Why the Sabiny are gritty to female circumcision

July 30, 2011
Daily Monitor
David Mafabi


Changing the life style of the people living in Kween, Kapchorwa and Bukwo districts at the slopes of Mt Elgon in order to end the traditional Female Genital Mutilation FGM is proving a headache to local leadership in the region.

Although like United Nations health experts, the district leadership is calling for stronger commitments from the local people to end the FGM in bid to restore the dignity of the girl-child, many traditionalist are not ready to drop the practice.

As I approach Chesmat village in Kapyoyon sub-county in Kween district, a young girl Ms Sarah Chelimo, 15, leads a group of girls in a traditional circumcision song in Kupsabiny.

“Tombo chemuto owo! tombo chemuto owo! Mariwey, tombo chemuto! tumbo chemuto owo. Chebo namukweza owo! nte Kachoo, chepo namukweza, tombo chemuto owo! Abarojii kiketya, abaroji kiketya na aboraji kiketya, sande simburi, tomo chemuto owo.” (I am not circumcised, here I’m from Mariwey, daughter of Namukweza, I have agreed to take circumcision, pave way for me, and my surgeon is Sande Simbura) This song is sung by young girls intending to undergo FGM soon.

Although I was surprised when I heard this from these girls given the fact that FGM is now prohibited, I stood still, listened to the song, looked at the young girls, I wanted to speak back but an inner voice restrained me when I saw an old woman amongst them guiding them in dancing.

The looks on their faces left no doubt in my mind that these girls are determined to undergo FGM come next year because they are prepared.

This experience illustrates how many Sabiny are determined to take FGM next year despite President Museveni approving the law prohibiting the practice and describing FGM as crude, outdated and an infringement on the rights of the girl-child in April 2010.

In the villages of Kapsarur, Kireteyi, Riwo, Kaptererwo, Chesmat, Kameti, Tulem, Nyalit, Binyinyiny and Chesower amongst the people who are still stuck in the tradition, amongst the illiterate’s preparations are in full gear sending fears that the local people might never drop FGM.

Why the persistence

Traditionalists argue that FGM is apart of their culture that makes them distinct from other tribes. It initiates girls into womanhood, shapes the morality of women during marriage and above all that it is their livelihood as they are paid for mutilating the girls. Kokop Cherop, a traditional surgeon, says that circumcising girls is the only means of living she has got which enables her to educate her children. “I have been circumcising since the age of 20 and from this I have educated my children; it’s a means of survival. So when someone talks about ending it, I just laugh it off,” 67 year Cherop said.

According to the district leadership in Kween, the changing attitude of the people who are deeply rooted in the tradition and look at it as a source of income for sustaining their families.

Nelson Chelimo an elder from Kween and Former LCV for Kapchorwa said, “Sensitisation of the masses against FGM has not yielded enough results and even the law has not changed anything in our villages.” Chelimo’s fears are not unfounded. The traditional Sabiny have in the past resisted dropping FGM, which they urge is a practice that gives diginity to the traditional Sabiny woman.

Ignorance of the law

Bukwo district population officer and FGM researcher, Simon Alere says the biggest population living in the rural remote areas of Kabei, Bukwo parts of Suam, Chesower (Bukwo) and Kwanyiny, Benet, where the culture originated and where the people value the practice FGM so much have no information about the law.

Britain continues FGM crackdown

July 25, 2011
Bikyamasr
Johnathan Terry


Amira Yussif is a 16-year-old Sudanese-British teenager. She is typically British in every aspect. She wears trendy jeans, a mini-skirt with tights in the winter, and loves to dance when she has the chance. But for her, her life changed two years ago when her family attempted to force her to return home to be “circumcised.”

“It was horrible,” the young teenager began at a friend’s house where she has been staying for the past two years after running away from her family. “They said it was to protect my honor and dignity until I was married. I tried to explain to them that I am a good girl and that this is not what I wanted.”

When her family purchased plane tickets to Khartoum, Yussif made a move, backing one bag and leaving for school one morning, not to return. Since then, she has lived with a family friend in a London suburb, maintaining her school work and continuing to push on with life.

“It is hard, but I was not going to go through that procedure because I don’t believe it is right in today’s world, whether we are here in Britain or in Sudan,” she told Bikyamasr.com.

She is one of the “lucky” ones who escaped the procedure. With more reports being published of young girls being forced to return home to have what most in the human rights community refer to as female genital mutilation – the cutting of a woman’s genitalia – the British government is pushing back.

