UNICEF and partners aim to end harmful practices towards children and women in Guinea-Bissau

October 4, 2011
UNICEF


CANQUEBO, Guinea-Bissau, 4 October 2011 - Thanks to the intervention of the NGO Tostan, whose ongoing actions are helping to change long-held erroneous attitudes, customs, and traditions, the inhabitants of Canquebo village can now rest assured that the days of harmful practices towards women and children are numbered.

With additional support from UNICEF and UNFPA, such human rights violations as early and forced marriage, lack of girls’ education, absence of  birth registration, and female genital mutilation/circumcision are finally becoming a thing of the past in Canquebo.

Indicator of change

Mariama Seide, coordinator of the Community Management Committee, recently commented on the initiative to end these customs. "We are aware of the negative consequences of involuntary and early marriage," she said. "Now the girl is asked whether or not she agrees to the husband chosen. If she refuses, then the family is forced to accept her position.”

Domestic violence has also been common among couples in Canquebo. Women would be routinely beaten by their husbands and forced into silent submission, unable to attend community meetings and have their voices heard.

"Just for me to be here speaking to you is a strong indicator of change,” said Ms. Seide with a smile. “This is the result of the profound work undertaken by the NGO Tostan in our community.”

Focus on education

A major factor spurring the positive change is education. Queba Dindima Seide, the head of the Canquebo community, highlighted the importance of literacy, stating that all the women in the community are able to read and write.

This focus on education extends to the children in the community as well. Rather than labouring in the crop fields during cashew season – as was common in the past – the village youth now attend school normally.

"Many children didn’t go to school and some even abandoned school altogether,” said Seide Manque, a young member of the Community Management Committee. “However thanks to awareness-raising undertaken by Tostan, with support from UNICEF and UNFPA, the parents learned about children’s right to education, and over time all children returned to school.”

A positive impact

In addition to the efforts being made to educate their community, the issue of birth registration is also being addressed. Now children are being registered soon after their birth, as the community has been made aware that every child has the right to a name and nationality.

The community’s spiritual leader is also happy with the way the village has improved in recent times and stressed that Tostan, UNICEF and UNFPA’s interventions have made a decidedly positive impact on the lives of all the villagers – particularly women and children.

To read the full report on the UNICEF website, click here

Doctors, West African women who relocated to NYC speak out against forced female circumcision

May 6, 2011
NY Daily News
Heidi Evans

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.

While female genital cutting (FGC) is recognized as a human rights violation around the world affecting 140 million women, the practice is receiving increasing focus here in New York City, where West African immigrants have come in growing numbers.

Harlem is affected in particular as it is home to a large population of women from FCG-practicing countries, such as Mali, Guinea, the Ivory Coast and even Egypt.

Many of these women seek Ob-Gyn care at Harlem Hospital Center. And their children get their checkups there.

"I have this conversation with all parents who are taking their female children back to their countries for a first-time visit," said Dr. Benjamin Aubey, a pediatrician at Harlem Hospital.

"Many of the mothers break down in tears over their own experience, and want their daughters to be left intact, but they feel pressure from elders back home. I explain there are bad health outcomes. I don't want it happening to these children."

The practice involves partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the genital organs for nonmedical reasons.

Girls as old as 12 are held down and anesthetics are not used during the cutting.

Doctors say long-term health complications are numerous, including difficulty in urinating, sexual pain, recurrent vaginal infection, not to mention hemorrhaging during the process.

Of the many misconceptions around the issue, one is that it doesn't happen among educated families within countries that subject girls to cutting.

Dr. Crista Johnson, a national expert who works with refugees in Arizona, told the audience that a well-educated midwife from an urban African capital recently explained it to her this way: "My mother-in-law drives the show. If I don't have it done to my baby, I can't go home."

Djoumel Diallo, who manages a pharmacy in Harlem, said the procedure she underwent at 3 months old has caused her unimaginable physical and emotional pain. Childbirth was excruciating, she said, until her third birth which was a C-section.

Diallo, 39, immigrated to Manhattan from Mali in 1995. She is married with three children. "All boys," she said. "Thank God."

Ouattara, who works in a Harlem salon braiding hair, said she will fight to protect her 16-year-old daughter who attends an uptown high school.

"I told my mother if we go back to visit, 'NOT MY DAUGHTER!' We have to stop this now!" said Ouattara. "It's too late for us, the damage has been done. But we can fight for our children."

After School in Brooklyn, West African Girls Share Memories of a Painful Ritual

April 25, 2011
The New York Times
Nadia Sussman

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.

The small group — all the students had roots in West Africa — was there not to discuss quadratic equations, but something much more personal.

