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The Global Persecution of Women
Glossary
Human Rights
UDHR
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
CEDAW
Article 5
States Parties shall take all appropriate measures:
(a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women.
Definitional
” Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)” from UNIFEM, Violence Against Women – Facts and Figures. Downloaded from http://unifem.org/attachments/gender_issues/violence_against_women/facts_figures_violence_against_women_200611.pdf, 16 Feb. 2007.
FGM refers to several types of deeply rooted traditional cutting operations performed on women and girls. Often part of fertility or coming-of-age rituals, FGM is sometimes justified as a way to ensure chastity and genital “purity.” It is estimated that more than 130 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, mainly in Africa and some Middle Eastern countries [17], and two million girls a year are at risk of mutilation. Cases of FGM have been reported in Asian countries such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, and it is suspected that it is performed among some indigenous groups in Central and South America [18]. FGM is also being practiced among immigrant communities in Europe, North America and Australia [19].
Since the late 1980s, opposition to FGM and efforts to combat the practice have increased. According to the Secretary-General’s in-depth study on violence against women, as of April 2006, fifteen of the 28 African States where FGM is prevalent made FGM an offence under criminal law. Of the nine States in Asia and the Arabian Peninsula where female genital mutilation/cutting is prevalent among certain groups, two have enacted legal measures prohibiting it. In addition, ten States in other parts of the world have enacted laws criminalizing the practice [20].
— UNIFEM supported a project in Kenya, which involved local communities developing alternative coming-of-age rituals, such as “circumcision with words” — celebrating a young girl’s entry into womanhood with words instead of genital cutting. The project involved close cooperation with circumcisers, religious leaders, and men and boys in the communities [21]. Another project in Mali, with support from the UN Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women, is currently working to foster dialogue and build capacities among government ministries, parliamentarians, civil society and traditional and religious leaders that can lead to changes in harmful practices and attitudes.
(17). Referred to by General Assembly. In-Depth Study on All Forms of Violence against Women: Report of the Secretary-General, 2006. A/61/122/Add.1. 6 July 2006. 39.
(18) Radhika Coomaraswamy. Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective: Violence against Women. Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences. Cultural practices in the family that are violent towards women. E/CN.4/2002/93. 31 January 2002. 10.
(19). Referred to by General Assembly. In-Depth Study on All Forms of Violence against Women: Report of the Secretary-General, 2006. A/61/122/Add.1. 6 July 2006. 39.
(20). General Assembly. In-Depth Study on All Forms of Violence against Women: Report of the Secretary-General, 2006. A/61/122/Add.1. 6 July 2006. 40.
(21) Cheywa Spindel, Elisa Levy, Melissa Connor, With an End in Sight: Strategies from the UN Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence against Women. New York 2000. 23-33.Feminist Majority Foundation, "FGM - What is It?" Globalfeminism, n.d., downloaded 23 Jan. 2007.
Issue in Focus: fgm
What is it?
Female genital mutilation (FGM), sometimes called female genital cutting (FGC) or female circumcision, is the cutting or removal of all or a portion of the female genitals for cultural (not medical) reasons. There are different ways it is practiced according to the place or culture in which it is being done. The World Health Organization describes them in the following types:
Type I (Clitoridectomy): removal of part or all of the clitoris. Type II (Excision): This is the most common form. Removal of the clitoris and part or all of the labia minora (the inner vaginal lips). Type III (Infibulation): Removal of the external genitalia and stitching of the vaginal opening. A very small opening is left, about the diameter of a pencil. Sometimes the girl’s or woman’s legs are bound together from the hip to the ankle so that she cannot move for 40 days. Some communities don’t stitch the opening. About 15 percent of women who undergo FGM have this form. In the areas where it is practiced, however, it sometimes affects 90 to 100 percent of the women. Type IV: This category includes pricking, piercing or incision of the clitoris and/or labia, stretching the clitoris and/or labia, cauterization by burning of the clitoris and surrounding tissues, scraping (angurya cuts) of the vaginal orifice or cutting (gishiri cuts) of the vagina, introduction of corrosive substances into the vagina to cause bleeding, or introduction of herbs into the vagina to tighten or narrow the vagina, or any other procedure that falls under the definition of female genital mutilation. The procedure is usually done outside of a hospital, with no anesthetic. The person (usually another woman) performing the procedure uses razors, scissors or knives, sometimes other sharp instruments. There are incidences of FGM being performed in hospitals as well. It is done to girls and women, the most common being girls under the age of puberty.
The number of girls and women who have been subjected to this practice range from 115 million to 130 million worldwide and an estimated two million girls are at risk each year.
Where is it being done?
UNICEF estimates that the total number of women living today who have been subjected to FGM in Africa ranges between 100 and 130 million. This means that approximately 2 million girls are mutilated every year. Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, and the Sudan account for 75 percent of all cases. In Djibouti and Somalia, 98 per cent of girls are mutilated . Due to emigration, FGM is now being practiced in areas of Asia, Europe, and the United States.
Why should it be stopped?