Prosecutors across the country have been sent new guidelines to assist in the prosecution of those who try to have their children undergo the procedure.

The Female Genital Mutilation Act of 2003 allows for the prosecution of British citizens who breach the provisions of the act and perform the procedure abroad, often in Africa or the Middle East. While the law appears strict on paper, it appears to have limited practical effect, the a recent report in The Guardian stated.

The British government has investigated more than 100 claims of genital mutilation over the past two years, but there were no convictions. In comparison, French authorities have successfully prosecuted 100 cases.

The practice is “barbaric,” said Jane Ellison, a Tory member of Parliament, who wants the issue taken more seriously.

Ellison called the procedure “a brutal crime perpetrated against those who are least able to protect themselves: little girls and young women.”

“In every case, the health of the girl or woman is damaged, often irreparably,” Ellison said. “What is most shocking of all is that a great many of these criminal acts are perpetrated against girls aged 10 and under, right down to infants.”

Yussif continues to tell the story of a number of friends who have been forced to undergo the procedure and says that she hopes that people do not see it as a religious idea, instead that FGM is believed to be a practice that “guarantees a girl’s honor as she grows up.”

It is “not Islamic, but a cultural practice that through education our societies can hopefully end. It is horrible to think how many people in today’s world have had it done. I love Sudan and my people and this needs to stop,” she added.

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.”

Memories of my circumcision have haunted me to date

April 16, 2011
Daily Nation
Caroline Wafula

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 was perhaps the first time an MP was giving a deeply personal story which contributing to debate.

Female circumcision, said Sophia, was the cause of a harrowing experience during menstruation, her first sexual experience, and the eventual childbirth.

This, she said, is the driving force behind her passionate fight against the practice, which Parliament now seeks to outlaw with the Bill sponsored by Mt Elgon MP Fred Kapondi.

She was barely eight years old when together with seven of her agemates, she was handed over to a traditional circumciser who took them through the painful process of the cut. It has been many years since, and she has accomplished so much in life, but the incident remains fresh in her mind.

The old woman who took them through the process was going blind, she says, and three of the eight who underwent the operation died due to excessive bleeding. One of them was her very close friend.

Luckily for her, the bleeding was not too much and she had a saviour at hand. Her father, who was a policeman, took her to a hospital in Garissa using a police Land Rover.

Completely changed

 She was in hospital for a week and underwent a transfusion of four pints of blood. After she left the hospital, her life completely changed and her mother was also affected as she felt guilty for ‘blessing’ her daughter to undergo the rite.

The beginning of her complications was her first menstrual period, which was slow as the opening of her vagina was small, restricting the flow and her period lasted up to seven days. This would mean missing classes for the whole period and she would often lag behind in class.

Sophia does not remember her wedding day as the happy occasion it usually is for most people.

“It was a night I literally don’t want to remember,” she said. Her husband was equally affected due to the frustrations they encountered trying to consummate their union.

It took them three days before her husband could open up to friends about their frustrations of being unable to consummate their marriage.

“I was completely closed and we could not even share with our mothers who kept checking our bedsheets for blood. They got worried and asked the very young couples of our age to come and find out what the problem was,” she recalls.

More problems

 She was later taken to hospital for an operation although the eventual consummation was still difficult because of the wound from the operation.

She would also have problems later as she gave birth to her first child, a baby boy. She had prolonged labour for four days and she could not undergo a Caesarean section because the child had already moved to exit position. The baby had to be removed by a vacuum, slightly injuring his head.

Ms Noor says it is this experience of her life that propelled her to launch anti-female circumcision campaigns.

“So many girls have died out of this, there is no documentation because this is done in secret, but this is killing and that is why I am talking about it,” she said.

She said it’s a very painful psychological experience. with some dying and that “there is no homestead that has no sad story arising from circumcision,” says Ms Noor.

She explains that as a child from a pastoralist community, circumcision was a compulsory rite.
 
“It was not a matter of consultation, it was even a taboo to talk about i. It was a very strong belief,” she says.

Everyone believed it was a religious obligation to undergo the rite, and the conviction was that a woman who was not circumcised was unclean and not fit for marriage.

It was also believed that God could not hear prayers of an uncut woman. But the MP does not blame her mother for the ordeal. She understands too well that like many other women in her community, she was brought up to believe it was a religious rite.

Going through the process meant cleansing daughters for marriage. “No one wanted their daughter to be a ‘haram’ or unfit for marriage,” she explains.

