 2008, including 25 times this year.
But it said that as it was a "taboo" subject there had been no prosecutions.
FGM is illegal in the UK and anybody convicted for it can be jailed for up to 14 years. The law protects British citizens even if they undergo the procedure abroad.
Although the practice of female genital mutilation is illegal in the UK, thousands are considered to be at risk annually and no one has ever been convicted of the crime.
Aged 15, UK-born Jay Kamara was taken home to Sierra Leone by her mother for an initiation ceremony. Jay had vague ideas of evenings around the fire, cooking and gossiping with female relatives. She had no idea that during the celebration of her womanhood, her genitalia would be cut.
“I was laid down on the floor, lots of hands, lots of celebration cheers, etc… And then my mouth was covered and my legs were spread, and I felt pain… I think that the pain itself will never, ever leave me,” Jay Kamara says. “I can understand how people feel when they lose an arm or a leg, when they have that phantom kind of pain, all the time, and that’s the kind of pain that I personally have to live with on a day-to-day basis… Some people say it’s really quick, but for me, it felt like it was being sawn.”
In the village of Abu Nashaba, a thirteen year old girl has just died and her family have quickly buried the body without the necessary permit from local authorities. Clearly distraught at her loss, what could the family have to hide?
They are suspected of hiding the fact that the thirteen year old recently underwent a female circumcision, a procedure which is illegal in Egypt because of the risks it carries to a woman’s health. Her death was reported anonymously to the authorities and the girl’s doctor has now been arrested, accused of carrying out the illegal operation. Regardless of the law prohibiting female genital mutilation, which was passed in 2008, this case and others like it show the practice is still widespread in the country.
The Egyptian government has been prosecuting medical workers and closing down clinics found to be carrying out such circumcisions. And these actions, as well as public campaigns, have had some effect. Government statistics show that the number of girls between the ages of 15-17 who have been circumcised has dropped from 77% in 2005 to 74% in 2008. Among women in their twenties or older, 90% are circumcised.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) continues throughout the world, including across Europe. The EU needs to act and the incoming Belgian Presidency must support the European Commission in developing a strong, comprehensive and rights-based strategy to combat FGM and protect women and girls affected by this practice, writes Dr. Christine Loudes, director of Amnesty International's 'END FGM European Campaign', in an exclusive commentary for EurActiv.
This commentary was sent exclusively to EurActiv by Dr. Christine Loudes of Amnesty International.
''Aissatou Diallo was 14 years old when she was held down forcibly by six people while the seventh person cut her in her home in Guinea. She was made to believe that this was how she could become a woman and get married. Today, Aissatou lives in Belgium with her two daughters and is determined to protect them from being subjected to the same practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). The Belgian state is assisting Aissatou by giving her and her daughters asylum in Belgium. There are many other girls at risk in the EU and beyond. What can the EU and the Belgian Presidency do to end FGM and protect those at risk?
Waris Dirie, an Austrian of Somalian origin, is an inspiration to the many victims of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), especially in Africa. Born into a family of Somalian nomads, Dirie's genitals were mutilated when she was three years old. She was sold in marriage at 13 years after which she fled Africa. From the heart of the desert to the West, where she became one of the highest paid models, Dirie has come a long way. She has been chosen as the United Nations spokesperson against FGM and is a fierce crusader against the ritual of FGM, calling it one of the biggest challenges facing Somalian women.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM. The inhuman procedure is mostly carried out on young girls some time between infancy and post-puberty (15 years). FGM intentionally alters or injure the female genital organs and causes severe long-term medical problems.
Fatayat Nadhlatul Ulama, the women's wing of the country's largest Muslim organization, reported that violence, early marriage and female circumcision are among the problems compromising the reproductive health of NU women nationwide.
Inequality in marriages, unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions are also issues Fatayat NU encountered during reproductive health campaigns it conducted in villages in 11 provinces from 2005 to 2010.
Fatayat's programs focused on reproductive health and gender mainstreaming and awareness building in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the National Family Planning Agency (BKKBN) since 2006, as well as programs with its long-time partner the Ford Foundation.
The programs included workshops on reproductive and sexual health, and occasionally the organization held discussions on abortion and female circumcision.
It also handed out booklets on reproductive health education "for future brides and grooms".
These booklets contained information on subjects including sex, labor and sexually transmitted diseases.
Nomadic girls in the Danakil Desert of Ethiopia often skip school to fetch and carry water. But in one settled pocket, girls are going to school and mothers in the past two years have begun heeding radio warnings on female genital mutilation.
The schoolmaster at Kursawat, a rural area in the Afar region of Ethiopia, is struggling to bring awareness of the benefits of girl education and the risks of female genital mutilation.
Ethiopia outlawed female genital mutilation in 2004 but the practice is deeply rooted and nearly universal in the Afar and Somali regions. In 2005 a government health survey found that 74 percent of girls and women nationwide had undergone the ritual cutting.
"Circumcision is still going on here," Schoolmaster Kadesang Fasile told Women's eNews. "Most of the Afar are nomads so they can't be reached through educational broadcasts."
Along with her pink pajamas and playful eyes, Delan has an 11-year-old’s endearing smile.
She leans against an old stone wall and chats with friends as chickens and geese cluck around her feet. Rocky mountains form a towering backdrop. This is Iraqi Kurdistan, where the people are as tough as their environment.
Sitting on the empty floor of her family’s mud brick home in this remote village, Delan’s smile quickly fades. She speaks of the day, when she was 6 years old, that an “old woman” came to visit.
“I was in the room playing with my cousin and they called us to come,” Delan said. “They cut my cousin. I was very afraid. I was crying and crying. My mother is very fat; I knew if I could run she could not catch me, but she held me too strong. I could not get away. There was a lot of blood from that place. I cried and cried. I hated my mother.”
Uganda recently passed a law in parliament banning FGM. Those found praticing it are liable to be imprisoned for not less that 5 years.
During an interview with the press Tuesday in Kampala, one of the female leaders in Uganda, Brenda Nakato Okello said that after having succeeded in banning the act in Uganda they want to seek the safety of fellow women from other parts of the world where Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is still practiced.
"It is good that after our struggle FGM was banned in Uganda. But we can not leave our fellow women [in areas] where it is still practiced to continue suffering. We want FGM to be banned globally by UN," Nakato said.
Women opposed to female genital mutilation have marched through Bristol in a protest against the practice.
About 20 people, many of them Somali women, handed out leaflets in the Easton area. An estimated 2,000 girls in the city are at risk.
The practice, which is illegal in the UK, can cause urinary infections, kidney failure and death.
Bristol midwives say they are coming across a large number of women with complications caused by it.
Also known as female circumcision, the practice is carried out in more than 28 countries in Africa, as well as in parts of Asia and South America.
Social services say they are investigating one case of female genital mutilation in Bristol a month.
Human Rights Watch called on Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq to ban the practice of female genital mutilation, and said in a report released Wednesday that the majority of women in the self-ruled region undergo the medically risky and emotionally painful procedure.
The New York-based group said the new Kurdish government, which was elected in July 2009, failed to take steps to ban the practice. Initial efforts on the issue stalled under the former regional government, which also failed to make it a priority because of the culturally sensitive nature of the practice.
Female genital mutilation involves the removal of a girl's clitoris and sometimes also other genital parts, usually shortly after birth or at a young age. Critics say it can lead to painful sexual intercourse, complications in childbirth and eliminates any pleasure for women during sex.
The procedure was performed on nearly 73 percent of 1,408 Kurdish women and girls, aged 14 and over, who were interviewed as part of a study conducted between September 2007 and May 2008. The survey was conducted by the Association for Crisis Assistance and Development Co-operation, or WADI, a German-Iraqi non-governmental organization and published this year. It did provide a margin of error.
Twenty- four new community based facilitators from Kombo South have been certificated after the completion of a three day intensive training on Rights Education in the campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation and other harmful traditional practices affecting the health of girls and women. The training has objective to empower the community based facilitators with the right information to advocate against FGM, children's and women's rights in their communities, as part of the recently launched GAMCOTRAP’s Save the Children UNIFEM project f or 2010-2012 in the Kombos, Western Region on Eradicating Harmful Traditional Practices through Rights Education.
Female genital cutting (FGC) encompasses all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons, according to the World Health Organization. While the procedure seems like a tribal tradition undergone on other countries, many young women in the U.S. have undergone FGC.
Steamboat Springs Editor’s note: Clark resident Mary Walker volunteers at the Tasaru Girls Rescue Centre in Narok, Kenya. The center was built in 2002 and provides a safehouse for Maasai girls who have escaped or been rescued from female genital mutilation and forced childhood marriage. Walker’s updates appear periodically in the Steamboat Today.
Mary Walker
Florence comes from the Maasai Mara region of southwestern Kenya. The Maasai Mara is a world-known tourist destination, and often is called the Seventh Wonder of the Natural World because of its amazing concentration of wildlife.
Natalie is growing up in Steamboat Springs. “Ski Town USA” is a world-known tourist destination and the home of Champagne Powder.
NEW YORK, Jun 12, 2010 (IPS) - The U.S. currently lags behind several Western European countries in closing a legislative loophole banning the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) beyond its borders to protect U.S. citizens and residents. But this may soon change.
Some 6,000 girls endure FGM every day, totaling about 100 to 140 million girls and women who bear the lifetime consequences. The "Girls Protection Act" would make it illegal to transport a minor abroad for the purpose of FGM. Introduced by members of Congress Joseph Crowley and Mary Bono Mack as a bipartisan initiative, the bill is now awaiting review in a congressional committee.
FGM rituals are practiced in many parts of Africa, the Middle East and some countries in Asia. It involves procedures that partially or completely remove the external female genitalia and is undertaken at infancy or later in childhood, depending on a particular culture.
The United Nations Operation in Cτte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) organized a capacity- building workshop for community leaders in Logouale, 500 km west of Abidjan on Monday, 7 June, 2010, on the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM).
Representatives of the regional office of UNOCI's Rule of Law section lectured some 40 members and officials of the NGO, Loucha (wake up in the local Yacouba dialect), on the laws prohibiting the practice of excision.
UNOCI's Focal Point in Man, Fomunyam Tefuh, said the UN placed particular importance on the fight against excision. “As you all know, the principal mission of the UN is to maintain peace and security. These values can only be attained in an environment where justice and human rights reign. At the end of this seminar, you would be better equipped from a legal point of view, to sensitize the population on the prohibition of excision,” she explained.
PARLIAMENT has urged the United Nations (UN) member states to support a motion banning Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) at the General Assembly in September.
The motion was moved by Tingey MP Herbert Sabila. Tingey is located in Kapchorwa district where the practice is carried out.
Sabila appealed to the Government to take a lead role in sponsoring and soliciting support from African countries to adopt a resolution banning FGM globally during the African Union summit in July.
The summit will tackle issues of reproductive and maternal health.
The motion also called upon African states to domesticate the Maputo protocol, which outlawed FGM.
Justifying his motion, Sabila said the Constitution provides that “no person shall be subjected to any form of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
FOR a group dedicated to the health and well-being of children to advocate the cutting of girls’ genitals seems inconceivable. But the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP), in a review of its policy on the practice known as female circumcision, did tentatively ask if, in order to avoid the most dangerous behaviour, doctors should be allowed to perform some kind of “ritual cut” in the clitoral skin. The academy likened it to ear-piercing and said that it might satisfy the cultural requirements of people wedded to the practice.
Female genital mutilation is illegal in the U.S., but some African and Muslim immigrants face cultural and religious pressure from their communities to perform the procedure, CNN reports. Based on anecdotal information, some advocacy groups say immigrants are sending girls abroad for FGM.
The World Health Organization defines female genital cutting as altering or injuring the female genital organs for nonmedical purposes. In parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, certain populations consider FGM an important cultural ritual, sometimes performed in infancy and sometimes during adolescence.
There are no national surveys documenting immigrants' attitudes toward FGM or whether they are sending their daughters overseas for procedures. Experts say that conducting such studies would be extremely difficult because most families refuse to discuss the topic. An analysis of 2000 Census data by the African Women's Health Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital estimated that 228,000 U.S. women have experienced or are at risk for FGM.
Uganda Police in Looro Sub County, Moroto district have arrested two people over conducting banned female genital mutilation practice.
Female genital mutilation is a common cultural practice among Sebei, Pokot and Tepeth ethnic groups.
Female genital mutilation is outlawed in Uganda and any person that practices or promotes this practice commits an offence.
The spokesperson of Police, Judith Nabakooba says the suspects arrested will be prosecuted in courts of law.
Human rights activists and scientists say female genital mutilation is dangerous to girls’ lives. Female genital mutilation is a culture practice that introduces girls into ‘womanhood’ among Sebei, Tepeth, Pokoti and some Karimajong clans.
ACTIVISTS against female genital mutilation have requested that it be included among the issues to be discussed during the African Union summit in July.
They say this would be a great platform for the campaign prohibiting female circumcision, which is still practiced in over 28 African countries, and whose effects greatly contribute to maternal and child mortality.
Uganda will next month host the AU summit. The theme of the meet will be; “Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa”.
The other key areas to be covered during the summit include peace and security, infrastucture, energy, agriculture and food security.
The activists, led by Chris Baryomunsi, the MP for Kinkinzi East, met the First Lady and Karamoja affairs state minister, Janet Museveni, to solicit her support to end the practice, specifically among the Pokot, Tepeth and the Kadam in the Karamoja sub-region.
President Museveni has described Female Genital Mutilation as an outdated practice and an abuse to dignity of the girl-child that has no room in modern society, urging the Sabiny to stop it henceforth.
“This cutting of girls must stop. This was a science of our ancestors and we need to change it. I am happy that before I even signed the law you already had enacted a law against it,” said President Museveni.
The President, who was on a one-day tour of Bukwo District on Saturday aimed at assessing the progress of the state-funded agricultural and credit facilities, urged people to utilise the small fragmented pieces of land in Bukwo for intensive agriculture to fight poverty at households.
Some deportees must choose whether to leave their citizen children behind or bring them back to the ancestral land. That choice is even harder when genital mutilation is a threat.
After undergoing female genital mutilation as a child in Senegal, Fatoumata thought that her days of hardship were behind her once she settled in the United States. But after her Bronx home was raided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2007, her husband was subsequently deported and Fatoumata now faces deportation herself.
Although she’s actively fighting to stay in the United States, she fears that there may come a day when she has to choose between leaving her six U.S.-born children behind or bringing them to Senegal, where she would face pressure to submit her four daughters to the same ritual that disfigured her.
Experts have identified Female Genital Mutilation as one of the harmful health practices that cause complications for mothers during child delivery in developing countries.
Rising from a three-day Training Information Communication (TIC) workshop held in Oye-Ekiti weekend, participants were unanimous that such complications often accounted for the high maternal mortality rate on the continent.
In a communiquι issued at the end of the workshop, they urged health workers to abstain from female genital mutilation practices, while calling on governments at all levels to eradicate the habit through the media and establishment of Female Genital Mutilation Monitor Clubs in all secondary schools.
The experts observed that poor communication between parents and children accounted for the high level of child abuse in the society, while requesting that parents and teachers should serve as role models to their wards.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has rescinded a controversial policy statement raising the idea that doctors in some communities should be able to substitute demands for female genital cutting with a harmless clitoral "pricking" procedure.
"We retracted the policy because it is important that the world health community understands the AAP is totally opposed to all forms of female genital cutting, both here in the U.S. and anywhere else in the world," said AAP President Judith S. Palfrey.
The contentious policy statement, issued in April, had condemned the practice of female genital cutting overall. But a small portion of statement suggesting the pricking procedure riled U.S. advocacy groups and survivors of female genital cutting.
In the April statement, the group raised the idea that some physicians should be able to prick or nick a girl's clitoral skin in order to "satisfy cultural requirements." The group likened the nick to an ear piercing.
Chiefs in Mamprugu area in the Northern Region, have called on the Mamprugu Traditional Council to as matter of urgency asked the District
Assemblies in the area to enact a by-law to ban negative cultural practices, especially Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
The 36 chiefs made the call in a communiquι issued at the end of a seminar on FGM organized by the Ghana Association for Women's Welfare (GAWW), at Gambaga in the region.
The statement, which was signed Wuni Grumah, Tarana, N F.Y Wari, Bukpenaba, and Naa E.D. Mahami, Nagborana, some of the chiefs of Mamprugu, said that FGM was against fundamental human rights and could also affect the health of women and girls who were forced to undergo such negative cultural practices.
The communiquι said girls who experienced FGM could suffer psychological and reproductive health problems which could increase their vulnerability to HIV and adverse obstetrics and prenatal outcomes.
It reminded the public that the practice of FGM was an offence under the laws of the country.
Australian doctors are considering introducing a controversial form of genital mutilation carried out on baby girls.
The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) says the practice of "ritual nicks" could meet the cultural needs of some women and potentially save some people from drastic surgery.
Although illegal in Australia, female genital mutilation is common among some African, Asian and Middle Eastern communities but has been known to leave some young girls scarred for life when not carried out in proper clinical facilities.
RANZCOG secretary Gino Pecoraro told News Ltd, "We will need to start to think about [its introduction] but we would have to speak to community leaders from Australia."
Human rights groups have come out against a proposal by the Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gyneocologists to support a form of female circumcision.