FGM leads to lifelong pain and problems with sexual health and childbirth. Depending on the environment and type of the procedure, FGM can lead to serious health issues such as infection, illness and death. As a result, bleeding is severe, and infection can affect all or part of the genitals or reproductive organs. Due to infection, some women will find movement, sitting, urination and childbirth to be excruciatingly painful. Some women acquire dysmenorrhoea, which means they are no longer able to have periods. Fistula is another result of FGM, and is described as the continuous leakage of feces and urine, which can cause the woman to be outcast from her community.
Some women who have FGM performed on their daughters (or themselves) feel that they will be ostracized if they do not have the procedure done. Some women who have not undergone FGM feel pressured that they may not be able to find a husband. Men in communities that practice FGM add to the situation by asserting that a woman who is not cut is not fit to marry. Some men believe that FGM is the only way to prove a woman’s virginity. These men think that if a woman is still sown together then she is a virgin. In addition, the act of opening her wounds for the act of sexual intercourse can be just as painful for the woman as the original procedure. The pressure to be accepted by their communities is the main reason women undergo FGM. While FGM is usually looked at as a cultural tradition, it is not required in any religion. It crosses ethnic, religious and cultural lines.
”World Health Organisation: Female genital mutilation,” Women in the Middle East, No. 43, May and June 2006.
What is female genital mutilation? Female genital mutilation (FGM), often referred to as 'female circumcision', comprises all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural, religious or other non-therapeutic reasons. There are different types of female genital mutilation known to be practised today. They include:
Type I - excision of the prepuce, with or without excision of part or all of the clitoris;
Type II - excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora;
Type III - excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation);
Type IV - pricking, piercing or incising of the clitoris and/or labia; stretching of the clitoris and/or labia; cauterization by burning of the clitoris and surrounding tissue; scraping of tissue surrounding the vaginal orifice (angurya cuts) or cutting of the vagina (gishiri cuts); introduction of corrosive substances or herbs into the vagina to cause bleeding or for the purpose of tightening or narrowing it; and any other procedure that falls under the definition given above. The most common type of female genital mutilation is excision of the clitoris and the labia minora, accounting for up to 80% of all cases; the most extreme form is infibulation, which constitutes about 15% of all procedures. Health consequences of FGM
The immediate and long-term health consequences of female genital mutilation vary according to the type and severity of the procedure performed.
Immediate complications include severe pain, shock, haemorrhage, urine retention, ulceration of the genital region and injury to adjacent tissue. Haemorrhage and infection can cause death.
More recently, concern has arisen about possible transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) due to the use of one instrument in multiple operations, but this has not been the subject of detailed research.
Long-term consequences include cysts and abscesses, keloid scar formation, damage to the urethra resulting in urinary incontinence, dyspareunia (painful sexual intercourse) and sexual dysfunction and difficulties with childbirth.
Psychosexual and psychological health: Genital mutilation may leave a lasting mark on the life and mind of the woman who has undergone it. In the longer term, women may suffer feelings of incompleteness, anxiety and depression.
Who performs FGM, at what age and for what reasons?
In cultures where it is an accepted norm, female genital mutilation is practiced by followers of all religious beliefs as well as animists and non believers. FGM is usually performed by a traditional practitioner with crude instruments and without anaesthetic. Among the more affluent in society it may be performed in a health care facility by qualified health personnel. WHO is opposed to medicalization of all the types of female genital mutilation.
The age at which female genital mutilation is performed varies from area to area. It is performed on infants a few days old, female children and adolescents and, occasionally, on mature women.
The reasons given by families for having FGM performed include:
psychosexual reasons: reduction or elimination of the sensitive tissue of the outer genitalia, particularly the clitoris, in order to attenuate sexual desire in the female, maintain chastity and virginity before marriage and fidelity during marriage, and increase male sexual pleasure; sociological reasons: identification with the cultural heritage, initiation of girls into womanhood, social integration and the maintenance of social cohesion; hygiene and aesthetic reasons: the external female genitalia are considered dirty and unsightly and are to be removed to promote hygiene and provide aesthetic appeal; myths: enhancement of fertility and promotion of child survival; religious reasons: Some Muslim communities, however, practise FGM in the belief that it is demanded by the Islamic faith. The practice, however, predates Islam. Prevalence and distribution of FGM
Most of the girls and women who have undergone genital mutilation live in 28 African countries, although some live in Asia and the Middle East. They are also increasingly found in Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA, primarily among immigrants from these countries.
Today, the number of girls and women who have been undergone female genital mutilation is estimated at between 100 and 140 million. It is estimated that each year, a further 2 million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM.
Current WHO activities related to FGM
Advocacy and policy development
A joint WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA policy statement on FGM and a Regional Plan to Accelerate the Elimination of FGM were published to promote policy development and action at the global, regional, and national level. Several countries where FGM is a traditional practice are now developing national plans of action based on the FGM prevention strategy proposed by WHO.
International
Amira El Ahl, “Theologians Battle Female Circumcision,” New York Times, 6 Dec. 2006. Originally printed in Der Spiegel.
In Cairo, a small revolution has been launched: A conference of high-ranking Muslim theologians has agreed that the practice of female genital mutilation is irreconcilable with Islam. The painful and often deadly practice of female circumcision affects millions of women in Africa.
Fatima's scream is as blood-curdling as it is heart-wrenching. The little girl, who looks to be about eight years old, screams in a panic, initially in fear and then because she is unable to bear the pain she is experiencing. She is lying on the floor of a dirty hut somewhere in the Ethiopian desert. Her body is contorted with pain as she screams, cries and finally lies there whimpering. Her new, green floral dress is soaked in blood.