A part from the belief that circumcising the girl made her clean, it was also believed that the process protected her virginity.

“Once taken to her husband, he would know that she had been properly taken care of,” the MP explains. The third reason for the cut is that the community was scared of girls who were not circumcised, easily branding them prostitutes.

This is because it was believed not going through the cut left a woman sensitive sexually hence could easily turn to prostitution.

In one village

 Her campaign started when, while working on a Unicef Programme in Garissa where she was seconded by the Ministry of Education, she came across a circumcision rite in one of the villages she was visiting.

She immediately went dizzy after memories of her childhood experience flashed back. She sat down in silence but just a few minutes later, she and her colleagues heard a cry from the hut where the rite was being conducted.

The girl had fainted from the loss of blood but she passed away on the way to hospital. That incident marked the beginning of her activism against female circumcision. It was not easy owing to opposition from especially the religious leaders. But she was not going to give up.

“I knew deeply that was not my religion,” she says.

With this conviction, she approached some sheikhs and asked them to go through the Koran to find out whether indeed the Muslim religion required that women go through it.
 
It was with much relief that she came to learn from the sheikhs that it was nowhere in the holy books of Islam.

“I immediately mobilised meetings with the community and would later receive support from the international community,” she says.

She founded Womankind Kenya to spearhead the campaigns. She also started a centre for orphaned girls and those vulnerable to female circumcision, which also offered education.

The centre currently has 120 uncircumcised girls, having grown from an initial number of 18. It has girls aged between six and 23.

“People talk of diseases that come naturally and cause complications and kill, but this one is a bigger disease by our own making and people just don’t talk about it,” the MP says, noting that the practice goes on in several other communities in Kenya, secretly.

She is grateful to her colleagues for passing the Bill that will boost the war on female circumcision.

Kenya: FGM Clubs in Schools to Fight the Cut

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.

KENYA: Lawyers ask Men to Fight Against Female Genital Mutilation

March 10, 2011
Women News Network
Kenya Correspondent, Gitonga Njeru

Pokot District, Kenya: Human rights lawyers are asking Kenyan men to be a stronger part of the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM), which despite being illegal in Kenya, is still widely practiced by some communities.

One of the communities that has not yet abandoned FGM is Kenya’s Pokot community. Unfortunately in the district, many men in the region, and throughout Africa, still encourage circumcisers to continue the practice.

Most Pokot men place value and usually demand that a woman must be circumcised in order to marry, but there are some growing exceptions to this rule.

“I was circumcised as a little girl and I managed to get a husband,” says Selina Lorupe, a 43 year old mother of 2 children. “Many women in my Pokot community continue to be circumcised. It is part of our culture but other women are slowly resisting this move,” she highlights.

Numbers from The Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Organization, a group that fights for the rights of women in Africa, estimate that 500 young Pokot girls and women were circumcised, in only one month, last December 2009, alone.

Despite FGM being rampant among the Pokot, advocacy groups are working hard to educate local women about the health dangers associated with the practice. But society pressures sometimes outweigh education. Advocates have noticed some improvements through their campaigns, but improvements over the past years have been backsliding.

More Pokot men are now marrying women outside their communities, from places such as the Kikuyu, Meru, and Kuria, where the practice of FGM – female genital mutilation – remains intact.
Kenyan human right lawyers suggest this undermines the fight to discourage FGM, making it even more difficult to eradicate...

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Intensive efforts reap progress towards ending female genital mutilation in Somalia

March 7, 2011
UNICEF
Iman Morooka

HARGEISA, northwest Somalia “Somaliland”: “It is a shame and a disgrace if a girl is uncut. She will be outcast and ostracized from her community”. This is what Ubah Abdillahi believed until she was convinced otherwise by the community education programme aiming to end the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia.

Ubah Abdillahi, mother of 5 girls and 3 boys, lives in Daami village in Hargeisa. She came to know about a programme run by NGO TOSTAN- supported by UNICEF- aiming to create community awareness around various issues including FGM/C, child rights, hygiene and sanitation, environment and health among others. She started to attend classes offered by the programme and participated in its activities.

“Before participating in this programme, I believed that all girls have to be cut, just like I was cut when I was a young girl. I cut my daughters because I always believed it was good for protecting girls from men. If the girl is not cut, she can’t get married either. This was done to me by my mother and I did the same to two of my five daughters.” said Ms. Abdullahi.