The college is considering supporting a less extreme version known as a 'ritual nick'.
Female circumcision is illegal in Australia but the secretary of the Royal Australian College of Obstetricians and Gyneocologists, Dr Gino Pecoraro says he's worried the practice is being done overseas with much worse consequences.
"No one is condoning the practice, no one is trying to legitimise the practice, it's trying to look at a way to minimise the harm," he said.
But Victoria's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner Dr Helen Szoke says it's still genital mutilation.
A NZ doc states that it is not likely to see that obstetricians on either side of the Tasman will consent to a token from of genital mutilation on baby girls.
The American Academy of Pediatrics in recent times raised but hurriedly withdrew from the scheme that doctors in a few communities should be able to replace demands for female genital cutting with a risk-free clitoral pricking or scratch, so as to carry out cultural requirements.
Today the Sydney Morning Herald reported the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists was intending to discuss the matter at the conference of its women's health committee in the subsequent month.
The American Academy of Pediatricians backs away from an ill-conceived move to relax its rules on the practice.
Late last month, 330 villages in Senegal held a ceremony to announce that they would end the practice of female genital cutting. That brought the number of Senegalese communities to abandon the practice to 4,229, and when the number reaches 5,000, complete eradication will be achieved. Similar pronunciations and celebrations are occurring in other countries in Gambia and Somalia, and in Mauritania, where on Tuesday 78 villages participated.
The growing movement to end the ancient practice of slicing off part or all of a girl's clitoris and/or labia historically done to prepare her for adulthood and marriage is the result of years of work by local and international activists. Particularly noteworthy has been the success of the nonprofit Tostan, which means "breakthrough" in Wolof. The organization spends almost three years teaching villagers about health and human rights. Thus, when a community opts to end genital cutting, it is generally because of a recognition that cutting not only endangers girls' physical well-being but runs counter to the universal right to stewardship of one's body. And that understanding leads to other changes: As villagers learn about the health effects of childbearing, girls are less likely to be married off as children and more likely to go to school. And as women become better educated, they are more likely to participate in the economy and open businesses.
A leading gynaecologist says any doctor suspected of doing female circumcision or even so-called ritual nicking should be reported to authorities.
The call's come from Dr Ted Weaver the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
It follows a statement by obstetricians and gynaecologists who say they don't support ritual nicking of some young Muslim girls.
Believe it or not, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) thinks it's OK for immigrant parents to subject their daughters to a mild form of female genital mutilation (FGM). This is more evidence our nation has gone mad over immigration and is allowing immigrants to commit all manner of crimes that would be illegal if performed by a native-born citizen.
The AAP issued a report saying, in essence, it's better to allow parents who are going to maim their daughters' private parts to inflict a "ritual nick" than to send the girls overseas (back to their home country) for the traditional form of mutilation--a "surgery" performed by midwives and other non-medical personnel which maims girl's private parts for life. According to the anti-mutilation activist group Intact America:
The AAP report--which urged changes [to current law] to allow a “ritual nick” of girls’ genitals so families don’t send their daughters overseas for a full genital cutting--came out the same day that two congressmembers--Democrat Joseph Crowley of New York and Republican Mary Bono of California--introduced legislation (The Girls Protection Act, H.R. 5137) that would make it illegal to transport a minor girl living in the United States out of the country for the purpose of female genital mutilation.
Joseph Crowley (D-New York) and Mary Bono Mack (R-California) are asking their fellow members of congress to support a new law that would make it illegal to transport a minor outside of the United States for the purpose of female genital mutilation (FGM). According to a "Dear Colleague" letter obtained by UN Dispatch, the "Girls Protection Act of 2010" would impose the same penalties on those who transported teenage girls abroad for FGM as if the procedure occurred in the United States.
Numerous European countries have already passed laws, known as “vacation” or “extra-territorial” provisions, which make it possible to prosecute individuals who transport girls abroad to have the procedure forcibly carried out.current U.S. law does not sufficiently address the travel issue. As a result, young girls in the United States have a difficult time turning to the legal system for the protection and support they deserve. Our legislation would amend existing law so that those who transport girls abroad for the purposes of FGM will face the same penalties as if the FGM had been carried out in the United States.
WOMEN legislators have warned people who still practice female genital mutilation to stop or risk being arrested under the new law. “Female genital mutilation causes shame to women. We have come up with a law to stop it. Anyone found practicing it will be arrested and charged.
We shall not relax when women in Ssebi and Karamoja regions are suffering,” the president of the Uganda Women Parliamentary Association, Jane Alisemera, said.
Alisemera, who is the Bundibugyo woman MP, was speaking at a two-day workshop for local leaders on gender related legislation. The workshop was officiated by the deputy Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, at the Century Hotel in Kamuli district on Friday.
Alisemera said many homes were breaking up due to the increasing domestic violence in the region. “According to a recent Police report, the eastern region ranks highest in cases of domestic violence. Many homes have step-parents, which has caused deaths, especially to children,” she noted.
According to the World Health Organization, the cutting or removal of young girls’ and women’s clitoris and/or labia often carried out for deep-seated religious or cultural reasons, leads to infection, urinary tract problems, mental trauma, sterility or complications during childbirth, and in some cases fatal haemorrhaging.
"Now is the time to move forwards with a specific resolution at the United Nations that can give a new boost, a new hope to activists, governments and lawmakers. There is no miracle solution, only a complex strategy that needs to be implemented," Italian Senate deputy leader and campaigner Emma Bonino told reporters in Senegal.
Lawmakers from 27 African countries gathered in Dakar on Monday for a two-day conference to push for a United Nations ban on female genital mutilation as a breach of human rights.
International activists joined envoys from the United Nations and African Union in Senegal to "promote the adoption of a resolution that explicitly bans female genital mutilation as a practice that is contrary to human rights".
The cutting or removal of young girls' and women's clitoris and/or labia affects 120- to 140-million women in 28 countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, according to the World Health Organisation.
Often carried out for deep-seated religious or cultural reasons, it can lead to infection, urinary tract problems, mental trauma, sterility or complications during childbirth, and in some cases fatal haemorrhaging.
EFFORTS to end female genital mutilation have hit a snag after the Government failed to provide sh400m for compensating the practitioners.
The money is meant for start up capital for over 400 promoters of the practice, said labour state minister Emmanuel Otaala.
“The ministry is proposing to compensate them with sh1m each for the lost income as a result of eliminating the practice,” Otaala explained.
“These people are also looking for survival. Since the female genital mutilation Act was passed, they have been out of business.”
Lawmakers from 27 African countries ended a two-day conference in the Senegalese capital of Dakar on Tuesday, where they pushed for a United Nations ban on female genital mutilation, or FGM. Parliamentarians, civil society activists and government representatives called for the adoption of a resolution that explicitly bans FGM as a practice that is contrary to human rights.
The Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Female Genital Mutilation aimed to help put together legal mechanisms for the eradication of FGM in Africa.
Most countries in Africa have signed treaties and conventions on FGM, but they failed to implement or enforce those laws.
During this week's two-day conference, parliamentarians from across the continent discussed and shared common information about international and national legislation regarding FGM, and how to solidify and enforce them.
The two-day Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) ended Tuesday in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, with participants, including lawmakers from 27 African countries, appealing to the U.N. to adopt a resolution that bans FGM on the basis that it is "contrary to human rights," Radio France International reports (Bojang, 5/4).
"The cutting or removal of young girls' and women's clitoris and/or labia affects some 120 to 140 million women ... mostly in Africa and the Middle East, according to the World Health Organisation," Agence France-Presse writes. "Often carried out for deep-seated religious or cultural reasons, it can lead to infection, urinary tract problems, mental trauma, sterility or complications during childbirth, and in some cases fatal haemorrhaging," AFP reports.
"In Africa, around 91 million girls aged nine and under have undergone the practice, with three million operated on each year, the UN population fund's envoy Rose Gkuba told the conference," the news service adds (5/4).
Aswan--In a nation where UNICEF estimates 96 percent of all married women have undergone some form of female genital mutilation (FGM), Aswan's official declaration against the practice earlier this week, marked by First Lady Suzanne Mubarak's two-day visit to the southern governorate, was one that has human rights and women's rights groups cheering--and gearing up for more action.
But while various units within the Egyptian government--whose Health and Population Ministry banned all forms of female genital cutting in 2007--and numerous non-governmental organizations and civil and human rights groups have all taken a clear stand against the continued practice of FGM across the country and are working toward eliminating it, on the ground and especially in villages, Aswan's declaration means very little.
The lawmakers in 27 African countries have gathered in Dakar for a two-day conference to discuss a ban on female circumcision.
The practice of female circumcision, which is genital mutilation of the female's clitoris and/or labia, is performed in over 28 countries and reportedly affects more than 140 million women in Africa and the Middle East.
The World Health Organization states that the practice not only leads to infections and urinary tract problems, but it also increases risk during child birth, causing many women to die due to hemorrhaging.
EQUALITY NOW CALLS ON AAP TO REVOKE ELEMENTS OF ITS 2010 POLICY STATEMENT THAT ENDORSES PEDIATRICIANS' "NICKING" OF GIRLS' GENITALIA
NEW YORK, May 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- International human rights organization Equality Now is stunned by a new policy statement issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which essentially promotes female genital mutilation (FGM) and advocates for "federal and state laws [to] enable pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a 'ritual nick'," such as pricking or minor incisions of girls' clitorises. The Policy Statement "Ritual Genital Cutting of Female Minors", issued by the AAP on April 26, 2010, is a significant set-back to the Academy's own prior statements on the issue of FGM and is antithetical to decades of noteworthy advancement across Africa and around the world in combating this human rights violation against women and girls. It is ironic that the AAP issued its statement the very same day that Congressman Joseph Crowley (D-NY) and Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) announced the introduction of new bipartisan legislation, The Girls Protection Act (H.R. 5137), to close the loophole in the federal law prohibiting FGM by making it illegal to transport a minor girl living in the U.S. out of the country for the purpose of FGM.
In a controversial change to a longstanding policy concerning the practice of female circumcision in some African and Asian cultures, the American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or “nick” on girls from these cultures if it would keep their families from sending them overseas for the full circumcision.
The academy’s committee on bioethics, in a policy statement last week, said some pediatricians had suggested that current federal law, which “makes criminal any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of a girl in the United States, has had the unintended consequence of driving some families to take their daughters to other countries to undergo mutilation.
“It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm,” the group said.
The Supreme Court has reserved judgment on whether or not Pamela Izevbekhai will be allowed to proceed to a final appeal against her deportation.
The Sligo based Nigerian woman was due to have her appeal heard in February last but the Supreme Court raised legal issues arising from a separate High Court judgment last year.
The judgment concerns a person's right to apply for subsidiary protection which gives the Minister for Justice discretion to allow someone remain in the state on humanitarian grounds.
In court today lawyers for Ms Izevbekhai argued that despite the fact that the regulation establishing subsidiary protection came into force after her deportation order had been made, she was still entitled to apply.
Not all girls are treated equally.
Across the world, girls are faced with the challenges of dealing with boys, makeup and popularity. Some young girls are pinned down with their legs spread and vaginas butchered in the name of a cultural, religious or social cause.
Female genital mutilation. It is an international issue that affects between 100-140 million girls and women worldwide. The age range varies from birth to mid-30s, though it typically happens to prepubescent girls.
This atrocity is recognized as a human rights violation. It is not just a “girl” problem, but a problem that affects our most precious resources.
FGM occurs in some African and Asian countries, the Middle East and in areas of North America and Europe.
Why should you care? Because this issue is not too far removed.
Traditional surgeons in Kapchorwa and Bukwo districts among other areas will start receiving government salaries in a bid to discourage them from practicing Female Genital Mutilation among girls.
Government is now seeking the first batch of 400 million shillings from Parliament to facilitate payment for the surgeons to abandon the practice.
Female Genital Mutilation is widely carried out in over 20 districts of Uganda including Bukwo, Kapchorwa and Nakapipirit.
The Minister of Uganda for Gender, Labor and Social Development, Gabriel Opio says while the government tries to ban the practice, its important that these surgeons engage in self sustaining activities to deter them from practicing the barbaric act.
The Minister was appearing before the Parliamentary Gender committee in Kampala today.
The Parliament passed the Female Genital Mutilation bill into a law in December last year.
Members of the country’s security apparatus have been called upon to put an end to the incidence of Female Genital Mutilation and other forms of violence against women and girls. This appeal was made at a training programme targeted at Security Officers in different regions of The Gambia organized by GAMCOTRAP under the UNFPA Joint programme to accelerate the elimination of FGM in Africa initiative. The training on gender based violence and harmful traditional practices targeted at fifty security officers in the Central River Region held at the Bansang Youth Centre.
In his welcome remarks, the head alkalo of Upper Fulladu West, Alhajie Kebba Kora of Bansang emphasized that the campaign against Female Genital Mutilation has come a long way because it has reached a stage where the participation of security officers is important. He noted that security officers have the right profile, mandate and legal status to protect children from being circumcised. Alhagie Kora expressed deep sadness on the plight of children who suffer the effects of FGM in latter life. According to him, FGM has no place in society and it should be banned.
MINISTER FOR Health Mary Harney will introduce the heads of a Bill to ban female genital mutilation (FGM) in the next three months, her spokesman said last night.
Labour Senator Ivana Back said she welcomed the Minister’s “goodwill and support” as she outlined her own proposed legislation on the issue in the Seanad during private members business.
“I welcome the Minister’s announcement that she will publish the heads of a Bill to prohibit FGM within three months, before we rise for the summer recess in July and that she will publish the Bill itself within six months,” Ms Bacik said.
There was no explicit legal protection against FGM in Ireland and no specific legislation to protect a child from being removed from Ireland to have the mutilation carried out overseas, she said.
Uppsala Municipality has been ordered to pay 60,000 kronor ($8,400) to the family of a girl of Somali origin who was forced to undergo an examination to check whether she had been circumcised.
Uppsala social workers forced the then 10-year-old girl to submit to the examination to see whether she had been subjected to genital mutilation (circumcision) while on a family holiday in Kenya in 2004. The girl was collected by police from school shortly after returning from a visit to relatives.
The girl's family took their case to the Discrimination Ombudsman (DO) which ruled in 2007 that the social workers' suspicions constituted discrimination.
Discrimination Ombudsman Katri Linna concluded in her 2007 ruling that the suspicions "were based entirely on the fact that the parents have Somalian heritage."
Wednesday, 06 April 2005
The sixth General Assembly of the Inter-African
Committee on Traditional Practices (IAC) was held in Bamako, Mali from the 4th
to the 7th of April 2005.
National committees of
the IAC from more than 28 African countries in the African region as well as
IAC group sections, affiliates, partners, human rights organizations, donors
and representatives from UN specialized agencies and the Economic Commission
for Africa [met to review progress, assess constraints and identify
opportunities for strengthening campaigns against harmful traditional practices
particularly female genital mutilation.
The Supreme Court has been told a second set of documents provided by Nigerian woman Pamela Izevbekhai to prove her daughter died of Female Genital Mutilation are fakes.
Izevbekhai has spent the last five years challenging a deportation order, arguing her daughters' lives are at risk from FGM if they return to Nigeria.
She says her first-born girl died from the brutal procedure.
The Gambian Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (GAMCOTRAP), in partnership with Yolocamba Solidaridad of Spain on Wednesday held a one-day conference on Generating Alternatives to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
Speaking at the conference, funded by the Region of Madrid in Spain, the Executive Director of GAMCOTRAP, Dr. Isatou Touray, said the GAMCOTRAP/Yolocamba Solidaridad partnership was based on the need to stop the harmful traditional practices against women.
'These areas of concern are critical for the attainment of the fundamental human rights of women and ensuring their complete wellbeing and empowerment within their communities,' she noted.
According to Dr. Touray, GAMCOTRAP in partnership with Yolocamba Solidaridad, supported by the Region of Madrid, worked with Cluster communities in addressing harmful traditional practices, women's rights and gender-based violence.
Conference urges greater visibility for anti-FGM activities Sustained advocacy, funding and support are key components to facilitate efforts aimed at routing female genital mutilation and cutting in the country, Dr. Isatou Touray, executive director of GAMCOTRAP has said.
Speaking yesterday at the workshop on Generating Alternatives Against FGM in The Gambia, held at the Paradise Suites Hotel in Kololi, Dr. Touray said that GAMCOTRAP, a non governmental advocacy group, has implemented many activities in collaboration with its partners.
Mariam Nadr, 77, has a fine home in an upscale neighbourhood of Erbil and is a prominent member of the community. She has a bright smile, a calm demeanour and wears the white shawl of a respected Kurdish matron.
Part of Nadr’s social standing stems from her past: for many years mothers came to her to perform genital mutilations on their daughters. For these women, the act was a cultural and religious rite.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In order to enhance the performance of the women rights' organisations in Egypt and the Arab world, a three-day conference was organised by German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the Network of Women's Rights Organisations (NWRO) in Cairo last week. The conference discussed concepts, contexts and challenges for collective work by women rights' organisations in the region.
Roland Steurer, director of GTZ Egypt, said that the conference was an Egyptian-German initiative in the context of GTZ's work on promoting gender equality. "We hope to receive larger support from the German government for our activities, and we will conduct a dialogue with the officials next June to have that aid," she said at the inauguration of the conference.