Two men and her mother press the delicate child against the floor and pull apart her thin little legs. An old woman crouches in front of Fatima, holding a shiny razor blade and a thick, threaded darning needle. Today is the day Fatima will become a woman, a decent woman.
The purpose of the thick darning needle is to lift the lips of the vulva to facilitate cutting them off. The old woman moves the razor blade into position. First she slices off the small lips of the vulva and then the clitoris. There is blood everywhere. The girl arches her small, sweat-soaked body. The old woman repeatedly pours a milky liquid onto the wound to prevent infection. Then the grandmother comes into the hut, pokes at the wound and tells the old woman to make a deeper cut. The process starts all over again. Fatima's screams become almost unbearable. If the sight of this girl under female circumcision is so difficult to bear, how can she possibly stand the pain?
Finally the deed is done. The wound is sewn shut with thorns, leaving only a tiny opening. A straw is inserted into the small opening to prevent it from closing. Then Fatima's legs are tied together with a rope to allow the wound to heal. She will lie in bed, her legs tied together in this fashion, for several weeks.
The old woman completes her barbaric task with a slap on her subject's behind. Fatima is now a woman.
Millions of victims
About 6,000 girls fall victim to genital mutilation every day, or about 2 million a year. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that between 100 and 140 million women worldwide are circumcised. Most circumcised women live in 28 African countries, as well as in Asia and the Middle East. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), at least 90 percent of all women are circumcised in developing countries like Ethiopia, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia and Sierra Leone, while almost no women are circumcised in Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
WHO distinguishes among four types of genital mutilation:
Type I, or "clitorectomy": Excision of the skin surrounding the clitoris with or without excision of part or all of the clitoris Type II, or "excision": Removal of the entire clitoris and part or all of the labia minora Type III, or "infibulation": Removal of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching together of the vaginal orifice, leaving only a small opening Type IV: Various other practices, including pricking, piercing, incision and tearing of the clitoris. One out of every three girls dies as a result of infibulation, also known as pharaonic mutilation.
Women have been circumcised for thousands of years, and the custom has become deeply ingrained in human thought. Tradition demands that women be circumcised, and it is often the women themselves who wish to continue this ritual, partly to prevent sexual desire in girls. Indeed, an uncircumcised girl is considered worthless on the marriage market in many places because she is perceived as being "impure" and "loose."
Sharp condemnation
Although circumcision is often justified for supposedly religious reasons, there is no religious justification for the practice in either Christianity or Islam.
Sharp condemnation by religious and moral leaders is needed to ban this horrific practice. But movement does appear to be afoot -- at least if an event that took place in Cairo two weeks ago is any indication. It bordered on a minor revolution.
Muslim scholars and academics from Germany, Africa and the Middle East spent two days discussing female genital mutilation. The goal of the conference was to declare this form of circumcision to be incompatible with the ethics of Islam as a global religion.
It was a German who organized and funded the conference. In 2000 Rüdiger Nehberg, 71, a man known for adventurous exploits that have included crossing the Atlantic in a pedal boat, founded Target, a human rights organization dedicated to fighting female genital mutilation. Since then Nehberg, accompanied by his life partner Annette Weber, has been traveling throughout Africa with his video camera, documenting the inhuman practice and attempting to win over political and religious leaders for his cause. Wherever he goes, Nehberg says: "This custom can only be brought to an end with the power of Islam." In organizing the conference, which was held at Cairo's Al-Azhar University under the patronage of Egyptian Grand Mufti Ali Jumaa, Nehberg has come one step closer to his goal.
Many important Muslim scholars attended the event. The Egyptian minister for religious charities, Mahmoud Hamdi Saksuk, condemned the practice, as did the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar University, Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi. Even the renowned and notorious Egyptian religious scholar and journalist Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who enjoys great popularity in the Middle East as a result of his commentary on the Aljazeera television network, attended the Cairo conference.
Qaradawi did full justice to his reputation as a hardliner by initially criticizing the fact that the conference was paid for by a foreign institution, and not the practice of mutilation. He also complained that the title, "The Prohibition of Violation of the Female Body through Circumcision" was biased and presumptuous.
A practice forbidden by the Koran
But after plenty of hemming and hawing, even Qaradawi managed to agree that the Koran states that it is forbidden to mutilate God's creation. "We are on the side of those who ban this practice," he said, but added that doctors ought to have the last word.
This wasn't enough for women's rights activists. Mushira Chattab, the Egyptian first lady's special ambassador and chairwoman of the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, called upon the legal scholars at the meeting to take a clear position against female circumcision. Then she turned to Qaradawi and said: "You should not leave it up to doctors to condemn this practice."
Every doctor at the conference agreed that there is no medical justification for female genital mutilation. Heribert Kentenich, physician-in-chief of the women's clinic at the DRK Hospitals in Berlin expressed a "complete lack of understanding" for the fact that 75 percent of circumcisions are now performed by doctors in Egypt. "I find it almost more horrifying that doctors are enriching themselves by doing this," he added. The drop in the estimated incidents of female circumcision has dropped significantly -- some believe as much as from 97 percent to approximately 50 percent -- but it is impossible to obtain precise figures. Even at 50 percent, that would still represent roughly 400,000 girls a year. Kentenich believes that the "medicalization of female genital mutilation makes it seem more acceptable."
