Category: Female Genital Mutilation

European Parliament Addresses Female Genital Mutilation

The European Parliament met in November to discuss female genital mutilation, which is believed to be on the rise in Europe as the continent receives more immigrant families from African countries where female genital mutilation is practiced.

Despite this, female genital mutilation is specifically outlawed in only three European countries — Sweden, Norway and the United Kingdom. Other countries do ban the practice under broader anti-mutilation statutes, but regardless there doesn’t seem to be a lot of effort to enforce such laws. According to a report in Afrol.Com, France has been the only European nation to undertake vigorous prosecution of female genital mutilation, with 25 such prosecutions so far. Sweden has apparently conducted a single prosecution for female genital mutilation. And that’s it.

Part of the problem is that most immigrant families are believed to have their daughters mutilated while they are visiting their country-of-origin. According to Afrol.Com, “Most countries do not follow up their legislation or can not prosecute if FGM was carried out abroad.”

The European Parliament essentially punted the issue back to individual European states. European Commission’s Social Affairs Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou, who last year was keen on an EU-wide censorship plan, said that tackling female genital mutilation was simply beyond the European Commission. Afrol.Com reported,

After assuring that “the European Commission and the international community have recognised female genital mutilation as a profound violation of the human rights of women,” she stated that “any legislative measures, however, to combat FGM are not within the competence of the EU, and neither are provisions for the deinfibulation to be performed under proper medical conditions.”

According to the World Health Organization, as many as 100-140 million women worldwide have been subjected to female genital mutilation, and another 2 million girls are likely to face pressure to have the procedure each year.

Source:

Genital mutilation ‘on the increase in Europe’. Press Association News, November 26, 2004.

Europe impotent in fighting female mutilation among African women. Afrol.Com, November 30, 2004.

Burkina Faso’s Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation Appears to Be Succeeding

Preliminary results suggest that Burkina Faso’s campaign against female genital mutilation may be succeeding, at least in some parts of the country, in ending the practice.

In 1992, when Burkina Faso launched its anti-FGM campaign, as many as two-thirds of all women there were subjected to female genital mutilation. Recent surveys from 6 of Burkina Faso’s 45 provinces finds that the rate of FGM in those provinces has fallen to just 1-2 percent. Survey results from the other 39 provinces are expected soon.

In 1996, Burkina Faso outlawed female genital mutilation and made it a crime punishable by up to three years in jail and up to a $1,500 fine. Anyone who inflicts wounds during an FGM ritual that leads to death can be jailed for up to 10 years.

United Nations Wire quotes Hortense Palm, permanent secretary of the National Committee to Combat the Practice of Circumcision, as saying,

After 12 years of intense lobbying, sensitization and training we are seeing a big reduction in numbers undergoing FGM. The figures speak for themselves.

Source:

Genital mutilation in Burkina Faso down after 12-year campaign. UN Wire, January 16, 2004.

Sudan Pledges Ban on Female Genital Mutilation

In August, Sudan pledged to ban female genital mutilation in that country.

According to a story carried by the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks,

At the end of a regional three-day symposium held last week in Khartoum, Health Minister Ahmed Osman Bilal expressed his government’s commitment to eradicate FGM at all levels, according to a summary of proceedings provided by UNICEF.

According to the Sudanese government, as many as 90 percent of women in its northern, largely-Muslim states are victims of female genital mutilation. Moreover, female genital mutilation in Sudan is the worst form of the practice involving the removal of most or all of the external genitalia and then the sewing of the vaginal opening — all done on young girls aged 7-11.

Source:

Government to ban female genital mutilation. UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, September 3, 2003.

Sudan: Genital mutilation rises. Agence-France Presse, August 24, 2003.

Ethiopian Immigrant Charged with Circumcising 2-Year-Old Daughter

An Ethiopian immigrant living in Atlanta, Georgia, was recently charged in that state for allegedly mutilating the genitals of his 2-year-old daughter. In Ethiopia, female genital mutilation is believed to be widespread, with as many as 70-90 percent of adult women having been subjected to it.

Khalid Adem, 27, is accused of using a pair of scissors to to mutilated his daughter sometime in 2001 when the girl was just 2-years-old. Authorities were made aware of the female genital mutilation after the girl’s mother — who says she was unaware of what had happened — took her for an apparently routine doctor’s visit. Adem has since been charged with cruelty to children and aggravated battery.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that The Centers for Disease Control and PRevention estimates that as many as 160,000 young girls and women in immigrant communities in the United States have experience female genital mutilation.

Adem’s family appeared at a preliminary hearing maintaining that his family did not practice female genital mutilation and that the mother of the girl was using this as part of a divorce case. Police testified that the 4-year-old girl told her doctor that Adem had performed the procedure on her while a friend of Adem’s held her legs.

Sources:

Ethiopian in George charged with circumcising 2-year-old daughter. Associated Press, April 4, 2003.

Family defends man in circumcision case. Lateef Mungin, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 8, 2003.

Man accused of circumcising girl. Lateef Mungin, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 29, 2003.

Kenyan Women Assaulted by Anti-Trouser Religious Extremists in Kenya

The BBC had a brief item back in February about women in Kenya being assaulted by members of the Mungiki youth sect. The women were targeted because they were wearing trousers, and their assailants stripped them naked for this offense.

The Mungiki sect is an ascetic religious extremist group that, like many such groups these days, sees itself defending traditional values against encroaching liberalism driven by exposure to Western ideas. Estimates put the number of people involved with the sect at around 300,000 (out of a population of 30 million).

Along with assaulting women who wear short skirts or pants, the sect also advocates in favor of female circumcision and has reportedly kidnapped women and forcibly mutilated them.

Women in Kenya, however, seem willing to stand up to these thugs. The BBC quoted one of the woman who was assaulted in February as saying, “I felt so bad, I felt so humiliated . . . [but she will keep wearing trousers because] It’s my right.”

Source:

Kenyan women protest at ‘trouser police’. The BBC, February 3, 2003.

Female Genital Mutilation Hospitalized 21 Girls in Kenya

This happened back in October but is an frightening example of the dangers of |female genital mutiliation|. At the end of October, 21 girls in Kenya had to be hospotailized due to serious infections they developed after being forced to undergo female circumcision.

The girls, aged 9 to 14, were pulled out of school by their parents to make sure the government would not interfere, and forced to undergo the procedure. Kenyan woman’s activist Naomi Okul told the BBC that in this case, “The traditional operators used dirty knives and most of the grisl ahve infections in their wounds.”

Kenya only outlawed female genital mutilation for girls under 17 a few months ago, and the high rate of the practice among some of Kenya’s peoples is believed partially responsible for that nation’s extremely high maternal mortality rate.

Source:

Circumcision hospitalizes Kenyan girls. Muliro Telewa, The BBC, October 31, 2001.