Women's rights' activities have existed in Egypt and the Arab world outside the state system through philanthropic activities since at least the early 1900s, according to Margot Badran, a senior fellow at Georgetown University in the US. She listed the role of early 20th-century activists like Malak Nasef and noted that feminist activists in the Arab world had been developing networking skills over a long period.
Married women who consent to circumcision are undermining the fight against female genital mutilation.
Speaking at a reception to honour three girls who trekked for 46 kilometres from Embobut to the Tirap district offices to escape the cut, senior chief Benjamin Kipkemoi said many women had accepted that female genital mutilation was retrogressive but were under immense pressure from their communities to undergo the cut.
Barred
"They are ostracised and their husbands are barred from community meetings, forcing them to pester their wives to go for the cut," said the Sambirir location chief.
A coordinator at Marakwet Girls and Women Project, Ms Eunice Yego appealed to women to resist pressure to undergo circumcision.
The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices affecting the health of women and children (GAMCOTRAP) which has been engaged in consistent grassroots activism and social mobilization through training and sensitisation activities to raise consciousness of men and women on the effects of FGM on the reproductive health rights of women and girl-child. It was confirmed that the organisation has worked closely with the communities through an empowerment process to be able to bring about change. As a result of the series of activities, the organisation has been able to register immense success leading to the first public declaration made by 18 circumcisers and 3 communities to protect their children from FGM on the 5 May 2007. The sustained advocacy engaging the duty bearers at the community level has resulted to yet another success story.
The second dropping of the knife event through a public declaration by 60 circumcisers and 351 communities in the Upper and Central River Region of the Gambia was held on the 5 of December 2009 at the Basse Mini Stadium.
In Kenya, where Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) remains a serious problem, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) is implementing a project that is changing the attitudes and behavior towards the procedure in practicing communities within the country's western and northeastern regions.
ADRA's Anti-FGM project addresses the dangerous effects that FGM, also called Female Genital Cutting (FGC), has on young women and girls in communities where the procedure is currently practiced. As a form of gender-based violence, FGM is one of the most critical issues addressed by enditnow, an ongoing campaign co-sponsored by ADRA and the Women's Ministries Department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The enditnow campaign works to end violence against women and girls around the world. Mr Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), on Thursday renewed the commitment of the world body to defend the rights of all people particularly the most vulnerable.
In a statement read on his behalf at the International Human Rights celebration in Accra, Mr Ki-Moon noted that no country was free of discrimination and called for concerted efforts to deal with the problem.
December 10 is International Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Conventions.
This year's celebration is on the theme: "Embrace Diversity; End Discrimination" and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) organized a programme to mark the day in Ghana.
The Ugandan parliament unanimously passed a bill banning female genital mutilation, a traditional rite that has sparked an international outcry and is practiced in some African and Asian communities.
The practice, which involves cutting off a girl's clitoris, is also called female circumcision. In some communities in eastern Uganda, it is practiced in girls up to age 15.
Convicted offenders face 10 years in prison, but if the girl dies during the act, those involved will get a life sentence, according to officials in the east African country.
"A majority of Ugandans felt it is a disgusting act, but you have to remember that this is a cultural belief that has been practiced for generations," said Fred Opolot, the government spokesman. "That's what took the bill so long to pass."
The practice of female circumcision in the name of Islam is being revived in Addu atoll, the Attorney General has warned.
Speaking at a human rights function held on Thursday night, Attorney General Husnu Suood said that the people responsible for reviving the practice of female circumcision in Addu were religious scholars who preach that it was compulsory. He further said that it was imperative that the atrocious practice be brought to a stop.
Christmas merry making may have come a little early for gender rights' activists in the country after Parliament yesterday passed a new law that outlaws and criminalises female genital mutilation.
The new law, a private member's Bill drawn up by Kinkizi East MP Chris Baryomunsi, hands down a series of stern punishments to perpetuators of the crime, a maximum 10- year sentence and life imprisonment for those who commit aggravated female genital mutilation (FGM).
The Bill says a person commits aggravated FGM in situations where death occurs as a result of the act or where a victim suffers disability or is infected with the HIV virus.
It defines FGM as the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-therapeutic reasons.
(CNN) -- The Ugandan parliament unanimously passed a bill banning female genital mutilation, a traditional rite that has sparked an international outcry and is practiced in some African and Asian communities.
The practice, which involves cutting off a girl's clitoris, is also called female circumcision. In some communities in eastern Uganda, it is practiced in girls up to age 15.
Convicted offenders face 10 years in prison, but if the girl dies during the act, those involved will get a life sentence, according to officials in the east African country.
"A majority of Ugandans felt it is a disgusting act, but you have to remember that this is a cultural belief that has been practiced for generations," said Fred Opolot, the government spokesman. "That's what took the bill so long to pass."
Human rights activists have decried the practice, which they say poses major health risks for girls and may lead to death. It also causes complications during sex and child birth, activists say.
"The experience has also been related to a range of psychological and psychosomatic disorders," the United Nations Population Fund says.
Kampala A Bill outlawing female genital mutilation is ready to be presented to the House for the second reading and be passed into law, MPs have been told.
Addressing a regional parliamentary workshop on the theme "Consolidating political will for child well being" at Imperial Royale Hotel yesterday, the chairperson of the committee on gender, Beatrice Lagada, blamed the practice for the high drop out rates in Universal Primary Education (UPE).
She urged people in communities where the practice is still rampant to report perpetrators and parents who subject their girl-children to genital mutilation. Upon conviction for indulging in the practice, one faces a maximum jail term of 10 years.
The workshop was attended by MPs from Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, and the Speaker of the East African legislative assembly. It was organised by the East African community secretariat, Parliament of Uganda and European Parliamentarians for Africa.
Some members of the country’s Parliament yesterday expressed worry at the rate at which violence is being perpetrated against women. In their various submissions in the House yesterday, the MPs for Savelugu, Ahafo Ano South and Mion constituencies, Mary Boforo Salifu, Balado Manu and Dr. Yakubu Alhassan respectively condemned violence against women in no uncertain terms.
Hon. Mary Boforo Salifu expressed dismay about the constant disregard for the law against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) which to her is still prevalent among several ethnic groups in the country, although the law that criminalized the act in 1994 was further strengthened by Parliament in 2007. “In the area of culture, Mr. Speaker, some communities still practice Trokosi, an outlawed custom which involves ritual servitude and sexual exploitation of girls.
There is constant disregard of the law against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM),” she noted, adding “the consequences against these inhuman acts are indeed worrisome. Aside the reproductive and maternal health problems, many women die and properties are being confiscated”.
Deputy Health Minister Jet Bussemaker appointed ‘ambassadors’ against female genital mutilation today at an international conference on the practice in The Hague.
The ambassadors, drawn from African communities in the Netherlands, will pass on information on the dangers of female genital mutilation to parents who originally come from countries where the custom is practiced, such as Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan.
In a TV interview on Tuesday, Ms Bussemaker stressed that apart from causing terrible pain, female genital mutilation, also referred to as female circumcision or genital cutting, deprives women of their sexuality and carries grave lifelong health risks.
The Dutch government has launched a national campaign against female genital mutilation, “Say no to FGM”.
Also known as female circumcision, FGM was relatively unknown in Europe before its introduction by migrant communities. It is a practise in which external female genital organs are either altered, injured, or removed, for reasons related to culture, religion, or both.
According to the World Health Organisation, about three million girls risk being submitted to this procedure every year in Africa. FGM can cause severe bleeding, and later complications in childbirth.
Better statistics in Africa
Speaking to national and international experts in The Hague on Wednesday, Dutch Deputy Health Minister, Jet Bussemaker, said that her government had no reliable statistics on the prevalence or FGM in the Netherlands.
It is known to be widespread in the Somali community, one of the largest migrant groups in The Netherlands.
A year after its publication, The National Action Plan on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has still not been adopted by any Government agency, and legislation outlawing it has not been implemented.
Director of Akidwa, the national network for African and migrant women, Salome Mbugua, said there was no explicit legal protection against FGM in Ireland, nor was it possible to protect a child from being taken overseas to have the procedure carried out.
“These two scenarios need to be catered for together within legislation. We hope that the Minister for Health and Children will get the appropriate support from the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the attorney general in urgently progressing this matter,” she said.
At the beginning of November, the Uganda Law Reform Commission brought a new set of proposed gender-related laws before the Ugandan Parliament for debate in response to increased pressure from civil society groups. If passed, the proposed bills would alter laws concerning marriage and divorce, domestic violence, and female circumcision.
Uganda has a diverse society. The draft Marriage and Divorce Bill aims to consolidate laws pertaining to all forms of marriage recognized in Uganda: religious, civil and customary. The new law would ensure both partners fair access to matrimonial wealth during and after marriage, make marital rape illegal, and ban bride price, a practice that demands the husband pays the bride’s family to marry her.
According to statistics from the Uganda Law and Reform Commission, 78 per cent of women have experienced some form of domestic abuse. The Domestic Relations Bill would protect women in the private sphere through enforcing the punishment of perpetrators of domestic violence and providing guidelines for courts to follow with regards the protection and compensation of victims of domestic violence.
Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Mrs. Salamatu Suleiman, has called on the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and other law enforcement agents, to ensure prompt report of violence against women and children.
Salamatu said this at the 10th anniversary of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, adding that the law enforcement agents should be legally binded to report any violence against women and children.
The theme of 2009 of International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women is “Commit, Act, Demand: We can end violence against women.”
According to her, “Nigeria Police and other law enforcement agents should be legally bound to seriously report violence against women and children and therefore should no more treat them with levity.”
At least 350 teenage girls are to be circumcised in the next two weeks in Marakwet East and Pokot Central districts.
A pre-initiation ceremony known as kitung’a will take place in Kapsiren village, Koibirir location, on the Friday that schools are to close.
A source from the provincial administration and several primary school teachers told the Nation at Tot trading centre on Tuesday that according to cultural beliefs, the stars, prevailing weather patterns, and other key elements had signalled that the initiations should go on in the next two weeks.
About 120 girls aged between nine and 16 years are to undergo the rite in Endow, Kaben, and Koibirir locations while 60 others are targeted in Cheptulel in Marakwet.
In the neighbouring Lomut and Arpolo sub-locations in Pokot Central, more than 150 girls will undergo the cut.
THERE are positive aspects of female genital mutilation (FGM), the Reproductive Education and Community Health (REACH)has said.
“We aim at conveying the message that we are not against the whole female genital mutilation ritual, but the actual cutting of the female genitalia. There are some good pre-FGM rituals,” Martin Cherukut, the REACH programme officer, said.
“For instance, teaching the girls how to take care of their future spouses on the pre-cutting night. These are basics every woman needs to know in marriage. Such teachings are held even among other tribes such as the Baganda. Cutting the female genitalia does not in any way qualify a girl to womanhood,” he said.
At least 350 teenage girls are to be circumcised in the next two weeks in Marakwet East and Pokot Central districts.
A pre-initiation ceremony known as kitung’a will take place in Kapsiren
village, Koibirir location, on the Friday that schools are to close.
A source from the provincial administration and several primary school
teachers told the Nation at Tot trading centre on Tuesday that
according to cultural beliefs, the stars, prevailing weather patterns,
and other key elements had signalled that the initiations should go on
in the next two weeks.
About 120 girls aged between nine and 16 years are to undergo the rite
in Endow, Kaben, and Koibirir locations while 60 others are targeted in
Cheptulel in Marakwet.
In the neighbouring Lomut and Arpolo sub-locations in Pokot Central, more than 150 girls will undergo the cut.
Koibirir chief Alfrick Lorem said the teenagers are to be initiated during the December holidays.
The initiations come amid stern warnings by the government that
perpetrators would be prosecuted. Human rights activists have also
threatened to sue the perpetrators of the outlawed practice.
Separately, three married women were circumcised on tuesday in
Chepkwawai village in Chebororwa location, Marakwet West District.
According to anti-female genital mutilation crusaders, one of the women
claimed that she was forced to undergo the rite or face excommunication
by the society and divorce by her husband. The other two admitted that
they had consented to be circumcised.
Marakwet East district commissioner Joseph Kisangau put FGM practitioners in the district on notice.
“We have instructed chiefs to be on the look-out throughout the
December holiday. Should anyone circumcise a girl or woman, they will
be arrested and prosecuted,” he warned.
Marakwet West district children’s officer Peter Kutere said the
government had criminalised forced circumcision of girls and warned
parents that they risked being jailed if their daughters underwent the
rite.
The new government guide for people considering Canadian citizenship denounces African and Asian practices of genital mutilation and forced marriages.
Unveiling it in Ottawa Thursday, Minister of Citizenship Jason Kenney told reporters there is a new section called "Equality of Women and Men" that addresses specific problems.
"It's no secret that we've seen instances of culturally rooted abuse of women, so-called 'honor killings,' forced marriages, and spousal abuse, and even female genital mutilation," Kenney said. "We want to make sure that people understand that multiculturalism doesn't create an excuse to engage in those barbaric cultural practices."
The Minister of Uganda for Health, Dr. Stephen Malinga has said parents in Moroto, Kotido and Kapchorwa among other districts who conduct female genital mutilation on their daughters risk arrest.
Female genital mutilation is a common cultural practice among Pokot, Sebei and Tepeth ethnic groups of Uganda.
The Minister says female genital mutilation is outlawed and whoever practices or promotes it risk arrest and subsequent prosecution. He was today addressing residents of Moroto town council.
Malinga also called upon girls to discard the practice and report to police the parents and guardians who promote the practice.
Dr. Malinga says female genital mutilation is inhuman and risky to the girls’ life. Female genital mutilation is a culture requirement among the Pokot, Sebei and Tepeth for girls to enter into ‘womanhood.’
Nine villages in Mali ban female circumcision, and celebrate this in a solemn ceremony; a future bride in Ethiopia proclaims in public that she and her fiancι are happy that she has not been circumcised.
More and more men and women in Africa are saying ‘no” to the genital mutilation of their daughters, as a result of effective local interventions that have helped break ancestral taboos.
The incidence of female genital mutilation (FGM) is even regressing in Ethiopia, Guinea, Niger and Sudan, says Berhane Ras-Work, who has been fighting it for the past 25 years. Berhane Ras-Work is the Executive director of the Inter-African Committee (IA) on traditional practices, based in Addis Ababa.
In Sudan, women are taking a positive approach to the phenomenon. Nafisa Nedri refuses to say that she is “not circumcised”. Instead, she says ‘I’m salima”. Her 19-year old daughter is salima too. Salima means “whole, intact” in Arabic.
FEMALE genital mutilation is on the decline in Kapchorwa district, the LC5 chairman, Nelson Chelimo, has said. He noted that despite the absence of statistics, the Sabiny were gradually abandoning the brutal practice.
“We have reached a level where the majority of the Sabiny know the danger of female genital mutilation. The communities that still carry out the practice do it out of ignorance. This calls for intensive education of girls and massive sensitisation,” Chelimo said on Saturday.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia. In Uganda, the practice is carried out among the Sabiny in Bukwo and Kapchorwa districts and the Pokot Karimojong in Amudat district.
The Tepeth Karimojong in Katikekile sub-county in Moroto district and the Kadam Karimojong in Moruita sub-county in Nakapiripirit district also carry out the practice.
A new film focuseson the fight by African activists against an ancient practice that is stillperformed each year on millions of girls: female circumcision, often known asFGM, or female genital mutilation. Opponents call it a human rights abuse thatdestroys a woman's ability to enjoy sex, is sometimes fatal, and frequentlyleads to lifelong pain and disability.
Agnes Pareyio helped found the Kenyan movement to end FGM“I was forcefully cut when I was 14 years,” says Kenyananti-FGM activist Agnes Pareyio. “Itried to resist; everybody was calling me a coward. There was a lot of peerpressure on me that forced me to prove to them that I was not a coward. But I hated it. So, I grew up hating it andmade sure that not my daughter, not anybody who can listen to me, will undergoFGM.”
I want to bring the spotlight back to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) in 1995 ushered in a new era in terms of addressing women's empowerment and advancement. The inception of this platform carried with it a call for governments to accelerate their efforts towards addressing gender inequality.
In 2004, and in line with the BPFA, African member states reiterated their commitment to the provisions of the platform and to gender equality in general. African member states committed themselves to addressing challenges, as identified in the synthesis of the national progress reports on the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action (2004) at the 7th African Women's Conference held in October 2004 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Since 1996, the Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for Advancement of Women (EASSI) has sought to hold governments to account on the status of the implementation of policies, programmes and legislation in the area of women's empowerment and advancement in each of EASSI's member states of Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda.
The United Nations Development Fund for Women enjoin people of the world to join the 16 Days of activism against gender violence, a campaign linking November 25th - the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women with December 10th, the International Human Rights Day. Since 1991 over 2000 organizations in 156 countries have participated in this campaign.
This year, a new advocacy program called "Say NO Unite to End Violence Against Women," campaign, serves to spotlight international efforts to garner attention and action on the issue of violence against women.
The goal of the campaign is to reach 10,000 "actions" by March 2010, and one million in one year. Actions vary from volunteering at abuse shelters to donating to programs that protect victims of violence or educate women and girls.