The direct consequences include hemorrhaging, as well as severe pain and anxiety that can lead to trauma. Besides, the practice can also cause infections in the urinary tract, the uterus, the fallopian tube and the ovaries. Other consequences such as tetanus infections, gangrene and blood poisoning can be fatal. Besides, women who are subjected to pharaonic mutilation experience increased pain during menstruation, when blood accumulates in the vagina because the opening is too small to permit normal flow. Mutilated women are also at greater risk for becoming infected with HIV.
Intercourse is painful for circumcised women. To be able to penetrate, men must often force themselves into their wives' vaginas. Those whose penises are incapable of doing the job use a knife to enlarge the opening.
Circumcised women can face complications during pregnancy, and both the mother and child are at greater risk of dying in childbirth.
There is no religious justification for this practice. All three major monotheistic world religions define man as a perfect creation of the Almighty, and condemn doing any harm to God's creation. In Sura 95, Verse 4, the Koran states: "We have created man in our most perfect image." Besides, in Islam men and women are meant to experience sexual fulfillment, and it is considered the husband's matrimonial duty to satisfy his wife -- a near impossible task when a woman is circumcised.
Although the conference's attendees were generally in agreement over these facts, men repeatedly insisted on defending circumcision as an established custom. "Our women have been circumcised for thousands of years, and they have never complained," said an agitated elderly man in the audience. The conference, he said, was a Western conspiracy, and showing pictures of circumcisions was a crime.
But the academics and scholars in attendance declared genital circumcision to be a deplorable custom without any basis in religious texts. They called upon the parliaments in the countries where the practice is common to pass laws making genital mutilation a crime.
The Grand Mufti of Egypt signed the resolution the next day. Ali Jumaa declared that he firmly believed that the fight against this terrible custom would succeed. Muslims base much of their behavior on legal opinions issued by religious scholars.
For Rüdiger Nehberg, the adventurer on a crusade for women, the conference represented the fulfillment of a dream. He now plans to "print a small book containing the recommendation and the scholars' comments and distribute 4 million copies worldwide."
Ruth Meena, “Sexual Mutilation, DPMF Workshop and Conference Proceedings, downloaded from http://www.dpmf.org/democracy-ruth.html, 6 October 2006.
Genital mutilation has its origin in male desire to control female sexuality. This has taken many forms throughout the history of human society. During the Roman period, the Romans slipped rings though the labia majora of their female slaves to prevent pregnancy, the Crusaders in the 12th Century designed the chastity belt to control unsanctioned sex. And in the present day Africa, young girls are mutilated to dampen their sexual desires. Genital mutilation continues to date with little condemnation from the political elite or academicians despite the fact that it threatens the lives, the physical welfare and the sexual health of women. Other than the medically related literature, the mainstream academic disciplines have never attempted to analyze the politics of genital mutilation.
Anai Rhoads Ford, “Female Genital Mutilation On The Rise,” Stop FGM, 9 Dec. 2005.
AnaiRhoads.org - Despite evidence that female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) is on the decline in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Yemen, numbers appear up overall as the procedure endures through tradition.
A total of 28 countries encourage this practice, with an estimated 3 million new girls undergoing this form of mutilation annually according to the United Nations (UN).
"Real and lasting change is possible," said Marta Santos Pais, director of UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, which issued a recent report entitled "Changing a Harmful Social Convention: Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting".
FGM/C has been done on young girls for generations. Some cultures believe by removing a girl's sexuality, they are improving her appearance, making her "honourable", and ensuring certain monogamy after marriage. Ironically, some young women have become infertile as result.
According to UNICEF, FGM/C is practiced for a number of reasons, which include:
• Sexual: to control or reduce female sexuality.
• Sociological: for example, as an initiation for girls into womanhood, social integration and the maintenance of social cohesion.
• Hygiene and aesthetic reasons: where it is believed that the female genitalia are dirty and unsightly.
• Health: in the belief that it enhances fertility and child survival.
• Religious reasons: in the mistaken belief that FGM/C is a religious requirement.There are some differences from culture to culture with regards to appropriate age and methods of cutting. The average age is 14, however according to UNICEF, nearly half are performed on infants before their 12th month of age, This figure includes 44 percent in Eritrea and 29 percent in Mali.
The results may be prolonged bleeding, infection, septicaemia, and even death. Not only is the whole experience brutal, painful, and most often done without anesthetics, but also humiliating and forever unchangeable. Once a girl has the FGM/C done, her sexuality is forever dormant. The psychological impact alone is overwhelming and often ignored.
The silence on this topic is deafening. Countries speak very little on FGM/C and its dangers, making it impossible to estimate the actual death toll.
"Change will happen when communities – including girls, boys, men and women – are empowered by knowledge to make choices that are healthy and empowering to individuals and societies," Pais added.
”UNICEF Releases Report on Female Genital Mutilation,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 29 November 2005.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has released a new report that provides current information on female genital mutilation (FGM) and suggests solutions for putting an end to the violent practice. UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Centre’s report, entitled Changing a Harmful Social Convention: Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting, reveals that FGM is practiced as often as it was ten years ago, with about three million women and girls subjected to cutting each year.