She recalled the pain she had to go through as a child when she had undergone the procedure. “I still remember how I cried of pain, and the problems I faced in urinating and menstruating. When I was giving birth they had to make cuts even sideways for the baby to come out. There are many problems but I didn’t question it [FGM] because it is our culture and tradition.”

According to the most recent statistics (MICS 2006)*, FGM in Somalia is almost universal. 98 per cent of women aged 15-49 have undergone the procedure, with 77 per cent of them subjected to the most severe form.

“I wouldn’t have been able to socialize and have friends if I wasn’t cut. It was considered a disgrace and people would gossip if a nurse wasn’t called to the house for opening the stitching after a woman gets married or for child birth.”

TOSTAN started its community advocacy work in Daami village in 2006 and formed the “Community Management Committee” which played a key role in engaging in discussions with the community and creating awareness on the harms of FGM. After three years of the programme’s inception, the people of Daami village publically declared abandonment of the practice. Ms. Abdullahi was one of the Committee members who were trained by TOSTAN.

“It took me time to understand and accept that circumcision is not good for girls. Even when I joined the programme in TOSTAN, I didn’t commit myself to anything at first. I was just learning about all sorts of things, then I came to realize that FGM is the cause of many health issues like infections. It was explained to me how girls who are not cut don’t have the same health problems during menstruation, intercourse and child birth. I also learned that not all Muslim women are circumcised. I started to believe that it is better not to have my girls cut.”

Ms. Abdullahi became an advocate who spoke out in and outside of her village urging people not to subject their girls to FGM.

Over a year has passed since Daami community declared abandoning FGM in 2009, but the Committee members are still active in their advocacy work. They meet regularly at the classroom provided by TOSTAN to discuss and exchange their experiences and plan joint activities within and outside their village, including writing and performing songs and plays.

So far, a total of 84 communities have been mobilized through this programme in Somalia. Of them, 28 communities including Daami village declared collective abandonment of FGM.

“It [the advocacy work] is not always easy, some people are accepting while others are not.” said Ms. Abdullahi. “I sometimes even have to resolve conflicts between couples, when the husband is opposing to FGM while the wife is still insisting to cut her daughters. I believe that education is very important for people to understand the harms of FGM, and perhaps the fact that men are better educated in our society, makes them more capable of opposing traditional practice.”

For a long time it’s been considered a taboo to discuss a sensitive subject like FGM in public. However change is gradually starting to happen in Somali communities. Ubah Abdullahi is just one of many mothers who have joined the fight against FGM.

Salima: born whole and healthy

February 28, 2011
United Nations Mission in Sudan

In a society where the gross majority of women are forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) during childhood, being uncircumcised often results in ostracism.

Aiming to counter stigmatization by creating a positive term to replace one sounding like a curse, the Salima campaign was initiated in Sudan by the National Council for Child Welfare (NCCW) with UNICEF support.

The campaign – incorporating clearly identifiable, vivid colours in its messaging – pursues a change in society’s stance towards the harmful practice.

Salima means whole, healthy and intact, said Amira Azhari, coordinator of the national program for the abolition of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) at NCCW in Khartoum.

The campaign uses radio spots, community discussions and hundreds of community members signing a tarqa (traditional cloth) to abandon the practice. The goal is to reform a long-ingrained notion that an uncircumcised woman is unclean and worthless.

Calling someone “ya wad el ghalfa” or “you son of an uncut woman” is a harsh insult in Sudan, where according to the 2006 Sudan Household Health Survey, 69.4 per cent of the country’s female population, or almost seven women out of 10, are subjected to FGM.

“It’s a big deal in our communities … FGM is about being a virgin,” said singer Abir Ali at a Khartoum conference on reconstructive surgery for women suffering from detrimental health effects of the most severe form of FGM, called infibulation.

Ms. Ali was donning a Salima-coloured scarf as a campaign ambassador, one of 10 prominent Sudanese chosen to engage the public in discussions about the practice through their work and appearances, and promote its abandonment.

One reason why the practice continues is a traditional conviction that a circumcised woman will remain a virgin and after marriage be faithful to her husband. Basically, it is control over a woman’s sexual desire, noted Ms. Azhari.

She mentioned other reasons, including unfounded beliefs that FGM results in cleanliness and good health, and that the practice is required by Islam.

Some religious leaders, however, argue that no proof can be found for this requirement in the Quran or in hadith, which are interpretations of the words and deeds of Prophet Mohammed.

“Female genital mutilation used to be practiced during pharaonic times more than 3,000 years ago,” observed Ahlam Ali Hassan, professor of Islamic studies at Omdurman Islamic University, adding that FGM stemmed from long before the spread of Islam.