Violence against women and girls is a problem of pandemic proportions in all continents. At least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in the course of her lifetime. The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, November 25th, is a unique opportunity to remind governments and societies of persisting and dramatic inequalities.
Despite the progress that has been made in achieving gender equality worldwide, women represent 60 percent of the world's poorest, less than 16 percent of the world's parliamentarians, two-thirds of the world's illiterate and, both in times of armed conflict and behind closed doors at home, they are still systematically subjected to violence.
The roots of violence against women lie in historically unequal power relations between men and women and persistent discrimination against women. From domestic violence, to human trafficking and female genital mutilation, gender-based violence is a cruel reality in the 21st Century.
Among the dangers a woman faces in most poor nations of Africa, Asia and the Middle East (and some affluent ones) is the avoidable risk of being circumcised/cut as an infant or, more unwillingly, as a young adult.
The practice of female circumcision, or what has come to be known today as 'female genital mutilation/cutting' (FGM/C), evolved from the dark past of our human existence.
Defenders of the practice have done so on grounds of culture and tradition, or, more problematically, on religious-moral grounds that prescribe or condone the act of cutting off portions of a young woman's genital organs in the belief that this will make the woman more chaste.
It is said that about 3 million infants and young African girls go through the ordeal of mutilation yearly. This figure may be higher, considering that not all cases are reported by victims who are usually cowed by the feudalist tradition of subservience. A similar number is at the risk of going under the mutilators' knives in similar manner, experts say.
Sligo based Nigerian woman, Pamela Izevbekhai will represent herself as she is due to appear before the Supreme Court once again this morning.
Her fourth set of lawyers withdrew from the case last Friday after they told the court they had received threats.
Pamela Izevbekhai will represent herself when she appears before the Supreme Court later this morning.
Last Friday, her lawyers, Murphy Mc Elligott from Dun Laoghaire withdrew from the case after they informed the Court that they received a threatening postcard telling them to ”back off”.
This was her fourth legal team since her deportation battle began.
A date for her case is due to be decided today following her unsuccessful attempt last Friday to oppose the State’s application to admit additional affidavits containing new evidence disputing her case.
It emerged earlier this year that documents detailing the death of her daughter Elizabeth from Female Genital Mutilation in 1994 were forgeries.
Leaders from Kapchorwa district have asked Parliament to revise some sections of the of female genital mutilation (FGM) Bill. Nelson Chelimo, the LC5 chairperson, said Section 4 of the Bill, that subjects a convict to 10 years imprisonment for carrying out self mutilation, was aggressive.
“Most women who carry out self mutilation do it out of social pressure. Some Sabiny communities believe that uncircumcised women could encounter difficulty in getting suitors. So Parliament should be lenient in enacting this section to avoid an unjust penalty,” he said.
Chelimo argued that Section 2 of the Bill that subjects a convict to a 10-year-imprisonment for carrying out FGM is hostile and not applicable to the local community.
The campaign to fight female genital mutilation is meeting new resistance not only in traditional societies but among Western anthropologists, says Barbara Crossette.
For a couple of decades, a small, underfunded nonprofit organization in New York called Equality Now has bolstered community groups in Africa that are making steady progress against the painful and destructive practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). But there is concern that an Equality Now-led campaign that has cost an unknown number of advocates their lives is meeting new resistance not only in traditional societies but also among Western anthropologists and other cultural apologists who put a higher value on a harmful practice than on the well-being of girls. Taina Bien-Aimι, Equality Now's executive director, calls it a "rites or rights" dilemma.
Nigerian mother Pamela Izevbekhai has told the Supreme Court a sworn statement from a doctor asserting she never had a child who died as a result of complications from female genital mutilation (FGM) is untrue. She claims she has a certificate from another doctor to prove the child’s death.
Representing herself in the Supreme Court today after her fourth set of lawyers withdrew over what they described as a threatening anonymous postcard, Ms Izevbekhai said her first child Elizabeth died in July 1994 and she has obtained evidence from another doctor certifying this.
Her case was before the court today following an application from the State to have her entire appeal against the deportation of herself and her two daughters dismissed as an abuse of court process.
This application was adjourned but she unsuccessfully opposed the State’s application to admit additional affidavits containing new evidence disputing her case.
LAST October, a postcard from Spain arrived in the offices of a solicitors' practice in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.
The firm, Murphy McElligot, had just taken over the case of Pamela Izevbekhai, the Nigerian asylum seeker whose attempts to fight deportation on the grounds that her daughters will be genitally mutilated has made her a cause celebre.
The card, posted in Alicante, warned: "Take my advice, back off. She is making a fool out of everyone. She is costing tax to Irish people. I know. I am Nigerian."
The solicitors took the card seriously. When Pamela Izevbekhai went to the Supreme Court on Friday in a last throw of the dice in her bid to stay in Ireland, McElligot Murphy asked the three judges if they could withdraw from the case.
The two female solicitors in the practice regarded the postcard as a threat and took it seriously enough to report it to gardai. They felt rather exposed, their barrister explained.
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Jackson (centre) chatting with some of the delegates at the launch on Tuesday |
By Irene Nabusoba
THE United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have launched a joint programme to end female genital mutilation (FGM) by 2012.
FGM involves partial or total removal of the external female genitalia commonly practiced as a cultural passage to womanhood by some ethnic groups in Uganda.
The practice causes immense pain, bleeding, infection, abscess plus shock, sometimes leading to death.
Speaking during a half-day event to mark the alliance at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala on Tuesday, UNFPA’s country director Janet Jackson said the five-year programme will cost $43.5m (about sh82.7b).
Over 200 representatives convened on October 21st, at the WEC Mission Camp in Kampant, Western Region for a 2-day workshop to reinforce dialogue between ex-circumcisers and practising circumcisers and their assistants for an accelerated total abandonment of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in the Gambia. The workshop, which was organized by the Foundation for Research on Women's Health, Productivity, and the Environment (BAFROW), supported by UNFPA, timely coincided with the 4th Annual Congress of BAFROW's Association of Ex-circumcisers. Coming from around the country, a number of partners attended the ceremony, among which included Members of the Association of Ex- circumcisors, practising circumcisers and their assistants, BAFROW health promoters and health mobilizers, members of the coalition against FGM/C, members of BAFROW's Board of Directors, the Women's Bureau, network of journalists, community leaders, women's leaders, and religious leaders.
In a series of celebrations that mark a profound and historic watershed, tens of thousands of people converged on Durame town from October 29 to 31 to celebrate the virtual eradication of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the zones of Kembatta and Tembaro in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Regional State.
According to local non-governmental organisation, Kembatti Mentti Gezzimma-Tope (KMG), the virtual elimination of this harmful traditional practice suggests that well over 100,000 girls have been spared in this region, reversing in a single decade a practice so old some Christians and Muslims here mistakenly believed it was mandated by their religions.
“We called it ‘getting the dirt out,’ but we never said it out loud, because it was taboo,” said Bogaletch Gebre, founder chief executive officer of KMG, who returned to Kembatta, her birth place, in 1997, to start the NGO that would fight for the human rights of women and improve the environment for all people in the region.
A LOCAL non-governmental organisation, Reproductive Educative and Community Health (REACH), has trained 150 school girls to serve as advocates against female genital mutilation.
While passing out the girls at Iwemba Primary School in Bugiri district on Friday, the director, Christine Chelangati, said the organisation had embarked on a door-to-door campaign.
Chelangati said 52,100 girls had been trained as advocates since 2004 under the alternate right to passage programme. She hailed the Irish government and the gender ministry for spear-heading the fight.
The Bugiri district Woman MP, Justine Kasule, said over 200 cases of defilement in the district had this year been settled by local council courts after parents of the victims demanded for petty fines from the offenders.
EXPERTS have warned of a shocking lack of evidence on the safety of "designer vagina" surgery.
A team have called for more research into the effects of of the cosmetic procedure known as labiaplasty.
They say the op - which can cost £3000 if carried out privately - can carry a risk of damaging the genital nerve supply and has been linked to impaired sensitivity and sexual function.
The scientists from University College London issued their warning after reviewing dozens of studies carried out between 1950 and April 2009.
In an article for BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, they said no properly designed studies were found among the literature.
They compared reducing the size of the labia to genital mutilation, which is linked to problems in childbirth, including haemorrhage and the need for Caesarean sections.
African countries must do more work towards banning female genital mutilation, Chantal Compoare, the first lady of Burkina Faso has said. Female genital cutting is carried out for religious or cultural reasons in some parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It involves the partial or complete removal of the female external genitals. It can cause death through haemorrhaging and later complications during childbirth as well as risks of infection, urinary tract problems and mental trauma. Worldwide between 100 and 140 million women have been operated on in this way, according to estimates from the World Health Organisation.
"I call on all African states to cooperate on all levels in order to speed up the elimination of the practice of female genital mutilation," Compoare told an international conference on the subject this week. The meeting in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ougadougou, aimed to bring together lawyers, aid organisations, government ministers and community leaders as well women from throughout the region who have dedicated, and sometimes even risked, their lives to ensure that future generations are not subjected to genital cutting.
_tells_the_fascinating_story_of_Waris_Dirie’s_journey_from_nomad,_to_supermodel,_to_UN_ambassador. "Desert Flower (Wόstenblume) tells the fascinating story of Waris Dirie’s journey from nomad, to supermodel, to UN ambassador.")
Desert Flower (Wόstenblume) tells the fascinating story of Waris Dirie’s journey from nomad, to supermodel, to UN ambassador.
Sherry Horman's adaptation of Dirie's bestselling memoir had no shortage of interesting material to work with. Dirie now lives in Vienna, having become an Austrian citizen in 2005, but she has led a remarkable life. Born in Somalia in 1965, she fled on foot across the desert to escape an arranged marriage at the age of 13. Migrating to London, she did odd-jobs for years before being talent-spotted by fashion photographer Terence Donovan while working in McDonalds.
Tostan-Unicef and the Gambia Government community-led sustainable development project, currently under implementation in URR have once again demonstrated its commitment to the empowerment of the Gambian rural communities, following a declaration made by over thirteen communities including adopted communities in Basse and Jimara to abandon the practice of female genital cutting, and child forced marriages at a ceremony held at Basse Manneh Kunda. The ceremony was well attended by the dignitaries in URR, TAC members, local and influential leaders, traditional communicators, as well as the entire business community in Basse.
In his welcoming remarks, the Alkalo of Manneh Kunda, Alasana Kebba Manneh in a very joyful mood, welcomed the participants and thanked them for uniting the community of Manneh Kunda and pledged to abandon some harmful traditions that have negative health implications for women and young girls. This according to Alkalo Manneh is an indication that Tostan is one family.
For his part, the VDC Chairman Mr. Manlafi Sanyang said that the ceremony is historic as far as development and respect for human rights is concerned; that it is a clear manifestation that the knowledge gained through Tostan is being put into practice. He thanked them for their efforts and urged them to be more committed.
Police has arrested 10 parents in Looro Sub County , Moroto district who allegedly last week conducted female genital mutilation on their daughters.
Female genital mutilation is a common cultural practice among Pokot, Sebei and Tepeth ethnic groups.
The Spokesperson of Police, Judith Nabakooba says female genital mutilation has been outlawed.
She says whoever practices or promotes it commits an offence leading to an arrest and prosecution.
Nabakooba advises the parents and guardians among the Sebei, Tepeth and and Pokot to discard the practice to avoid arrest.
Female genital mutilation is a culture requirement among the Pokot, Sebei and Tepeth for girls to enter into ‘womanhood.’
Somalian supermodel Waris Dirie has graced the pages of glossy magazines and starred opposite 007 as a Bond Girl.
Face for change: Dirie is a tireless campaigner against FGM.
But her glamorous appearances on catwalks and in magazines and films belies the personal battles Dirie has had to overcome.
Dirie is a leading voice against forced circumcision and female genital mutilation (FGM) and struggled to overcome her own circumcision at the age of five. The forthcoming film, "Desert Flower", based on her biography, tells her story.
Yet it is through her charitable foundation that Dirie hopes that the practice still common in traditions in parts of Africa, the Middle East, South American and Asia will not create more cases similar to her own.
The state minister for Gender and Culture has advised the civil society to redirect their efforts towards discouraging skimpy dressing by women rather than wasting time and resources on issues such as the Domestic Relations Bill.
Ms Rukia Isanga Nakadama said civil society organisations should discourage women against skimpy dressing because it hurts the dignity of women before they can tackle larger issues like the DRB.
“Why don’t you (civil society) talk about those who do not dress properly, why are you quiet about the nakedness of women and decide to only talk about the Domestic Relations Bill,” the Ms Nakadama said on Tuesday at a workshop organized by Islamic University in Uganda and sponsored by ISESCO/FUIW at Tagy Hotel, Kampala.
Recently, the civil society re-launched their demand for the speedy tabling of the new DRB which is meant to harmonise issues of marital property rights, sexual rights in marriage and domestic violence. However critics argue that the bill is not only controversial but attempts to criminalize the whole essence of bride price and legalise cohabitation.
Development minister Bert Koenders is visiting Burkina Faso between 15 and 17 October
Mr Koenders will talk with President Blaise Compaorι, Prime Minister Tertius Zongo and health minister Seydou Bouda. Their topics of discussion will include the crisis in Guinea-Conakry.
In addition, Mr Koenders will meet members of various organisations to discuss the development of health care and measures against female genital mutilation.
Accompanying Mr Koenders to Burkina Faso will be Radio 3FM DJ Eric Corton and Director of the Dutch Red Cross Cees Breederveld. On Friday, they will invite him to visit Red Cross malaria projects in Diιbougou.
The proceeds of the Radio 3FM Serious Request this year will go to reducing malaria. On Saturday, Mr Koenders will invite Mr Corton and Mr Breederveld to visit a regional hospital and a number of civil society organisations in Gaoua.
The violence suffered by most women in the home and work place undermines their capacity to effectively participate in private and public life, as they are allegedly treated and perceived as second class beings by their male counterparts.
The assertion was made by the Women's Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA)in its recent town hall meeting with women and male family heads in Kuje Area Council of Abuja, with a theme 'Raising Her Voice' Project (RHV).
The organisation described violence against women as sexual assault, battery, female genital mutilation, marital rape, child marriage, women trafficking, male child preference, withdrawal of the girl child from school, limitations on their ability to participate in politics, and also curtailing their capacity in the power relations between men and women.
"The lives of poor and marginalised women in Nigeria are characterised by susurration, which aggravates inequality and poverty of women, including failure in responsiveness of governance to citizens", the forum noted.
Also Hears from Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, As It Begins Multi-Day Debate on Promotion, Protection of Rights of Child
Violence against children, and ways to stem that violence, figured prominently in a discussion between Member States and United Nations officials from the field of child rights, at the start of a multi-day discussion on the promotion and protection of the rights of children convened by the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural).
In her first appearance before the Committee, Marta Santos Pais, the Secretary-General's newly appointed Special Representative on Violence against Children, said she was counting on mutual support between herself and Member States to identify the most promising initiatives to stamp out violence against children. She made that statement in response to numerous questions posed by Member States on how she planned to conduct her work, and what role Governments were expected to play in the dispatch of her mandate.
Frontpage Interview’s guest is Ines Laufer, founder of the Task Force for Effective Prevention of Female Genital Mutilation, a network of Human-Rights-organisations and activists that is committed to measurable, broad prevention of genital mutilation (FGM) among migrant girls in the EU. Together with Lucy Mashua, a Kenyan victim of FGM, she now leads a new campaign, sponsoredgirl.com, to protect girls from this barbarity.
FP: Ines Laufer, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.
In our last discussion, we focused on how Germany has exposed a young girl to female genital mutilation and how Germany, and Europe in general, is not protecting young girls from this barbaric crime.
Today I would like to talk to you about a new campaign you have started. Tell us about it.
In remote villages in Ghana, Florence Ali sees firsthand the side effects of female genital mutilation.
Although banned by Ghana's laws, it's a cultural tradition still practiced in some villages, said Ali.
"We see the side effects particularly when women come in to deliver their babies,'' said Ali, president of the Ghanaian Association for Women's Welfare.
A World Health Organization study showed that women who have suffered the most serious form of genital mutilation have a higher chance of suffering from a post childbirth hemorrhage.
She said when some of the women return to their communities they isolate themselves because they're ashamed of their wounds.
Saturday night at a Ghanaian function in Lauderhill, Ali will speak about female circumcision, or genital mutilation, and her work to bring more awareness to this issue.
A report released by CRADLE, a non-governmental organization indicates that cases of sexual abuses remain highest at 73 percent of all reported cases.
According to the report, 79 percent of girls between the ages of 13 and 15 years and 21 percent of boys in the same age bracket have been sexually abused.
The report says the most common forms of abuse include defilement, sodomy, incest, sexual assault, child pornography, defilement of mentally impaired children and child sexual exploitation among others.
The report further says despite the government's efforts to stamp it out, Female Genital Mutilation continues among children mostly due to cultural persuasions.
Early marriages and cohabitation with minors were also cited as a form of sexual violence representing five percent of reported cases.
Assistant minister for lands Bifwoli Wakoli cited Nairobi's slum areas as the most affected by the vice, adding that male neighbours and relatives were the most notorious perpetrators of child abuse.