The report emphasizes the necessity of working with communities to change gender stereotypes that put women in a subservient position that is then reinforced by the mutilation. FGM is a term used to refer to the harmful practice of cutting or removing all or parts of the female genitals for non-medical reasons. Depending on the environment and type of procedure performed, FGM can cause sterility, birth complications, loss of sexual pleasure, and disease.
Emma Bonino, a member of the European Parliament who participated in the report’s launch last week, said, “Leadership is needed in the flight to eliminate the practice. Laws aren’t enough. What we need is international commitment and local commitment in order to really change things,” reports IRIN News.
Ontario [Canada] Consultants on Religious Tolerance, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Africa, The Middle East & Far East, http://www.religioustolerance.org/fem_cirm.htm, downloaded 3 February 2005.)
The United Nations has supported the right of member states to grant refugee status to women who fear being mutilated if they are returned to their country of origin. Canada has granted such status to women in this situation. A judge of a Canadian Federal Court declared it a "cruel and barbaric practice."
In 1994 CNN broadcast footage of the circumcision of a 10 year old Egyptian girl by an unskilled practitioner. This program drew international attention to the operation. A 500 million dollar lawsuit was brought against CNN for allegedly damaging Egypt's reputation, It was rejected by the courts.
In the West, the procedure is outlawed in Britain, Canada, France, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States. A US federal bill, "Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation of 1995" was passed in 1996-SEP. Section 273.3 of the Canadian Criminal Code protects children who are ordinarily resident in Canada, (as citizens or landed migrants) from being removed from the country and subjected to FGM. In the US and Canada, the very small percentage of immigrants who wish to continue the practice often find it impossible to find a doctor who will cooperate. The operation is often done in the home by the family.
Marianne Sarkis, “Female Genital Cutting (FGC): An Introduction,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 25 February 2004.
As you are reading this article, there are between eight and ten million women and girls in the Middle East and in Africa who are at risk of undergoing one form or another of genital cutting. In the United States it is estimated that about ten thousand girls are at risk of this practice. FGC in a variety of its forms is practiced in Middle Eastern countries (the two Yemens, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Southern Algeria). In Africa it is practiced in the majority of the continent including Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Mozambique, and Sudan.
Even though FGC is practiced in mostly Islamic countries, it is not an Islamic practice. FGC is a cross-cultural and cross-religious ritual. In Africa and the Middle East it is performed by Muslims, Coptic Christians, members of various indigenous groups, Protestants, and Catholics, to name a few.
Definition
FGC is a term used to refer to any practice which includes the removal or the alteration of the female genitalia. There are three main types of FGC that are practiced through the world : Type I or Sunna circumcision, Type II or excision, and Type III or infibulation. These three operation range in intensity, from the "mildness" of Type I, to the extreme Type III. Type II is a recent addition to FGC. I will explain in the next sections what each of these practices involve, and outline some of the short-term and long-term effects that they have. [For Sarkis' entire article, see "Background Research" at bottom of this webpage.]
"Conference in Kenya Urges African Government to Ban FGM," Feminist Daily News Wire, 20 September 2004.
An international conference met to review progress made in the fight to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM) since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. The conference, organized by the Kenyan government and a group of non-governmental organizations, also called for efforts to ban the practice. Over 400 people, from doctors to former circumcisers, attended the conference, representing approximately forty countries. According to Agence France Presse, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki asserted that African governments “must continue our efforts to stop those who would continue the practice in the face of prohibitive legislations.”
Waris Dire, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) goodwill ambassador, stated that “in all cases, FGM victims are scarred for life. This amounts to an extremely serious human rights and medical violation. That is why stiffer sentences should be imposed to serve as a deterrent,” reports Xinhua General News Service.
Part or all of a girl’s or woman’s genitalia are removed during FGM, which is usually performed as a rite of passage, reports Voice of America. The United Nations reports that two million girls are mutilated every year in Africa.
”Conference Calls On Governments to Ban Female Circumcision,” Second Sight Research, 25 June 2003, downloaded from http://secondsightresearch.tripod.com/zine/id26.html, 9 March 2005.
Cairo -- Delegates from 28 countries across the Middle East and Africa called for governments worldwide to ban female circumcision.
Female circumcision, also called female genital mutilation (FMG), was first reported historically ca 700 BC and is still practiced today, though many call it "medieval," barbaric, and a violation of human rights.
At the close of their three-day conference in Cairo, a statement was issued calling for widespread dissemination of information to the public on the effects of female circumcision.
However, in a somewhat controversial clause, the delegates left it to nations themselves to define what entails female circumcision, also known as female genital mutilation, based on the World Health Organization's set definition.
The Cairo gathering, dubbed the Afro-Arab Expert Consultation for the Prevention of Female Genital Mutilation, attracted campaigners from Yemen as well as African countries like Senegal, Kenya, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad. In the Nile valley and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the practice is a long-standing tradition believed to be necessary to control female sexuality and ensure a girl's "marriageability."