The 15-year-old was sharing the memory of the day back in her homeland when a neighbor duped her into going to a hospital. There, she was tied down, and restrained, and subjected to genital cutting.

She was 8 at the time, and had to be hospitalized for the bleeding. “I got sick,” the girl said. “I was about to die.”

After she had healed, a celebration was held in her honor.

Now a high school sophomore, the girl belongs to a group of young West Africans who all share the experience of having been subjected to genital cutting, a procedure that is sometimes called circumcision and that opponents refer to as female genital mutilation.

The issue has largely been considered a foreign human rights concern but is starting to pose a bigger challenge here with an increase in the number of immigrants from countries in Africa and elsewhere where the practice is most common.

A conference on Wednesday at Harlem Hospital, hosted by the hospital and by the Sauti Yetu Center for African Women and Families, a group based in the Bronx that works to end female genital cutting, will focus on the physical and emotional needs of women in the United States who have experienced it.

Female genital cutting was banned in the United States in 1996. Some parents send daughters overseas to have it done; other girls are cut by relatives without their parents’ knowledge while on vacation abroad.

A 19-year-old woman from Guinea whose genitals were cut before she moved to the United States said her 13-year-old sister was 6 when their parents arranged for her to undergo the procedure while visiting their homeland. “Since she was there, they did it for her,” said the 19-year-old, who lives in Brooklyn.

Like all of the young women interviewed for this article, she asked not to be identified, saying that she did not want to be publicly associated with an intimate and controversial procedure.

In some families, parents oppose female genital cutting, but the decision about whether or not to have it done is not always theirs to make. Many elders in West African communities hold great social authority and do not seek parental permission to have it done to a girl.

The 15-year-old from Guinea was cut without the consent of her mother, who was living in the United States while her daughter was being raised in Africa by the girl’s paternal grandmother — who also was not consulted.

Female genital cutting is controversial even in countries where it is performed, and opponents have lobbied their governments for decades to outlaw the practice. Campaigns to end the practice have made strides in countries like Senegal and Burkina Faso.

The practice can cause a variety of medical problems, including extensive bleeding, infection, painful menstruation and complications during childbirth. Some women are leery of seeking medical care because they fear their doctors’ reaction.

“It bothers me a lot when I go to doctor visits, how they don’t understand,” said an 18-year-old woman from Guinea whose genitals were cut and who lives in the Bronx. “The look in their face tells you that they are shocked or confused.”

Female genital cutting is practiced in more than two dozen African countries and parts of Asia and the Middle East, and the World Health Organization estimates that up to 140 million women have undergone it.

Female genital cutting refers to a range of procedures performed without a medical purpose. They range from clitoridectomy, the removal of part or all of the clitoris, to infibulation, in which all the outer genitalia are removed and the vagina is sealed, often with stitches, except for a small opening. Despite the risks and the controversy, the cutting is, in many places, grounded in strongly held beliefs about cleanliness, chastity and coming of age.

“This is not done with ill intent,” said Zeinab Eyega, the executive director of Sauti Yetu. “This is actually done to embrace the child, to bring the child into the fold of the community.” Nonetheless, Ms. Eyega said the practice was dangerous and needed to be stopped.

Whatever the arguments over the practice, the experience often leaves indelible memories.

“That day was the worst day of my life,” said a 16-year-old high school sophomore in the Bronx. She said she was cut at her grandmother’s house in Guinea when she was 4.

One 17-year-old from the Bronx who was cut at an aunt’s house in Ivory Coast learned of the medical risks by watching a television report about a girl who had been cut and could not have children.

“It made me feel angry, because maybe that can happen to me,” said the 17-year-old, who has been in the United States for eight months. “And it make me feel like my aunt lied to me, but I feel like she doesn’t know, too. She just taught me the way they taught her, too.”

Sauti Yetu and other organizations run peer support groups for African high school students and provide counseling for women who have been cut.

Some opponents of the practice are also pressing for federal legislation to make it a crime to deliberately take or send a girl overseas to be cut.

“It’s not preventing people from going for vacation,” said Mariama Diallo, a social worker with Sanctuary for Families, a Manhattan nonprofit group that opposes genital cutting. “But the girls will feel protected.”

But Ms. Eyega said such a law would discourage women from reporting the procedure or seeking help, out of fear of causing legal trouble for their families.

The bill is sponsored by Representatives Joseph Crowley, Democrat of Queens, and Mary Bono Mack, Republican of California. Nevada and Georgia, as well as several European countries, have adopted similar laws.

More than anything else, girls and young women who have been cut seem to want to be accepted in their new homeland. The 19-year-old from Brooklyn, who was cut in Guinea, said, “They shouldn’t think Africans are weird just because of that.”