A website dedicated to tracking the response of the European Union (EU) to female genital mutilation (FGM) has been launched by Amnesty International Ireland.
It will document the response of EU institutions and the Council of Europe to assess developments on preventing FGM and will feature an interactive map of Europe, which will contain information on prevalence rates and legislation on the issue in member states.
Click here
The campaign the site for which is located at www.endfgm.eu is committed to ensuring the EU delivers a definitive strategy to end FGM in Europe and to protect women and girls who flee their countries for fear of being mutilated.
About 120 Delegates from three neighbouring countries, Ghana , Burkna Faso and Togo, at the end of a three day tri-partite cross border meeting held in Tenkodogo in Burkina Faso, issued a communiquι to reinforce cross border cooperation and peaceful co-existence among their people.
The three, also agreed to increase development activities in the decentralized cross border areas, and encourage twinning between communities and local government authorities.
The three delegations discussed security, social welfare, decentralized cooperation, culture, sports and free movement of people and goods.
In the domain of security, they committed themselves to fight against the proliferation of arms, armed robbery, goods and cattle rustling, and deepen collaboration among security services in the three countries.
For many Kenyan women, female circumcision is part of their culture.
Two female immigrants to Australia have been told that they are going to be deported back to Kenya to face genital mutilation.
Grace Gichuhi, 22 and Teresia Muturi, 21 went to Australia in July of last year on tourist visas. They then applied for protection with the Australian Immigration Department which was subsequently refused.
Both Grace and Teresia left Kenya in fear for their safety. Grace’s mother was killed for refusing to be circumcised and now Grace faces the same threats on her life. Teresia has fled an arranged marriage to a 70 year old man and has angered her family by also refusing to be circumcised.
An ancient Chinese proverb goes that women hold up half the sky. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn want that to be appreciated on the ground. In the opening pages of this gripping call to conscience, the husband-and-wife team come out swinging: “Gendercide,” the daily slaughter of girls in the developing world, steals more lives in any given decade “than all the genocides of the 20th century.” No wonder Kristof and WuDunn, whose coverage of China for The New York Times won them a Pulitzer Prize, declare the global struggle for women’s equality “the paramount moral challenge” of our era.
Their stories in “Half the Sky” bear witness to that bold claim. Kristof and WuDunn describe Dalit women, Indian untouchables, who swarmed, stabbed and emasculated a serial torturer and murderer in a courtroom. Further north, Mukhtar Mai, the victim of a Pakistani gang-rape, did the unthinkable for a Muslim village woman. Not only did she expose her assailants, but she incurred the wrath of her country’s president, Pervez Musharraf, endured abduction by his henchmen, started a school and even made an ally of her resentful older brother.
The Australian Immigration Department has been criticised for failing to adequately protect people facing human rights abuses in their home countries.
A young Kenyan woman who came to Australia for World Youth Day wants to stay because she claims she will be circumcised if she returns to Kenya.
She has been told she does not qualify for refugee status, but the Catholic Church has taken up her cause.
When Teresia Ndikaru Muturi arrived in Australia for World Youth Day last year, she knew she never wanted to go back to Kenya.
"Because I'm fearing my own mum for how she's forcing me to marry [an] old man, to leave school and yet I don't want to leave my school. Also I'm fearing to be circumcised," she said.
Her mother is a member of the outlawed Mungiki sect which practices female genital mutilation.
Ms Muturi says the sect believes you can only become a full woman and get married once you are circumcised.
In remote villages in Ghana, Florence Ali sees firsthand the side effects of female genital mutilation.
Although banned by Ghana's laws, it's a cultural tradition still practiced in some villages, said Ali.
"We see the side effects particularly when women come in to deliver their babies,'' said Ali, president of the Ghanaian Association for Women's Welfare.
A World Health Organization study showed that women who have suffered the most serious form of genital mutilation have a higher chance of suffering from a post childbirth hemorrhage.
She said when some of the women return to their communities they isolate themselves because they're ashamed of their wounds.
I want to start by saying something that I believe with all my heart, and, obviously, those of you who are here believe it also, that the issues related to girls and women are not an annex to the important business of the world and the United Nations, they’re not an add-on, they’re not an afterthought; they are truly at the core of what we are attempting to do under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that is the guiding message of this organization and what each of us in our own countries is called to do on behalf of equal opportunity and social justice.
A court has cleared a man of mutilating his 5-year-old daughter's genitals in the Netherlands' first trial linked to alleged female circumcision. The district judges in Haarlem said Friday there is no doubt the girl was mutilated but there is insufficient evidence to convict her father, Mustapha El M.
Prosecutors said the girl told a carer that her father had cut her with a pair of scissors, but judges said the statement was not strong enough evidence to convict him. El M. (30) was convicted of beating and biting his daughter and was sentenced to three months imprisonment for the abuse.
The trial was supposed to send the message that the Dutch justice system is serious about suppressing female circumcision, a practice which in some African cultures is considered a rite of passage. There have been dozens of successful such prosecutions in France.
If you entered a room full of women, she would instantly be the one who captures your attention. Young, charismatic, and with a disarming, contagious smile, Arian Arif comes across as one who must have attended a prestigious university and lived most of her life in the West. One would never imagine that this 31- year old journalist left Kurdistan just 3 years ago she completed her studies in Sulaymaniyah until finding love with a Kurdish man living in Norway. Born in Sulaymaniyah, Ms. Arif previously taught mathematics at a grade school level and worked in a number of ministries before her journalistic talent was discovered by the mother of Kurdish politician, Dr. Barham Salih.
“It was my only wish in this life to live and die in Kurdistan, and only leave for vacations. Fate would have it different I left Kurdistan because I fell in love with a man in Norway.” She continues furiously, “People think that living in Norway has made me conscious about women’s issues and that it’s because I’m outside my homeland that I speak my mind about women’s rights in Kurdistan. They could not be more wrong; in fact, I am less active here than I ever was in Kurdistan.”
A Bill seeking to impose tough penalties for people involved in female genital mutilation (FMG) has been tabled in Parliament. The Private Members’ Bill was yesterday tabled by Kinkiizi East MP Dr. Chris Baryomunsi (NRM).
If passed, a person found guilty of aggravated FMG will be liable to life imprisonment. FMG refers to the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-therapeutic reasons.
The practice is mainly carried out in Kapchorwa and Bukwo districts during the even year. Launching a campaign against the practice in Nakapiripirit district recently, President Yoweri Museveni described the practice as brutal and backward. “God knew what he was doing when he created us. Do you think you are more intelligent than God?”
According to the Bill, a person commits aggravated FMG in situations where death occurs as a result of the act or where the victim suffers disability or is infected with HIV/AIDS.
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| © UNICEF Ethiopia/2009/Zeleman |
| Aregash Agegnehu, shown here with her daughter, is a former practitioner of female genital mutilation/cutting who has renounced it. |
In a room filled with visiting dignitaries and members of the Ethiopian National Assembly, Tadeletch Shanko’s voice was whisper-quiet as she talked about the difficult subject of female genital mutilation/cutting, or FGM/C.
Freelance journalist and photogrpaher, Linda May Kallestein, has produced a short documentary, The Cut, aimed at raising awareness of the sufferin to women caused by female genital mutilation.
The Cut is a 12 minute documentary about Mary (fourteen years old) and Alice (early twenties) from Kenya. Both are affected by the traditional rite of passage into womanhood: genital cutting.
Mary and her community are preparing for her ceremonial cutting.
Alice is studying to be a social worker to work against female genital mutilation. As the first in her community to refuse the practice, she has paid a high price for her choice to break with tradition.
Alice tells of the different myths she encounters in the community around her, as to why circumcision is practiced. Mary, on the other hand, has no voice. She just goes through the preparations and rituals in silence.
Reports on Thursday said that the first doctor in Egypt was being charged under a new Egyptian law that forbids the controversial practice of female genital mutilation, or FGM. The man allegedly illegally circumcised a young girl last week and is being charged after a local hospital notified the authorities following the 11-year-old girl’s admittance into the hospital with heavy bleeding as a result of the procedure.
According to al-Arabiya news organization, the doctor performed the procedure at the girl’s Minya home some 400 miles south of Cairo for 150 Egyptian pounds ($27).
He said he performed the operation using a scalpel and the girl remains in critical condition.
In summer 2008, Egypt’s Parliament passed a law that ostensibly bans the controversial procedure. Not that it should have needed to legislate against FGM it was already officially banned in the country during the mid-nineties but with doctors continuing to perform the procedure on girls as young as five, Parliament felt it was necessary to intercede.
This publication contains rich research findings concerning global trends and the prevalence of female genital mutilation/cutting and its linkages with maternal and newborn health. It describes changing patterns and practices, including medicalization, and analyzes the threat FGM/C poses to the achievement of Millennium Development Goals as well as its economic and health costs. It identifies important lessons and discusses in detail case studies as well as the application of theories as a basis for accelerating the abandonment process.
It also addresses the needs for closing gaps in law enforcement, building capacity, mobilizing resources and building global partnerships. This extensive knowledge -- which was shared by research institutions, foundations, lawyers, medical professionals, religious scholars, development partners and NGOs -- would be difficult to find elsewhere.
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The Human Rights Committee concluded today its ninety-sixth session, during which it considered and adopted concluding observations and recommendations on the reports submitted by Tanzania, the Netherlands, including the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, Chad and Azerbaijan on how those countries implement the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. During this session, it also finalized its concluding observations on the situation of civil and political rights in Grenada, which the Committee reviewed in the absence of a report on July 18, 2007, at its ninetieth session.
Regarding the initial report of Chad, the Committee welcomed that the Chadian Constitution granted the Covenant precedence over domestic law and the adoption of a law prohibiting female genital mutilation, early marriage and domestic and sexual violence. The Committee also noted with interest the establishment of the National Commission to investigate violations of human rights that took place during the events of February 2008, as well as the establishment of the Ministry of Human Rights and the Promotion of Freedom in 2005.
The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women recognized the legislative and policy steps of Liberia to ensure women's rights and empowerment, but today expressed deep concern over the continued prevalence of discriminatory practices in that conflict-worn sub-Saharan nation, such as sexual and physical violence against women and girls.
Presenting Liberia's first through sixth periodic report on compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Vabah Gayflor, Minister of Gender and Development, said the Government was working to create a more equal and non-discriminatory society, economy and State by making gender mainstreaming a priority in the country's development of the rule of law, security, health care, education and the formal economy.
"This commitment is not an empty verbal promise, but one that we, as a Government take seriously," Ms. Gayflor said. "We are in the process of writing a new history for our nation's women and girls."
Sudan has tried to eradicate female genital mutilation since 1946 to little avail. But now women's health groups have taken the crusade in their hands--or rather, their own painted hands--in an effort to subvert the practice.
NGOs are training midwives and henna artists to cooperate using a secret code communicated through henna tattoos. Called the henna technique, a special design dyed temporarily on the skin can indicate to a midwife that a mother wants to avoid genital mutilation on her daughter. The tattoos serve as a bridge to discuss what is traditionally taboo. In turn, a midwife can stage a fake circumcision.
"It's underground," said Mawahib Mohamed of the Sudan Council of Volunteer Agencies (SCOVA). "It's totally something that women would invent." She said that midwives from the eastern and mountainous Nuer region invented the technique.
The Obama administration has moved to grant political asylum to foreign women who suffer severe physical or sexual abuse from which they are unable to escape because it is part of the culture of their own countries.
The decision, made evident in a court case involving a battered women from Mexico, ends years of dispute over the issue which saw the Bush administration stall moves toward recognising domestic violence as legitimate grounds for asylum made during Bill Clinton's tenure.
The department of homeland security has told an immigration court that it regards the woman, identified only as 42-year-old LR, as potentially having grounds to apply for political asylum because she feared she would be murdered by her common-law husband who repeatedly raped her at gunpoint and tried to burn her alive when he discovered she was pregnant.
The Ugandan parliament will pass a law banning female genital mutilation (FGM), President Yoweri Museveni has announced.
According to the statement issued by the presidency, the new law will protect young women, further saying those who would continue to perform the practice would face the death penalty if a girl dies as a result of the procedure.
"The way God made it, there is no part of a human body that is useless. Now you people interfere with God's work. Some say it is culture. Yes, I support culture but you must support culture that is useful and based on scientific information," President Museveni told local reporters.
Last year, the United Nations passed a resolution that called FGM a violation of the rights of women and said it constituted irreparable, irreversible scars on women.
Doctors and nurses were on Monday asked to desist from carrying out female genital mutilation in their clinics.
Health experts and human rights activists said the doctors’ performing of “the cut” was making the harmful practice more acceptable.
Cutting or excision of young girls’ genitals is seen as a cultural or religious rite of passage in some communities. The vaginal opening is sewn up after the excision, leaving a small opening for sexual intercourse, childbirth and natural bodily functions.
“All the natural processes of the body are affected,” said Unicef child protection regional advisor Margie de Monchy.
The head of the division of reproductive health, Dr Josephine Kibaru, said 32 per cent of women aged 15 to 49 had undergone the rite.
'They said they were going to give us ostrich eggs,' Esther Mbarga, aged 49, recalls. "'They're huge,' they said. 'Come and we'll give them to you.'" Aged ten or eleven, she and her friends had never seen an ostrich egg. They were really excited. They were taken deep into the bush and waited expectantly. Then, one at a time, they were led off to have their genitalia mutilated. Esther was pinned to the ground by four women and cut by a fifth. She limped away bleeding and crying. It was hard to walk and urination was incredibly painful for days afterwards. For some reason, the women weren't happy with the excision. On further checking they decided that there was more to cut. They cut more the following day and yet more a week later.
Esther lives in Burkina Faso where female genital mutilation is not legal but is still carried out covertly. Female genital mutilation comprises 'all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons'. Not only may the clitoris be partially or wholly removed, but also one or both of the labia. Sometimes the vaginal orifice is narrowed by cutting and repositioning the labia. The World Health Organisation estimates that 91.5 million girls over the age of 9 in Africa have been mutilated in one of these ways. According to the most recent U.N. statistics, 72.5% of women in Burkina Faso aged between 15 and 49 have undergone genital mutilation. In the majority of cases this procedure is arranged and carried out by the older women in a community.
Tears of joy rolled down Roseline Awolope’s face as her deportation to Nigeria and the possible genital mutilation of her young daughters were put on hold by a federal court judge.
“I am so happy that I haven’t stopped praying,” a weeping Awolope said today. “This is a great country and we are so happy that we don’t have to go back.”
Awolope, 35, a single mother of four Joseph, 10; Blessing, 8; Grace, 6; and Canadian-born John, 1 were slated to be deported Thursday after her refugee claim was turned down by an immigration and refugee board.
The case was appealed to the high court, where Mr. Justice Frederick Gibson killed the deportation order late Monday.
Seeking to make FGM illegal, Museveni wants to ban female circumcision and criminalize it. Press Secretary Tamale Mirundi told CNN that those who continue to perform the practice could potentially face the death penalty if a girl dies as a result of the procedure. "If a girl dies during circumcision that would be murder," Mirundi said. "The punishment for murder in Uganda is death. You will be hanged."
This is a strong stride in the right direction but it’s just that- a stride- and is not enough. Although the BBC listed Uganda as one of the 14 African countries which had banned FGM as early as 2004, an article by IRIN in 2007 tells a different story:
“Beatrice Chelengat, programme manager of an FGM awareness campaign sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund in the eastern Kapchorwa district, said 647 women aged between 11 and 31 were subjected to FGM in 2002 out of an estimated 13,000 females in that age group. The figures for 2004 and 2006 were 595 and 426 respectively, she said, adding that anti-FGM campaigns in the area were bearing fruit.”
Uganda - While the Ugandan leader, Yoweri Museveni, criticized Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as ‘interference’ with God’s works and then banned the age-old practice in his country, some traditionalists here are set to resis t the government’s action.
In view of the absence of a law to effect the ban, furious activists described it as mere lip service which would not stop traditionalists from continuing with the practice.
Last week, Museveni told a gathering in the Nakapiripiriti district home to pastoralist ethnic groups: Sabinys, Pokots and Karamojong, found in the landlocked east African country’s remote northeastern region, that a law was in the offing t o ban the stigmatizing practice.
"Now, you people interfere with God's work. Some say it is culture. Yes, I support culture but you must support culture that is useful and based on scientific in formation," Museveni said, after some elders told him that the practice was part of their culture.
The Member of Parliament for Tingey, Herbert Sabila has revealed that Female Genital Mutilation is one of the main causes of the high population growth rates amongst the Ugandan communities like the Sabiny that have this cultural practice.
This comes amidst a determined crack down on this cultural practice in the country and follows the tabling of private members bill on banning of the practice of FGM.
Sabila has told journalists at Parliament that FGM causes high population growth rates because it is partly the cause of the high fertility rates of the women in the communities that have this practice.
He says FGM causes high fertility rates because the girls undergo the cultural practice at about 14 years after which the girls are considered to be women mature enough to bear children.
Sabila says since the women begin having children at such an early age due to the influence of FGM, they are most likely to produce more children in their lifetime.
A Toronto resident says she'll be killed and her two young daughters forced to undergo painful female genital mutilation if they're deported on Thursday to their native Nigeria.