According to an Amnesty International report, female circumcision most commonly occurs between the ages of four and eight, sometimes as part of an initiation ritual into womanhood. The person who performs the circumcision is generally an older woman, a midwife or healer, doctor, or even a barber. The painful practice typically involves cutting off the clitoris and parts of the labia minora in girls and young teens. The immediate complications of the procedure include bleeding and infection.
"Mutilation may be carried out using broken glass, a tin lid, scissors, a razor blade or some other cutting instrument," Amnesty said, adding that the operation is often performed without any anaesthetic.
The conference organizers said female circumcision been carried out on between 120 and 130 million women, mainly in Africa and the Arab world, while two million girls annually undergo the procedure. The practice is banned in many African countries but still carried out on a massive scale even though it often causes infection and sometimes death.
Circumcision is practiced by both Muslims and Christians, although no texts recommend it in either religion. The only Arab countries where female circumcision is known to be carried out is in Egypt, Sudan and Yemen, because of their links with Africa, which exported the practice deemed vital to protect the honor of girls.
Between 85% and 89% of women in Sudan undergo the procedure, according to the report published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections.
Although female circumcision has been banned in Egypt since 1997 and a campaign against it was launched here, with 2003 named the "Year of the Girl," according to the government's study, 97% of Egyptian women are circumcised. The Egyptian health ministry issued a decree banning circumcision, which was upheld by the Council of State based on laws forbidding the "touching of the human body, except for medical necessity."
Egypt's most senior religious leaders, Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the head of al-Azhar, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, and the Patriarch of the Coptic church Pope Shenuda III, told the conference Saturday there was no basis for female circumcision in any Christian or Muslim holy book.
Halima Warzazi, United Nations special reporter on traditional practices, told the conference that education was key to eradicating the practice.
"All efforts must try, before all else, to make women aware by getting them access to education, information, to knowledge of human rights and the means to be able to exercise those rights," she said.
"We must change mentalities. The women who go to school are not going to let themselves be circumcised. They are not going to do it."
Education may be the key to making mutilated women less appealing to men as well. According to a new report conducted by UK researchers at the University of Khartoum in Sudan, most male Sudanese college students report that they would prefer to marry a woman who has not been circumcised. This finding contradicts the traditional belief that female circumcision increases a woman's chance for finding a husband.
The study was led by Dr. Elbushra Herieka, of the Bournemouth Genitourinary Clinic in Dorset. To see whether the practice and attitudes toward the practice have changed in Sudan, researchers examined a survey completed by college students. Of the 414 forms returned, 192 were from women.
Only 5% of the women who responded were in favor of the practice, however, about 60% said their mothers made the decision to have them circumcised. Only 57% of the women surveyed had undergone the procedure, and the authors report that this indicates a potential decline in the practice.
Men were twice as likely as women to think that the practice was recommended by their religion, but fewer women than men believed the practice was illegal -- 47% and 60%, respectively. While more than 90% of men and women reported that they were aware of the complications that can accompany the "surgery," 17% of the men and 16% of the women still either favored female circumcision or were not sure about it.
One in 12 of the women believed that undergoing circumcision would improve their chances of marriage, despite the finding that more than three-quarters of the 222 males said they would prefer their wives not to be circumcised.
"This could mean that the pressure from religious, cultural and social beliefs to continue this tradition is stronger than any perception of danger caused by the practice of female genital mutilation," the authors write. -- Edited with excerpts from the title article at allAfrica.com, "Cruel" Practice of Female Circumcision Continues at Welcome to Health News-UK, -- and Study Gauges Students' View of Female Circumcision at Reuters.
”Female genital mutilation on the rise in Africa,” SABC News, 8 March 2002.
About 6 000 girls undergo genital mutilation a day, often willingly, and up to 115 million African women have already had it, US-based development agency World Vision said yesterday.
Bizarre beliefs abound about female genital mutilation (FGM)range from: if a woman is not circumcised her husband will die, she will give birth to an abnormal baby and her genitals may grow to an enormous size. These tales have helped perpetuate the practice in more than 30 countries, Fatuma Hashi, the report's author, said.
"The worst perpetrators of FGM are women themselves," Hashi said, adding girls fear being ostracised and older women cling to tradition, unaware of the health risks.
FGM is a cultural practice with roots predating the spread of the major religions. Nevertheless, "erroneous beliefs that the Christian bible and the Muslim Quraan demand it are widespread," Hashi said.
The report highlighted cases in Ethiopia, Kenya and Ghana, and described a Kenyan woman ordering her twin daughters to shower in ice-cold water in preparation for circumcision. "With the freezing water's numbing effect serving as the only form of anaesthesia, Mary sits akimbo on a sheepskin, her limbs clamped down by other women to discourage even the slightest movement to prevent unintentional cutting.
"In an operation that lasts several minutes, an elderly woman takes several swipes at Mary's genitals using a sharp razor blade."
Cultures which practised FGM give many reasons for it, including preserving virginity, enhancing personal hygiene or attractiveness, easing childbirth and achieving status for the girl or her father. Types of FGM range from clitoridectomy to infibulation, in which the clitoris and labia minora are removed and the labiamajora are pinned together with catgut or thorns, leaving only a pinhole opening for urine and menstrual blood.