Awareness raising was key in abolishing genital mutilation, Ms. Hassan remarked, adding that imams and religious leaders carried a great role in informing people about its harmful health and social effects.

Educating midwives, who are often also circumcisers, contributes greatly to the cause. They are leaders of rural women, said Ms. Azhari, and having midwives lead discussions about abandoning the practice is as effective as having a Sheikh support the campaign.

Many of them, however, uphold the custom for financial reasons, as FGM practitioners generally make at least 100 Sudanese pounds ($39) plus in-kind gifts for each circumcision. Encouraging midwives to discontinue the practice, Khartoum State Governor Dr. Abdelrahman Alkhidir initiated job placement of 500 midwives in the state’s healthcare institutions last year, according to Ms. Azhari.

The child welfare council began on an ambitious path in 2008 by drafting a national strategy to combat FGM. The strategy, building on six modules – including health, media, law and religion – aims to eradicate the practice in Sudan over the next 10 years or the course of a generation.

However, most Sudanese women still view the issue as private and tend to remain silent.

What is FGM?

Female genital mutilation refers to procedures involving partial or complete removal of the external female genitalia, generally performed in Sudan when a girl is between 8 and 12 years old. The process is often carried out without hygienic tools, thus contributing to infections and the spread of diseases, including hepatitis and HIV.

Besides the psychological trauma it causes, FGM can lead to a wide array of ailments, including excessive bleeding, chronic urinary tract obstruction/bladder stones, urinary incontinence, infertility, painful menstruation, obstructed labour and increased risk of bleeding and infection during childbirth. (Source: UNICEF)

Campaign Against Female Circumcision Intensifies in Ethiopia

February 18, 2011
Ezega.com
Phillip Barea

Addis Ababa, February 18, 2011 (Ezega.com) -- In recent months local and national initiatives have shown a clear intensification of the struggle against the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), also known as female circumcision.

The ancient practice of removing the outer female genitalia and “sewing” the vaginal opening shut has long existed in the region under the pretext of cleanliness and religious piety.

After years of United Nations and international NGO advocacy, recent “homegrown” campaigns have signaled a local increase in the struggle to eliminate the practice in Ethiopia. For example, recent Ethiopian Television programs have targeted the practice by assembling both religious scholars and traditional leaders to advocate against FGM.

Afar Regional Action

 Most recently, two regions within Afar State have increased both the legal and social fight against this practice. Officials in Amibara and Awash-Fentale districts have outlawed female genital mutilation, and further expressed their concern that the practice causes serious health problems to women and is against their culture.

Fatuma Ali, Head of Women's Affairs for Amibara Distric, issued a statement saying that: “We are very happy to declare the abandonment of this horrible act on women…We would like to thank the elders, our community and all our partners [for their support]”.

She further added that their commitment does not end there, and: "This is like the rebirth of Afar pastoralist women…We will fight until we secure 100 percent abandonment of the practice from our region”.

External Policy Advocacy

Just this month, two United Nations officials issued statements advocating for the eradication of female genital mutilation. Anthony Lake, Director of the UN Children's Fund; and Babatunde Osotimehin, Director of the UN Population Fund, declared that: “the practice violates human rights and endangers the health of the women affected”.

European Union officials have also recently reinvigorated their advocacy against FGM. Catherine Ashton, who leads the EU´s foreign policy sector, told the press that FGM is an "exceptionally brutal crime"; and she confirmed her determination to advocate for its elimination in Africa.

Religion and Tradition

 Many advocates in favor of maintaining the practice in Ethiopia claim that it stems from their culture and their religion. This perspective is especially prevalent in the Afar and Somali communities. They claim that FGM is mandated by Islam; however, many Muslim scholars and leaders have disputed and rejected such a claim.

For example, in a recent television interview one Somali Sultan (traditional clan leader) from the Somali region of Ethiopia publicly declared that he believes FGM to be an unhealthy cultural practice, against Islam, and that it should be stopped.

Ethiopian Television also recently broadcast an anti-FGM show where religious scholars from the various religious communities in Ethiopia discussed the issue from a religious perspective and concluded that there is no religious mandate for the practice and that it is unacceptable.

Scholars and leaders in many Muslim states have also issued, or are preparing to issue, a Fatwa (Islamic legal ruling) against Female Genital Mutilation. Most recently, for example, Muslim scholars and leaders in Mauritania issued a fatwa against FGM.