Single mom Roseline Ijiola Awolope, 35, with daughters Blessing, 8, Grace, 6, and sons, Joseph, 10, and Canadian-born John, 1, are scheduled to be deported, following the rejection of her refugee claim by an immigration and refugee board.
The family and lawyer appeared in a federal court on Queen St. W. yesterday, calling on a judge to kill the deportation order on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
Mr. Justice Frederick Gibson will deliver his ruling before Thursday.
Awolope, who has undergone female mutilation and face marking, said she fled Nigeria after refusing to have the tribal custom performed on her daughters. Her ex-husband's family was forcing her to have it done to the children.
"They threatened to kill me if I refused it for my daughters," she sobbed yesterday. "I had to run away from my country with the children."
The Human Rights Committee this morning concluded its consideration of the fourth periodic report of Tanzania on the measures undertaken by that country to implement the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Presenting the report, Mathias Meinrad Chikawe, Minister for Constitutional Affairs and Justice of Tanzania, said that the laws of marriage, inheritance and succession were the subject of a protracted debate, which related not only to issues of gender equality, but also involved deep religious and strong cultural beliefs. The legislation was currently in the process of review in order to take on board the rights of every citizen. The process was delicate and sensitive and if not property handled might become volatile. Regarding the issue of access to education for women, the Government had recorded significant achievements since the last periodic report. Tanzania had put in place policies as well as legislation to govern compulsory primary education enrolment, secondary education, access to education for those who had missed the opportunity for formal education, as well as affirmative education programmes for girls. The Government had also recognized the need for having women in decision-making positions. Women now constituted not less than 30 per cent of the Members of Parliament and the House of Representatives. Regarding marital rape, the issue was an alien concept in Tanzania that required a deeper and wider debate.
The history of female circumcision, also called female genital cutting or mutilation, is unclear. Some say it's a religious requirement for Islamic women, while others point out that the practice pre-dates the spread of Islam. The practice is controversial in many countries. Westerners decry the practice, yet, it persists in many African and Islamic countries because of strong cultural support.
Now, new research finds the practice is losing support in one large country - Egypt. In that country, historical evidence indicates that female cutting has been done since the time of the pharaohs. Traditionally, it's been seen as a requirement to make girls marriageable.
But the current government in Egypt banned female circumcision in the 1990s and strengthened the restriction in 2007 after a high-profile case where a 12-year-old girl died after the ritual.
BOBO-DIOULASSO,
6 May 2009 (IRIN) - Construction has begun of West Africa’s first
clinic for reconstructing clitorises for victims of female genital
mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Amid high demand, the US non-profit
Clitoraid is funding the clinic, dubbed “Pleasure Hospital”, in
Bobo-Dioulasso, western Burkina Faso.
Financed through the non-profit’s “Adopt a clitoris”
campaign that sponsors women wishing to have clitoral reconstruction,
Clitoraid raised more than US$50,000 to build the facility.
Construction began in March and is expected to be completed by
September.
Once opened, US-based gynaecological surgeons will offer free clitoral reconstruction
surgeries to FGM/C victims from across West Africa. Currently too few
surgeons are available to serve the number of women who want to
reconstruct their mutilated clitorises and the price in private clinics
remains unaffordable for most, according to the few surgeons trained on
the procedure in Burkina Faso where the surgery was pioneered in 2006.
“Clitoraid decided to build the clinic in Bobo-Dioulasso because it is
at the crossroads of several West African countries,” said Mariam
Banemanie, president of Clitoraid’s local NGO partner, Voices of Women.
A parliamentary committee has drawn up a proposal to strengthen the law against female genital mutilation. The draft of a new code would specifically punish the practice, even if the acts were committed in a foreign country where they’re not illegal. Those convicted of the act would be sentenced to up to10 years in prison. Parliamentarians were mostly in support of the measure, although some said it doesn’t go far enough. Women’s rights NGO Alliance F is also calling for more education to prevent the practice in the first place.
The festive atmosphere in this village in the Upper River Region was reminiscent of a wedding. But the singing and dancing was, in fact, part of celebration at which 24 neighbouring villages publicly declared the end of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) practises in their communities.
Kobaie Nyabaly a former FGM/C practitioner walked briskly to the podium and boldly gave her testimony before the crowd of more than 600 onlookers, including religious leaders, village chiefs, and youth groups.
“There were times when the children collapsed and some even went into a coma,” she recalled of her time practicing FGM/C. “The parents would bring various items to be sacrificed to save their children. We told the parents to go and see the sorcerers, they were told that it was the work of witchcraft. I never knew that my knife was the witch.”
Basse Urr In what could be described as yet another victory in the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM), about 24 communities in the Upper River Region on Sunday the 14th June, solemnly declared publicly that they will no longer circumcise their girls.
Uganda will pass a law banning female genital mutilation, which is rampant among pastoralist tribes in the country's eastern region, the president said in a statement on Friday.
"The way God made it, there is no part of a human body that is useless," President Yoweri Museveni told a gathering in the eastern Karamoja district.
"Now you people interfere with God's work. Some say it is culture. Yes, I support culture but you must support culture that is useful and based on scientific information," he added.
Last year, the United Nations passed a resolution that called female genital mutilation a violation of the rights of women and said it constituted "irreparable, irreversible abuse".
Its a little-known fact that in Europe there are almost 7 million circumcised women. In France there are at least 60,000 adults and several thousand minors who have been circumcised.
Female circumcision is also carried out on babies just a few days old, too young to be able remember it. Few survive.
The practice has been widely reported in the media and happens less often today in France, but it hasn't been completely eradicated. Despite efforts to stop the practice, every year around 20,000 young women risk circumcision in France.
In France, all children have to have medical tests until the age of six, after which its impossible to check the physical integrity of a child.
So now, some parents wait until a young girl turns six before taking them on holiday to their country of origin and circumcising them.
Mara Huber spent some time during Christmas in 2006 chatting with the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Africa while they were visiting her mother-in-law.
Huber, director of UB's Center for Educational Research, learned a lot during this conservation. She learned of the desperate plight of women and young girls in Africa, specifically in Tanzania, who are denied education and subjected to violence on an almost daily basis.
In Tanzania, violence against women and girls, including domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, female genital mutilation and sex trafficking, is a considerable problem. Females are harshly limited in what they can do day-to-day.
School and social life ultimately do not exist for females in Tanzania. Rather than a school, girls are taught in a log in the middle of a field.
Upon learning of the conditions that they were living in, Huber knew that she had to take action.
Through the intervention of Tostan International to end the practice of female genital cutting Africa, over 24 communities in both Wuli and Sandu pledged to stop both the cultural practice of FGC(FGM), early marriage and forced marriage at a ceremony held at Sandu Dasilameh.
In his welcoming remarks, the Alkalo of Dasilameh Kajali Danso expressed happiness over what he called historic in the history of his village. He pointed out that the Tostan intervention in his village has brought about significant changes. He thanked the participating communities for their large turnout and urged them to unite as one family.
Mr. Bakakry Fofana a community development assistant CDA resident in the village who is also the chairman of the steering committee underscored the importance of the day for the participating communities, Tostan Unicef and the Gambia government as twenty four communities pledged to abandon the practice of female genital cutting, early marriage and force marriage. This according to the steering committee chairman is one of the greatest achievements registered so far by the rural communities; noting that it materialised after an intensive three year community empowerment program jointly implemented by Unicef, Tostan and the Gambia government, on issues of democracy and good governance, human rights and responsibilities, problem solving, health and hygeine. He pointed out that the weekly cleaning exercise initiated by the Tostan intervention and adopted communities is complementing the effort of the department of state for health. Mr. Fofana while urging communities to sustain the project activities thanked Unicef for their generous support over the years making it possible to witness such a very important ceremony in the history of The Gambia and URR in particular. He also commended the executive director of Tostan International Madam Molly including popularly called Sukaina Njie in Senegal, for her unflinching support and dedication to the empowerment of African countries which he said cannot go unrecognized.
"In politics and sociology you reach a tipping point and once you've reached it, things change," says Min-whee Kang of the UN Children's Fund. "This is what we're aiming at to stop female genital mutilation and cutting in The Gambia."
But a strong attachment to the practice in the country means anti-FGM activists must combat the custom indirectly through focusing on improving girls' and women's health and education. Twenty-four community represenatives in Gambia's Upper River Region on 12 June signed a public declaration abandoning female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C), in the presence of government officials, village chiefs, women's groups and international development agencies. They were the first of 80 villages in the region all of them from the Mandinka or Fula ethnic groups where West African NGO Tostan, supported by UNICEF, are working to eliminate FGM/C.
'Snow' is a Human Rights Festival highlight
Kampala Mercy Naserian had a grand dream. The bright eyed 14-year-old wanted to become a lawyer and help her Masai people settle community disputes (criminal or civil).
At the age of 10 and in P.5, Naserian topped her class of 100 pupils and her teachers were sure she would fulfill her dream. But in 2005, Naserian was married off to a 69-year-old man. According to Naserian, the man gave her parents 45 heads of cattle.
"I thought it was for my older sister," she narrates, tears welling in her eyes. But when she learnt that the cows were her bride price, she sought advice from one of her educated cousins. "I told her I wanted to become an important person in my community to help other girls who have been oppressed by culture," she says.
Many men in the Masai community think of their daughters as a source of income. When a man comes to the home intending to marry the girl, he will bring the father 40 or 50 cows in exchange. The girl will then be circumcised first before she is given away.
Islamic scholars in The Gambia and Senegal are the latest to join gender and human rights activists in condemning Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a phenomenon that has generated protracted debate over the years.
The scholars noted that Muslims should stay healthy - physically and mentally - in order to perform the duty of worship that human beings are created for, arguing that any practice that may tamper with the security of the body or mind of man should be looked into.
These remarks were made by the scholars during presentations on the topic 'Harmful traditional practices (Female Genital Mutilation)', on Thursday, at the Sheraton Hotel in Brufut. According to Ebrahim Touray, second secretary general of the Gambia Supreme Islamic Council, Allah warned believers in Suratul Ahsab, verse 36 in the Holy Qu'ran, that they should desist from contradicting His commandments as well as the orders of his prophet, Muhammad (SAW).
Wassu Gambia Kafo, an international NGO, operating in the Gambia since 1999, has organized a three- day international forum on harmful traditional practices at the Sheraton Resort Hotel in Brufut. The forum began on the 5 of May and ends today the 7th Mary 2009.
Delivering her opening remarks, the vice President, Aja Isatou Njie Saidy has noted that the Gambia government discourages all harmful practices and health hazards mainly through public education/ sensitization through creating awareness of the harmful effects of it. She further noted that harmful traditional practices are happening in Africa and many parts of the world and the practices endanger the lives of women globally ranging from fattening, foot binding, early marriages, incest, tattooing, tribal marks, and food taboos to female genital mutilation. She dilated that the harmful effects of FGM/C informed by medical practitioners namely; complication with child birth, VVF and other long term health complications for women, violate the rights of girls and women to bodily integrity. She mentioned that Gambia is one of twenty eight (28) countries in Africa that are practicing FGM. Statistics has it; she noted that UNICEF cluster survey or mics 2007 show a prevalence of almost 78%. “This figure indicates that a lot more work needs to be done in the area of FGM/C” she said. Vice President Njie Saidy stated that, it is the Gambia’s intention to redress the issue through sensitization GIEC and also to take alternative ways to address this global problem and concern. “We now realize that it is indeed a deep rooted traditional practice that has been passed on from generation to another since the pharsant and or Nubian era or days”. She said.
Abibata Sanon, above, is one of the first women in West Africa to undergo the genital reconstruction procedure at a private clinic. Olivier Asselin for The National
Africa’s first clinic designated for the reconstruction of female genitalia will open in Bobo-Dialousso this year. The clinic will offer free reconstructive surgery to women from across West Africa.
About 70 per cent of Burkina Faso’s seven million women are victims of female genital mutilation (FGM), a deep-rooted practice in West Africa. The ritual, common in a stretch between Senegal and Benin, can cause complications such as serious infections, excessive bleeding and stillbirths.
The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices affecting The Health of Women and Children (GAMCOTRAP) is a grassroots women’s rights organization established in 1984 and affiliated to the Inter African Committee (IAC). Since then GAMCOTRAP has been involved in advocacy work to end FGM and Other Harmful Traditional practices inimical to the health and wellbeing of women and girl-children in the Gambia in partnership with the Ministry of Health.
Government’s partnership with GAMCOTRAP in the fight against female genital mutilation is through the Ministry of Health. To that effect a Memorandum of Understanding was signed since 2000 and this enabled GAMCOTRAP to work at the community level where health care providers are empowered with health effects of FGM to be included in their health talks. Similarly the Ministry of Health has in the past years provided secretarial support under the PHPNP project to strengthen the institutional capacity of GAMCOTRAP. Similarly, GAMCOTRAP has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of education since 1997 and a lot of work has been done through these partnerships at country level in terms of policy and social mobilization at community level.
THE woman at the centre of the alleged female genital mutilation (FGM) case has got new lawyers to fight her case.
Nigerian-born Pamela Izevbekhai is fighting a bid to deport her and her two daughters because of her fears they may be subjected to FGM.
Last month, it was revealed that documentation used to support her original claim to stay here had been forged. The lawyers who had fought her case up until then asked the Supreme Court to be allowed not to represent her any more.
The Sligo-based woman was told last month by Chief Justice John Murray to have new lawyers in place before May 28, when an application by the State to have her entire case dismissed will be heard. Ms Izevbekhai was not in court yesterday.
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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Female circumcision is called female genital mutilation (FGM) in Australia and it's a crime. Those performing it face a possible seven-year prison term and those who don't report it risk a stiff fine.
In Sydney's outer suburb of Auburn, there's a specialist FGM clinic that has been in operation for over 10 years and sees around 40 women a year. The typical patient is in her 20s, is about to wed, and was operated on by a village midwife in an African or Middle Eastern country when she was young. The clinic adopts the World Health Organization definition of FGM as a surgical procedure "involving partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons."
There is anecdotal evidence that the law is being broken and FGM is being performed in Australia. Ten doctors have reported being approached by parents looking to have it done.
The vast majority of Iraqi women face domestic violence on a regular basis and many commit suicide because of it, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
Iraq and the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan should take measures to stop violence against women, including honour killings and genital mutilation, the UN mission in Iraq, known as UNAMI, said in a regular report on human rights. "The sensitivity of Iraqi communities to issues concerning women is such that families are frequently not reporting to the authorities incidents of violence against women," it said.To "escape the cycle of violence", many women turned to suicide.
Iraq should "investigate incidents involving gender-based violence, in particular the so-called 'honour crimes' perpetrated against women, and take measures to ensure that persons found responsible for committing these crimes are held accountable and brought to justice", UNAMI said.
Nigerian woman Pamela Izevbekhai's case before the Supreme Court has been put back until May 28th.
She is challenging her deportation and that of her two daughters.
Earlier this month, her legal team applied to withdraw their representation of her, stating that they had received conflicting instructions from her which went to the root of the case.
It relates to whether her claim that she had a daughter who died from female genital mutilation in Nigeria is truthful or not.
Lawyers for the State said they had new evidence which, if correct, would show her case was based on a lie.
Belgian authorities will expel African girls who, after getting political refugee status for declaring that they were threatened with genital mutilation in their countries of origin, afterward, voluntarily returned to their countries to get excised, an official source told PANA here.
The Belgian police have undertaken investigations on over 20 suspected women from sub-Saharian Africa, who risk losing their rights of residence.
By order of the government, the police will demand these women to produce, at regular intervals, medical certificates showing that they have not undergone any genital mutilations, after being accepted as political refugees in Belgium.
Belgian law protects, at the political level, all women threatened with genital mutilation in their countries of origin.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) issued today its fourteenth report on the human rights situation in the country covering the period from July to December 2008. The report, produced in cooperation with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, notes that although the period covered was characterised by further improvements in security, the overall human rights situation in Iraq remains a matter of concern.
The report describes a range of human rights abuses and reiterates that security will be sustainable if additional steps are taken in order to strengthen the rule of law and address impunity. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq (SRSG) Staffan de Mistura, while recognizing various efforts by the Ministry of Human Rights, urged the Government of Iraq to take advantage of the improved security, stating: “This is an opportunity for Iraq to advance all aspects of the rule of law and human rights by further introducing legal reforms, strengthening the judiciary, improving the conditions of detention and enabling access to justice.”
Parliament
Members of Parliament have unanimously agreed to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), widely practiced in parts of the country, even before the FGM Bill is presented in the House for debate.
In a presentation by Kinkizi East MP Chris Byaromunsi mid last week on the dangers associated with FGM, pictures depicting physical and emotional pains women and girls undergo during genital mutilation process, left MPs frightened.
FGM is cultural obligation in some communities the main purpose of which is to satisfy men interests.
The presentation showed a woman feeling acute pain as she was being cut. It also depicted the apprehension women and girls go through before undergoing the exercise.
Besides, it demonstrated vividly the consequences of FGM such as future birth complications, permanent scars on the private part and the inability to control urine among others.