Process causes long-term psychological problems
Infibulation, also called "pharaonic" circumcision, leaves scar tissue which must be cut open before intercourse and the birth of each child. Apart from the short-term consequences of FGM such as extreme pain, blood loss, gangrene and infections, many girls went on to suffer pain during sexual intercourse, infertility, incontinence, depression and long-term psychological problems. It sometimes caused death from haemorrhage, blood poisoning, urine retention or led to HIV infection.
FGM could also lead to problems at childbirth, and many women suffered constant bleeding, slow sexual arousal and an inhibited orgasm, or no orgasm at all. "Sex and suffering become synonymous to females both young and old," the report said. "Having no acceptable way of addressing their feelings, these girls and women mostly suffer in silence."
The report quoted an official of an African community education group as saying half the battle was to convince traditional midwives, who birth over 80% of Africa's babies and who are trusted by mothers. "It's the midwives who either circumcise girls themselves, or encourage mothers to circumcise daughters," the official said. - Reuters
Egypt”UN Report Finds Disturbing FGM Trend in West African Country,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 21 May 2004.
A new report states that while there has been a decline of female genital mutilation (FGM) on women in the West African country of Burkina Faso, there has been an increase in the number of young girls under the age of seven who are undergoing FGM. According to Planned Parenthood International, 66 percent of women in Burkina Faso, which has a population of 13 million, undergo FGM, down from between 70 and 100 percent 20 years ago. According to a survey conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Committee Against the Practice of Circumcision (CNLPE) based in Burkina Faso, 70.2 percent of cases of FGM, also known as female circumcision, carried out in Burkina Faso were on young girls under the age of seven, reports IRIN News.
According to the permanent secretary of the CNLPE, “In order to avoid the law, the circumcisers have been smart enough to substitute adolescents with little girls” because it is harder for authorities to detect, reports IRIN News. The survey found that 43 percent of the girls circumcised were between the ages of five and 10.
Burkina Faso passed a law against the practice of FGM in 1996 after major pressure from women’s rights and human rights organizations. The practice of FGM involves the partial or full removal of the clitoris. Advocates of FGM claim the procedure is conducted to reduce the motivation for committing adultery and to eliminate the pleasure from sexual intercourse.
"Village in Egypt Pledges to End Practice of Female Genital Mutilation," Feminist Daily News Wire, 1 July 2005.
In the Egyptian village of Abou Shawareb, community leaders and women's rights activists made a public commitment last week to end the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) as part of "The FGM Free Village Model" program established by The National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM). The program was launched in 2003 in an effort to eradicate FGM in 60 villages in the northern Egypt governates of Assuit, Aswan, Beni Suef, Minya, Quena, and Sohag. The NCCM has plans to enlarge the campaign to cover 120 villages.
FGM is a term used to refer to the harmful practice of cutting or removing all or parts of the female genitals for cultural, non-medical reasons. The NCCM campaign trains health workers to educate communities about the health risks involved in the operation. Depending on the environment and type of procedure performed, FGM can cause sterility, birth complications, loss of sexual pleasure, and disease. Roughly 97 percent of Egyptian women between the ages of 15 to 49 have experienced some form of FGM in their lifetime, according to a study conducted by the United States Agency for International Development in 2000.
FGM is often difficult to eliminate in villages where the practice is considered a traditional rite of passage. The United Nations Development Program Resident Representative, who participated in Abou Shawareb’s official declaration ceremony, explained, "Not all traditions are good. Female genital mutilation represents violence against women and is a violation of human rights," according to IRIN News.
Since the early 1990s, the Egyptian government has made the eradication of FGM a national priority. The First Lady, Suzanne Mubarak, began a project called the "Egyptian Girl" in 2003, which focuses on ending FGM and other forms of violence against women.
Eritrea
Emily Wax, “Respected In Battle, Overlooked At Home,” Washington Post, 4 Apr. 2004.
On a Sunday morning thick with heat, Mileta Abreah prepared coffee for her husband. She burned triangles of incense over charcoal. Then she roasted coffee beans over her small metal stove. The aroma drifted through their small home. Abreah commented that it was the time of year when women in the villages dotting Eritrea's rocky mountainsides underwent circumcision in ceremonies marked by dancing and celebration.
When Mileta was fighting, she refused to submit to the procedure, which often causes infections and makes sexual relations painful. A boyfriend wanted to marry her, but wanted the procedure done so she wouldn't be "out of control and want to have a lot of sex," she said.
She refused. He said he would leave her. She said no, again. The relationship ended.
When the war was over and Yemane came calling, he also asked her to undergo the procedure. Again, she refused.
He relented. "I said okay, don't do it," he recalled. "And everything has been fine. I love my wife. She has been good to me."
"Indonesia Bans Doctors from Practicing Female Genital Mutilation," Feminist Daily News Wire, October 6, 2006.
The Indonesian government announced this week that it is prohibiting doctors and nurses from performing female genital cutting. According to Reuters, some Indonesian groups encourage families to perform female genital mutiliation, possibly to maintain chastity and virginity before marriage and to ensure faithfulness in the women’s marriage.
Sri Hermiyanti, head of the Indonesian health ministry's family health directorate, said, “Hurting, damaging, incising and cutting of the clitoris are not permitted under the ban, because these acts violate the reproductive rights of these girls and harm their organs,” reports Kaiser. However, there are no punishments in place for those who violate the ban, and it is expected that it will take time for traditional communities to stop performing female genital mutilation.
