April 11, 2011
Nairobi Star- allAfrica.com
Hussein Salesa
The government has been urged to establish anti-Female Genital Mutilation clubs in schools to combat the outdated cultural practices in pastoral communities in Northern Kenya.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.
He said the fight against the practice could only be won if the government, NGOs and private sectors jointly work out modalities to come up with clubs that advocate against it.
The coordinator noted that there was need to undertake a comprehensive research on FGM among the practicing communities in Kenya adding that the practice was not cultural neither religious.