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In the year since Egypt outlawed female genital mutilation the government hasn't prosecuted a single case. Nonetheless, some activists say the law is a tool, among others, for gradually dismantling an ancient tradition. |
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CAIRO, Egypt (WOMENSENEWS)--This month, 10 villages in Niger, sponsored by UNICEF, pledged to end female genital mutilation--the traditional and widespread coming-of-age practice of cutting off all or part of a girl's clitoris--within their communities. Also this month, local chiefs in the northern Kambia district of Sierra Leone signed an agreement that girls should not undergo the ritual until the age of 18, so they can have a say in the matter. Unfortunately, progress has not come fast enough for some; a 7-year-old Kenyan girl bled to death in early April after being cut. |
High Court
Judgment was given by Mr Justice John Edwards on February 25th, 2009.
Judgment
There is sufficient evidence of the existence of state protection for those threatened with female genital mutilation (FGM) in Ghana to justify refusing a Ghanaian woman asylum.
The available country of origin information suggests that the weaknesses of the state protection system in Ghana is more due to a reluctance on the part of the general population in the northern part of the country to report incidents of FGM to the authorities than to an attitudinal problem on the part of the police.
Background
A mother and daughter fled Ghana in September 2005 and arrived in Ireland on September 22nd. The mother applied for asylum on her own behalf and that of her daughter, aged one.
The mother came from a village in the northern part of the country, but worked for many years as a hairdresser in Obuasi- Adansi. She had four children with her partner whom she married in September 2005.
Ever since God confirmed His covenant with Abraham through circumcision in Genesis 17, male circumcision has been a rite of passage among many cultures for males.
However, national director of Kids Alive in Kenya, Linda Mugo, and her team are trying to stop another rite of passage: the practice of female circumcision.
This practice can be damaging to young girls and cause female genital mutilation.
"In some cultures, they take the practice too far, and this is when it becomes female genital mutilation," Mugo said. She explained that the females are circumcised to force them to remain pure. They are also denied sexual pleasure, which forces them to remain faithful to their husbands.
"These girls have been forced into female circumcision simply because it's a way of life where they come from," Mugo said.
Women are subjected to female genital mutilation because they are likely to bring shame to their families, said a Muslim prayer leader Friday during an awareness conference.
But Imam Farooq Aboelzahab does not personally condone the act of circumcision on women because he believes the procedure hurts them and takes away a part of their dignity.
"This is a very touching and hard issue," he said. "The concept of shame has deprived us of a vital knowledge."
Female genital mutilation (FGM) dates back as early as 450 BC and is considered a cross societal, cultural and religious practice, affecting more than 130 million women worldwide. Typically the procedure occurs on girls 4 to 12 years of age and is very popular in parts of Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.
Four-year-old Shwen screams during her circumcision in Suleimaniyah, in Iraq's Kurdistan.
Golnaz Esfandiari wrote about this issue in March:
In the Kurdish areas of Iran and Iraq, supporters of the practice say it controls women's sexual desires and makes them "clean." Food prepared by uncircumcised women, for example, can be considered unacceptable.
No precise figures are available. But women's rights activists estimate the number of mutilated women in Kurdish cities and villages is high.
Parvin Zabihi, a member of a women's rights group based in Iran's Kurdistan called the Committee Against Sexual Violence, has researched female circumcision in the Kurdish-populated areas in Iran.
"One of my friends carried out some research in a classroom at a school in the Piranshahr area. Out of the 40 students, 38 were local -- and out of those 38, 36 had been circumcised. We came across many cases [of FGM] wherever we went to investigate," Zabihi says.
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| © UNICEF Niger/2009/ Bisin |
| Communities publicly vow to end female genital mutilation/cutting in Kiki village, western Niger. |
Ten villages in western Niger have decided to put an end to female genital mutilation or cutting (also known as FGM/C), publicly calling all inhabitants in the Tillabery region to give up this practice, which threatens girls’ lives.
“We have decided to definitively put an end to female genital mutilation in our villages and to continue sensitizing neighbouring villages so they also give up the practice,” declared M. Babobou Pana, leader of one of the villages.
Ten villages in western Niger have publicly denounced the practice of female genital mutilation, according to a UNICEF report.
Representatives from the West African nation's Tillabery region have called for all people living there to end the practice, the report said.
"We have decided to definitively put an end to female genital mutilation in our villages and to continue sensitizing neighboring villages so they also give up the practice," said N. Babobou Pana, leader of one of the villages.
Heading the call was Kompoa Tamkpa, a former traditional practitioner.
"I have given up the bad work, because it does not bring anything to our village," she said. "We thought it was good for women, that it was going to bring them success. But we found out that it does not bring anything."
Female genital mutilation, which is also called female circumcision, is commonly performed on young girls without anesthesia, and is extremely painful and traumatizing, UNICEF said.
The European Parliament has adopted a resolution calling for the practice of female circumcision and genital mutilation to be made unlawful in all European Union countries through laws and administrative provisions, prevention systems, and education and social measures, and in particular, wide dissemination of information regarding the existing protection mechanisms available. The resolution also insisted that women and girls who are granted asylum in the EU because of the threat of female genital mutilation should have regular check-ups by health authorities and/or doctors as a preventive measure so as to protect them from any threat of mutilation being carried out subsequently in the EU.
MEP Claire Gibault of France, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) spokeswoman on the Women’s Committee, who was instrumental in steering through this resolution, said: “I am pleased that the European Parliament, by adopting this report, decided to give refugee status to women and young girls who risk genital mutilation in their home country. It is reasonable and responsible to study this on a case by case basis even if there is only a slight glimmer of evidence.
 Photo: Bryna Hallam/IRIN  |
| Ceremonial knives owned by members of the women's Bondo society |
An agreement stating that girls under 18 will not undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) in Sierra Leone was recently signed by village chiefs and other community leaders, including women who perform FGM. The agreement affects the Kambia district, which is in the northernwestern part of the country.
At puberty, the majority of girls in Sierra Leone are initiated into the Bondo Society, a secret society of women that uses circumcision to initiate new members abducted the women. Gloria Bella, of Sierra Leone's Human Rights Commission, told IRIN, "community leaders feel that [initiation] is their culture, they feel offended by lobbyists, and don’t listen…We need to listen to their fears and try to allay them, and make sure they know we are not coming in to challenge traditional authority." John Marah, who works against FGM in Sierra Leone through local NGOs, also told IRIN "We are against just the cutting, not the training. You can still have a rite of passage. It's just a change of mentality."
THE NIGERIAN government told a UN committee last year that the prevalence rate of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the country was 32 per cent, and that in some regions the figure was as high as 65 per cent.
This contradicts remarks by the Nigerian ambassador to Ireland this week that FGM was a “non-existent issue” in her country.
Insisting that asylum seeker Pamela Izevbekhai and her two daughters were safe to return to Nigeria, Kemafo Nonyerem Chikwe said: “FGM happens to be an ancient practice that is no longer in the consciousness of Nigerians. It is something that is completely insignificant in the present Nigerian culture.”
However, in response to queries last May from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Nigerian government cited the findings of a survey carried out by its own National Bureau of Statistics in 2006.
(R-L) Nigerian woman Pamela Izevbekhai,daughters, Jemima and Naomi, with the Mayor of Sligo Veronica Cawley Photo: IRISHTIMES.COM
The government of Ireland has decided to deport Pamela Izevbekhai, a Nigerian woman seeking political asylum in Ireland.
According to a report by The Sunday Times, the government has refused to offer Pamela Izevbekhai a deal that would allow her to stay in Ireland with her two daughters in return for dropping her legal challenge against her deportation.
Ten villages in western Niger have decided to end the practice of female genital mutilations, including female circumcision, publicly calling inhabitants in the Tillabιry region to abandon such a practice which is dangerous to the lives of girls, women and babies, according to a press release from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), made available to PANA Tuesday.
According to the release, the prevalence of female genital mutilation/female circumcision (FGM/FC) in Niger fell considerably between 1998 and 2006, from 5 to 2.2 per cent.
However, this figure masks significant regional disparities: the regions of Tillabery, Diffa, and Niamey are mostly concerned by this practice.
About 66 per cent of women living in Gourma, in the western part of Niger near Mali, are circumcised.
"UNICEF hails this statement to abandon female circumcision, considered by Niger authorities as a serious violation of women's and girls' rights," said Akhil Iyer, UNICEF country representative in Niger.
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| (NHRC-Qatar) |
THE Family Court has for the first time intervened to prevent a father from taking his nine-year-old daughter back to Africa to have her circumcised.
Family Court judge Paul Cronin ordered the man, who is an Australian citizen of African descent, to surrender his passport and that of his daughter.
Justice Cronin banned the father from "removing or attempting to remove the child, born in March 1999, from the commonwealth of Australia".
It is not clear whether the order was successful, since the man, known only as Mr Abbas, failed to appear in court.
Female circumcision, also known as genital mutilation, has been a crime in most Australian states since the late 1990s.
The law makes it clear that it is an offence not only to circumcise one's own daughter, or any other female child, but also to encourage or enable any other person to do it; or to leave the country for the purpose of having it done.
Amid high demand from victims of female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) for clitoral reconstruction surgery available in Burkina Faso, the procedure remains unaffordable for most.
“The demand is very high in Burkina Faso and from neighbouring countries,” said Michel Akotionga, one of the first gynaecologists in Burkina Faso to perform the reconstructive surgery. “Last week two women from Cτte d’Ivoire came for the clitoral surgery,” he added.
Pioneered by the French urologist Pierre Foldes when he worked in Burkina Faso with victims of FGM/C, the surgery has been offered in Burkina Faso since 2006.
Since 2001 975 women have had state-funded genital repair surgery, which did not include clitoral reconstruction, according to the National Commission against Excision (CNLPE). The general surgery entails repairing the vaginal opening to alleviate menstrual and urination pain but does not reconstruct the clitoris.
A woman was yesterday arrested after her seven-year-old daughter bled to death after female circumcision.
It is female circumcision season in Wajir District, despite concerted efforts to discourage the practice.
"She was brought to the hospital more than 24 hours after circumcision. By then it was too late to save her life," said Mrs Ardo Mohammed, a nurse.
She said the girl underwent infibulation, the worst form of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) common in North Eastern Province.
Police intercepted family members planning to bury the girl. An elderly circumciser was also arrested after a brief search.
Deputy OCPD Job Lesinayu said they would be charged with murder.
But relatives want the two released, arguing the death was pre-ordained.
Ritual’s defence
"No parent would want to see her child die. At least the police should allow her to mourn her daughter," a former councillor, Mr Kunow Ibrahim, said.
A NIGERIAN woman who is facing deportation used forged documentation to back up claims that her first child died after being subjected to female genital mutilation, a garda investigation has been told.
Inquiries by the garda national immigration unit in Nigeria have uncovered apparent discrepancies in the case presented by Pamela Izevbekhai to the High Court and Supreme Court in Dublin and to the European Court of Human Rights.
A Nigerian obstetrician has dismissed a document, allegedly signed by him, as a forgery. He also rejected Mrs Izevbekhai's claim that she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, in February 1993 and that the girl died on July 16, 1994, following female genital mutilation.
The findings represent a potentially serious blow to the prospects of Mrs Izevbekhai overturning a Supreme Court decision supporting her deportation in her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
MINISTER FOR Health Mary Harney is examining the possibility of introducing specific legislation to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), according to the Department of Health.
A spokesman for the department said legal advice obtained in 2004 indicated that the practice was covered by the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997.
The spokesman said the advice “strongly indicated that female genital mutilation would constitute an offence under the . . . Act”. A conclusion has not yet been reached as to whether further legislation is necessary.
“The Minister is in the process of examining the possibility of introducing specific legislation to ban female genital mutilation in the context of UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s (UNCRC) recommendations,” he said. The UN had urged Ireland to prohibit the practice by law, he said.
Nigeria's minister for justice has offered to testify in an Irish court against Nigerian citizens who claim political asylum on the grounds they will be forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) if deported.
Michael Aondoakaa, a senior figure in the Nigerian government who is also the African country’s attorney-general, made the offer to Conor Lenihan, the integration minister, at a meeting held at the justice ministry in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, last Friday, according to a memo seen by The Sunday Times.
Aondoakaa is thought to have been referring to the case of Pamela Izevbekhai, the Nigerian woman who has appealed against her deportation, on the grounds that her two daughters, Naomi, 8, and Jemima, 6, will be forced to suffer the fate of their sister, Elizabeth, who she says died after FGM in 1994.
Izevbekhai has fought a highprofile legal battle to stay in Ireland since November 2005 after her application for asylum was rejected by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. She appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg last year. It has yet to decide if it will hear the case.
NIGERIAN mother Pamela Izevbekhai's fight to be allowed to stay here because she said she feared her two daughters would be subjected to female genital mutilation if she was deported has become a headline story over the past two years.
She came here at the end of January 2005 and immediately claimed asylum status. Ms Izevbekhai said she arrived in Ireland from Nigeria via the Netherlands, and had been waived through without a visa by the immigration authorities at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.
But immigration officials say there is no evidence she was in the Netherlands and suggest her version of her movements would be highly unlikely. Her application was fully processed and she was informed in November 2005 that she was to be deported. Her case has been fought through the courts since she was arrested in early January 2006. Officials disclosed that she applied for a UK visa in September 2003 and was issued with a multi-visit visa for six months.
In Cataluρa alone, 4,846 girls under the age of 19 at risk of enduring this barbaric ritual practice
THANKS to the efforts of Cataluρa’s regional police force, Mossos d’Esquadra, during 2008, 104 girls living in the region have been spared from having to go through the suffering caused by female genital mutilation, a practice that is carried out mainly in African and Asian countries. Officers have prevented 18 from going ahead so far this year. Since 2000, the Mossos have made contact with families of girls whom they consider may be at risk of undergoing this procedure, considering their country of origin and the fact that they may not have abandoned this type of tradition. They explain the dangers it involves, and attempt to dissuade them from returning to their country of origin for the ritual to be performed or from having it carried out by clandestine witch-doctors residing in Spain. The parents are also informed that in Spain, this practice is considered a crime punishable by law.
23/03/2009:
The NHS is offering to reverse FGM/cutting amid concerns that there are 500
victims a year with no prosecutions.
Despite having been outlawed in 1985, 'female circumcision' is still practised
in British African communities, in some cases on girls as young as five. Police
have been unable to bring a single prosecution even though they suspect that
community elders are being flown from the Horn of Africa to carry out the
procedures.
The NHS is to advertise free operations to reverse FGM/cutting.
The advertisement
will appear from next month on a Somali satellite TV station much viewed in
Britain. It features Juliet Albert [FGMNet.org: Related links: Juliet Albert, and BBC interview on reversing FGM], a midwife who does the reverse operations,
and promises, in English and Somali, confidentiality for victims of female
genital mutilation.
12 years ago today, the US passed a law banning female genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision. To mark the anniversary, protesters marched in Washington DC to protest that male circumcision is still legal.
These activists call themselves "intactivists", and are pushing for an end to public funding for circumcision. So far, 16 states, including Washington State, have banned Medicaid funding for the purposes of circumcision. According to the International Coalition for Genital Integrity, state governments can save $1 million a year by cutting public funding for circumcision.
Circumcision is an increasingly controversial topic in the US. In 2006, 56% of male infants were circumcised in the US, meaning the foreskin is removed from the penis in an elective surgery, usually performed in the first 24 hours of life. This rate has been going down in the US. Outside the US, circumcision is not routinely practiced in any other Western industrialized country.
A Kenyan diocese is giving girls a chance to grow up without participating in the traditional tribal rite of female circumcision, a practice that carries the risk of disease or death.
Catholic workers in the Diocese of Meru developed "An Alternative Rite of Passage," pulling elements from the traditional rite referred to as female genital mutilation.
In other areas of Kenya, programs to stop the circumcisions were tried and failed. Meru diocesan officials decided to begin slowly. They began by talking to each group of what they described as "stakeholders" in the practice and educating them about the dangers of female circumcision.
Joseph M'Eruaki M'Uthari, the diocesan social development director, and Martin Koome, program coordinator, said they spoke with community leaders, members of the councils of elders, parents and the girls themselves to make sure they knew the diocese did not condemn the people's culture.
When Zarah was 7 she saw her older sister being pinned to the ground by a room full of women. Then she heard her sister scream and quickly realised that she was next in line to have her genitals mutilated.
Unfortunately for Zarah, now 33, there was nowhere to run in her aunt’s home in Somalia. Both she and her sister, then 10, had been taken there by their mother for a “holiday”. “When that happened to me, I immediately lost all trust in my mother and I think that hasn’t changed to this day,” Zarah said. “In fact, I’ve lost trust in both my parents because my father was also aware of what was going to happen to us.”
Zarah said that the psychological scars were worse than the pain. She has nightmares, and relationships have been ruined by her fear of intimacy.
She grew up in a Kenyan village where she had to walk 10 miles a day to fetch water and dreamed of escaping to become a teacher.
Now, 15 years after moving to Scotland and becoming a prominent campaigner for African women's rights, Khadija Coll has found an entirely new platform: television soap River City.
Somalian-born Ms Coll, a former finalist for the Scotswoman of the Year award, run by The Herald's sister paper the Evening Times for her campaigning work against female circumcision, is delighted by the enthusiastic response she has had to her first ever acting role, as Congolese asylum seeker Makemba in the BBC Scotland soap. She hopes it will signal the start of more appearances in TV drama for similar characters.
Makemba, who featured in the episode that aired on Tuesday night, is an asylum seeker from war-torn Congo who is taken in for a couple of nights by Shirley (Barbara Rafferty). Makemba's heart-rending story, of how she has not seen her son since she was separated from him in an African refugee camp, deeply moves Shirley's flatmate Viv (Louise Jameson) - and appears to have had the same effect on viewers.
It was reported last week that Irish Minister for Health Mary Harney is examining the possibility of introducing specific legislation to ban female genital mutilation (FGM) in Ireland. The director of the network of African women living in Ireland, Akina Dada wa Africa (AkiDwA), Salome Mbugua, said she would welcome such legislation but it “must include the principle of extraterritorially to reduce the risk to immigrant girls and women being taken abroad for the purpose of genital mutilation”.
Where exactly does female genital mutilation occur? While female genital cutting or mutilation (FGC/FGM) in some African countries receives attention, the same cannot be said about a related practice in Western countries, according to Ronan Conroy, associate professor at the Department of Epidemiology at the Royal College of Surgeons. Given the growth in cosmetic plastic surgery of vaginoplasty and vaginal rejuvenation, he asks:
"How can we judge African societies as being barbaric and not condemn equally the cutting of women in the West solely to fulfil male masturbation fantasies?"
Conroy is the speaker at a public meeting on the subject this Wednesday at 7 PM at the Galway One World Centre.
FGM is partial or total removal of external female genitalia or other injury to female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Conroy caused controversy with an editorial in the British Medical Journal in 2006. He pointed out that female circumcision was practised in Europe and America in the 19th century and arguing that Western medicine was driving the advance of FGM by promoting the fear that a "natural biological variation is a defect". He wrote that:
"The high moral tone with which those in richer countries criticise female genital mutilation would be more credible if we in the rich North had not practised it and did not continue to practise it."
Latest reports indicate that approximately 500 girls a year have their genitals mutilated in Britain. It may come as no surprise to the knowledgeable political and cultural observer that the poor victims of these crimes are not from Christian or Jewish families, nor from Hindu or Buddhist ones. They are to be found predominantly in Muslim households. And being Muslim is a status that gives the victims, and all future victims, the unfortunate distinction of being part of a group that society can’t help, because the lib-Left has made sure that the Muslim culture can never be criticized and, therefore, that its sufferers can never be protected or saved. Fact: female circumcision is illegal in Britain. But this doesn't mean that British law enforcement is doing anything about this crime that Muslim communities are perpetrating against their little girls. The reality: five hundred girls’ genitals are mutilated every year in Britain. Not one arrest. Not one incarceration.
The once prevalent custom of female genital mutilation among Israel's Bedouin population in the Negev has virtually disappeared, researchers said.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev professor of psychiatry Robert H. Belmaker said female circumcision, also referred to as "female cutting," is still practiced in many cultures around the world and is a culturally entrenched procedure -- and unless a prohibition of the practice is accompanied by educational efforts, the effectiveness of legal action is low.
In 1995, Belmaker studied the Bedouin of Southern Israel, a heterogeneous group of tribes for which female genital mutilation was a common practice. At the time, a large number of women said that they planned to continue the custom, which involved a ritual incision but no tissue removal, and would perform it on their daughters.
Fifteen years later, researchers decided to re-survey the Bedouin population. They again focused on women in the tribes previously reported to have performed this practice.
Re: Memorandum on the Repeal of Article (13) in the Child Act, 2009 In this crucial moment of the history of our beloved Sudan, we would like to address you with great hope that this memorandum will meet your full attention along with your immediate response, we all expect from you a positive response to this memorandum as it presents fair and objective claims relevant to the protection and safeguarding of the heath of women and girls, and the protection and promotion of their rights.
The Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is one of most hazardous practices that endanger the bodily integrity, physical and psychological health of women and girls in Sudan. According to the 2006 Sudan Household Survey (SHHS) implemented by the Ministry of Health and the Central Bureau of Statistics, the practice of FGM among girl Children in Sudan amounts to %69.4. This aggravating fact was encountered by sincere efforts led by the Sudanese educated, intellectuals, enlightened religious men, Sufi sects since the era of Shaiekh Hamad Wad Umm Maryoum. Also, the non governmental and voluntary efforts to eliminate the FGM practice continued. Realizing the gravity of the FGM and its negative health, psychological, economical and social consequences, the State has adopted the National Strategy for the Elimination of FGM 208-2018 in partnership with the civil society organizations, the UN Agencies and the specialized international organizations.
To catch a ride to Nairobi Michael Ole Sayo, a 24-year-old Maasai living in Kenya's Rift Valley, negotiates fields of volcanic rock boulders, spiky thorn trees, and lions.
These days, however, the more immediate threat is one that here on the Rift Valley floor should seem remote. The world financial crisis is impeding funding for the projects he has initiated to help the Maasai community.
"It is a new problem," says the 6-foot three (1.9 m) tribesman who carries a cellphone and memory stick rather than the traditional spear: "One I'm not sure how we can fight."
One of a generation of mobile young Maasai as comfortable in the internet cafes of downtown Nairobi as in their parents' daub huts, Ole Sayo, who has secondary education and a fistful of diplomas, has given up job opportunities in the city to stay and work with the community.
The female journalist was snatched by members of a secret society, forcibly stripped and made to parade naked through the streets. It might sound like an atrocity from the time when Sierra Leone was ripped apart by a bloody civil war, but in fact the public humiliation was exacted in the diamond-rich eastern town of Kenema just this month. The woman's alleged crime was reporting on female genital mutilation.
While the attack was condemned by media watchdogs as "disgraceful behaviour worthy of a bygone age", one woman who was not surprised was Rugiatu Turay. When she was 12 Ms Turay was stolen away by family members and underwent what some politely refer to as "circumcision". She calls it "torture". For the past six years, she has been waging a war against the practice, which many in Sierra Leone, including senior politicians, see as an initiation rite.
It took a death threat to stop Abdi’s wife from circumcising their two daughters, aged 2 and 4. She called him from Somalia while on holiday to say she wanted to carry out the procedure.
Abdi, a London-based Somali, said that his wife’s eagerness to circumcise their daughters was fuelled by a combination of religious, cultural and tribal pressures placed on her after she took the girls to Somalia for a brief summer break last year.
But he refused to be swayed, despite his wife’s argument that the girls would improve their chances of attracting a good husband because they would be perceived as being more traditional and pure.
“I told my wife and her mother who was really eager to have my girls circumcised that if they dare do it, I will kill my wife,” he said. “And I also said I will take the girls to the GP when they return from Somalia to make sure that they didn’t have it done to them.”
Britain's National Health Service says it is offering reverse female circumcision services for women mutilated by circumcision procedures.
The Times of London reported Monday that NHS officials will advertise the free medical procedures next month to enable women whose genitals were mutilated by circumcision procedures to receive medical attention.
The advertisement is scheduled to air in both English and Somali on a Somali satellite TV station that is popular in Britain.
A Foundation for Women's Health, Research and Development study found that more than 7,000 girls in Britain once faced a high risk of genital mutilation as a result of circumcision procedures.
Such procedures range from the removal of all external vagina parts to the removal of a woman's clitoris, The Times said.
The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has called for a universal declaration of war on sexist policies that had kept millions of women in Asia, Africa, Latin America and even Europe the source of cheap labor, even as chattel, as the economic crisis threatens to impoverish 22 million women worldwide.
In its latest report, "Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009, Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability," UNIFEM stressed that the conditions of women in many countries would worsen as the financial meltdown deepens, with demand for durables hitting rock bottom and consumers worldwide hold on to their cash and spend only for basic needs.
The same report noted that women actually are in the majority in many countries dependent on agriculture, tending cattle and vegetable patches as men seek regular wages or are compelled to work overseas for higher pay.
It is not uncommon to hear a woman screaming in the middle of the night in many of our neighbourhoods. Yet no one will ever go to the rescue of the lonely voice.
Perhaps she is being beaten up just because she did not open the door in time for her husband who is just returning home at 3.00 a.m. drunk.
That is their business; we are used to it. Not so? In fact, we even comfort ourselves that it might be safer not to `interfere`.
The International Women`s Day is observed every 8th of March each year but this year`s theme was aimed at getting all of us to raise our collective voices against violence on our mothers and sisters. (Perhaps we should appropriately have screamed together in the dead of the night? Just a thought…)
On this day, women worldwide join their voices to fight gender inequalities of which they mainly are victims.
Violence against women prevails everywhere - from the walls of Masaki to the shacks of Magomeni. Rihanna, the American R&B superstar has recently brought the discussion back about rich wives (or girlfriends) who are battered by their spouses.
Tahereh vividly remembers the day in her native town of Marivan in Iran when she was circumcised with a razor, leaving her with physical and psychological pain that endures nearly 45 years later.
"We were five sisters --we didn't really understand what was happening. My mother just said that someone was coming to our house," says 48-year-old Tahereh, who is one of many women who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) in Iranian Kurdistan.
"Then they took all of us -- we were 2, 3, 4 years old -- and the operation was done," says Tahereh, who asked that her real name not be used.
FGM, defined as the intentional alteration or injury of female genital organs for nonmedical reasons, is common in many northern African countries as well as some places in Asia and the Middle East.
But rights activists and NGO workers say the practice, also known as female circumcision, is also widespread in Iraq's and Iran's Kurdish regions.
Fine Gael MEP Colm Burke has said Ireland needs to introduce legislation to criminalise the practice of female genital mutilation.
Speaking in advance of International Women's Day Mr Burke said: "Women should be safe from female genital mutilation (FGM), and measures need to be put in place to address the needs of women and girls who are at risk."
Burke recognised Ireland's recent commitment - as one of 15 EU Member States - to launch a national action plan on FGM.
"It is estimated that more than 2,500 women living in Ireland have undergone FGM. The Irish plan highlights the risks FGM poses to women and girls, both in Ireland and internationally, and sets out policy goals to address its detrimental effects.
"The enactment of a law to place an outright ban on FGM is critical to the elimination of this damaging practice in Ireland. Such a law would send out a clear signal to potential practitioners of this tradition that FGM is wholly unacceptable in Irish society.
Despite various efforts by the government and non-governmental organizations to alert the public on the dangers of female genital mutilation (FGM), the practice is still being carried out in some parts of Tanga Region, it has been observed.
Random interviews conducted in Kilindi District, Tanga Region, FGM is being carried out secretly in some villages which can hardly be reached by the non governmental organisations or government officials.
According to Pagwi Ward Executive Officer Josephat Paul, however the villagers were gradually becoming aware of the dangers of FGM.
The African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) through its Kilindi-based Nomadic Youth Sexual Reproductive Health project has been in the forefront in sensitising the residents.
He said that at first it was hard to change people`s notion about FGM, a practice they have been carrying out for hundreds of years, but were beginning to understand the dangers of the practice with time.
The NHS is to advertise free operations to reverse female circumcisions, with experts warning that each year more than 500 British girls have their genitals mutilated.
Despite having been outlawed in 1985, female circumcision is still practised in British African communities, in some cases on girls as young as 5. Police have been unable to bring a single prosecution even though they suspect that community elders are being flown from the Horn of Africa to carry out the procedures.
The advertisement will appear from next month on a Somali satellite TV station much viewed in Britain. It features Juliet Albert, a midwife who does the reverse operations, and promises, in English and Somali, confidentiality for victims of female genital mutilation.
The advertisement was expected to help to undermine demand for girls to be circumcised, and to popularise the reversal procedure, Ms Albert said. Thousands of such operations have been carried out at specialist clinics and hospitals around Britain and demand is growing slowly.
In villages across Africa, old women suspected of witchcraft are hacked to death, while young girls are mutilated to preserve their virginity. But attitudes are changing and thousands of lives are being saved. Johann Hari reports from Kenya and Tanzania.
Across Africa, a war is being waged on women but we are refusing to hear the screams. Over the past fortnight, I have travelled into the secretive shadow world that mutilates millions of African women at the beginning of their lives, and at the end. As girls, they face having their genitalia sliced out with razors, to destroy their "filthy" sexuality and keep them "pure". As old women, they face being hacked to death as "witches", blamed for every virus and sickness blowing across the savannah.
For decades, we have not wanted to know, because it sounded too much like the old colonialist claims of African "primitivism", used as an excuse by our ancestors to pillage the continent's resources. Our bad memories stop us hearing their bad experiences. But today, a rebellion of African women has begun, in defence of their own bodies, and their own freedom. They are asking for our support, and receiving it from Comic Relief and the tens of thousands of people raising money for them tomorrow. This is the story of the great African feminist fightback and how you can be part of it.
Kigali Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), as a practice has been in existence for centuries and has deep cultural roots. The expression "Female Genital Mutilation" received greater attention in the 1970s to give it a clear distinction from male circumcision due to of its gravity.
Female genital mutilation includes a range of practices involving the complete or partial removal or alteration of the external genitalia for non-medical reasons. It was adopted by the UN in 1991 under recommendations from the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Between 100 and 140 million women and girls around the world have undergone some form of FGM.
Statistics from UNDP, UNICEF, WHO give varying estimates of the number of girls who undergo this painful practice and give a range of between 2 to 3 million.
The theme of this year's International Women's Day was women and men united to end violence against women and girls. Reports of violence against women and girls are on the rise in Senegal, and outreach workers say there could not have been a better theme.
Violence against women and girls in Senegal does not just refer to domestic violence and rape.
Women's groups are also fighting long-standing traditions of polygamy, female circumcision and the forced marriage of girls as young as nine years old. It is a battle they say is made more difficult by traditional Senegalese society and a lack of resources.
Siggil Jigιen is a network of 17 organizations that promote women's rights and fight violence against women in Senegal.
The group is based in Dakar, but has recently extended its activities to Kolda, Matam and Tamba, three cities where they have noticed spikes in violence.
Irish candidates for this summer’s European elections are backing a campaign to end female genital mutilation in Europe, launched to mark International Women’s Day today.
Amnesty International’s campaign calls for the adoption of a definitive strategy to end the practice and to provide protection to women and girls who flee their countries for fear of being mutilated.
FGM is practised in 28 African countries and in some parts of Asia and the Middle East. The European Parliamentary Committee on Women’s Rights claims that around 500,000 women in Europe have been subjected to it. ‘‘Over 2,500 women living in Ireland have survived genital mutilation,” said Amnesty Ireland programmes director Noeleen Hartigan.
On Sunday 8 March, 2009, the world celebrated the International Women's Day.
It is a day that offers the world the opportunity to reflect on the status of women, with the objectives of highlighting their contributions, achievements as well as their limitations in terms of promotion of gender equality and empowerment at all levels.
In marking this very important day, very important messages have been delivered by prominent people. The Daily Observer herein reproduces the messages from The Gambia's vice president, Aja Dr Isatou Njie-Saidy; the US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton; the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon; and the Female Lawyers' Association of The Gambia (FLAG).
Vice president Aja Dr Isatou Njie-Saidy
Goodwill message on the occasion of the International Women's Day, March 7th 2009, by H.E. the vice president and Secretary of State for Women's Affairs, Dr. Ajaratou Isatou Njie-Saidy.
Theme: "Women and men united to end violence against women and girls"
A lot has been said about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Many people argue that unless a girl has this procedure done, she is not a woman and that removal of the practice would lead to the demise of their culture.
But what has been the role of men in perpetuating FGM? Can we start to give FGM a male face and work around boys and men’s selfishness and cultural myths that perpetuate it?
It is important to demystify the myth that unless a girl has this procedure done, she is not a woman. Some view the clitoris and the labia as male parts on a female body, thus removal of these parts enhances femininity of the girl.
The practice raises human rights issues because it is girls aged four to ten who are Circumcised. Some Sabin men believe that unless a woman has undergone this procedure she is unclean and will not be allowed to handle food and water.
Much has been said and continue to be said about Female Genital
Mutilation (FGM). This is a practice which includes the removal or the
alteration of the female genitalia. In simple words, it is the removal
of a young girl’s clitoris and often all external genitalia. That
sounds horrible, but that’s exactly what happens. The practice is
widespread in Africa and the Middle East.
According World Health Organisation, between 100 and 140 million
girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of
FGM. In Africa alone, about three million girls are at risk for FGM
annually
This practice is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.
The Protocol on the Rights of Women, adopted in Maputo by Member States of the African Union in 2003 which entered into force on 25th November 2005 condemns FGM.
This piece is partly a response to Mr. Donald Georgestone’s very misleading and uninformed piece in Cocorioko and other online outlets, calling for a ban Bondo and by extension Female circumcision. What is a little despicable is the reproduction of the untruth used by Western propaganda machinery to make his argument.
This piece will also disagree with Mr. Yankuba Kai-Samba who said children below eighteen years should not be initiated. This is the classic age of consent argument westerners have consistently used to eradicate African cultures they do not understand.
In the
end I would argue that we should respect the rights of Sierra Leonean
women to make decisions with respect to their “secret society”.
Let
me start by stating that the average westerner since the advent of
their contacts with Africans has been fascinated with African
sexuality. There are myths and legends about the sexual prowess of the
African male and how the women are promiscuous.