For Sandra Strobel and Thomas v. der Osten-Sacken, "Female Genital Mutilation in Iaqi Kurdistan," Kurdish Womens Action Against Honour Killing, 27 March 2006, see here.
Fulgence Zamblé, ”IVORY COAST: THE KINDEST CUT OF ALL -- SEVERING A HARMFUL TRADITION,” PEACEWOAMN.ORG, 29 NOV. 2005.
November 29, 2005 - (Inter Press Service) Thirty practitioners of female circumcision in the Ivorian financial capital, Abidjan, have publicly laid aside their blades, knives and scissors. This is the result of an ongoing campaign in the West African country to eradicate the practice, estimated by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to affect 40 percent of women living there.
The campaign, underway for a decade now, is led by the National Organisation for the Child, the Woman and the Family (Organisation nationale pour l'enfant, la femme et la famille, ONEF), a non-governmental group.
The decision by the 30 to renounce their trade during a ceremony in Abidjan earlier this month marked the first instance in which ONEF had managed to convince some of the 75 identified circumcisors working in Abidjan to quit the profession. They had been circumcising girls and women despite the fact that circumcision was banned by a 1998 law.
"This has been a long haul, starting in 1995. Thanks to funding received in 2004, we have continued awareness raising," ONEF President Rachel Gogoua told IPS, emotional in the face of her organisation's success after so many years of fighting to end circumcisions.
Female circumcision (also referred to as female genital mutilation or FGM) is practiced in several regions of the country, effectively divided into a rebel-held north and government-controlled south.
A study by ONEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) shows that circumcision is on the increase in western Ivory Coast. Seventy percent of girls and women in this region had undergone FGM in 1995, a figure that has now increased to 80 percent. Although it was once restricted to villages and remote hamlets, FGM has since developed into an urban phenomenon as well; men have become involved in the practice, and different excision techniques have evolved.
"Today, excisionists have mobile phones...You can contact them to arrange for a home visit," explains Gogoua, who believes circumcision needs to be considered a "violation of women's right to health".
Female circumcision involves the partial or complete removal of female genitalia. The most severe form of FGM -- infibulation -- results in part or all of the clitoris being cut away, as well as the folds of skin around the openings of the urethra and vagina. The resulting wounds are then stitched up, with only a small opening left to allow for the passage of urine and menstrual blood.
Many claim that excision lessens the risk of infidelity amongst women, on the grounds that it reduces their desire for sex. However, certain communities also consider FGM an initiation into adulthood or a hygienic measure -- while some Muslims believe it is a religious requirement. For her part, Gogoua considers this a false belief, one she is working to overcome.
UNICEF says FGM in Ivory Coast is most often carried out on teenagers before they get married -- although girls as young as five may also undergo the procedure. The agency also estimates that 13,000 new circumcisions are carried out annually. According to Geneviève Saki-Nékouressi of the WHO's Abidjan office, 130 million girls and women in Africa have undergone some form of genital mutilation.
Circumcision may be carried out with crude and unsterilised implements such as tin lids, putting girls at risk of contracting HIV. FGM can lead to difficulties in sexual intercourse and birth, and also cause girls to develop infections and other complications. "Complications, pain, shock, acute haemorrhaging, urinary retention, dysmenorrhoea (painful menstruation), sexual dysfunction, are the conditions that patients risk developing," Saki-Nékouressi told IPS.
The procedure may even result in death. Gogoua cites, for example, cases in the villages of Zralio and Koyinfla in the centre-west of the Ivory Coast, near the buffer zone which separates government and rebel forces.
In these two villages, where 10 practitioners have been identified, a girl of eight died as a result of the bleeding caused by FGM, she says. In another instance, a 25-year-old woman who was pregnant lost her life after undergoing circumcision, which custom dictates should be done before women give birth.
The 30 circumcisors who abandoned their profession say they realise they have done wrong, to those around them as well as themselves.
"Circumcision brought us nothing," noted one of the oldest, aged about 80. "We underwent this in the name of tradition (but) today, men are leaving their wives (who are circumcised) for young girls (who are not)."
ONEF says it has made funds available so that loans can be extended to the former circumcisors, enabling them to embark on other revenue-generating activities. Each has received about 130 dollars, under flexible terms of repayment.
"Schoolgirls Forced to Undergo Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya," Feminist Daily News Wire, 30 August 2004
A new report shows that more than 100 schoolgirls were forced to undergo the harmful practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the West Pokot District of Kenya in August. The East African Standard reports that most of the girls were between the ages of 10 and 18 years old.
According to a local human rights group, the survey shows "that most parents have resolved to circumcise their daughters in April and August instead of the usual December holiday. This is because in December, anti-FGM groups usually intensify their campaigns," reports the East African Standard.
Mark Lacey, “Genital Cutting Shows Signs of Losing Favor in Africa,” New York Times, 8 June 2004.
NAIROBI, Kenya, June 7 - Isnino Shuriye still remembers the pride she felt years ago when she leaned over each of her three daughters, knife in hand, and sliced into their genitals.
Each time, as the blood started to flow, she quickly dropped the knife and picked up a needle and thread. Quickly, expertly, she sewed her daughters' vaginas almost shut.
"I was full of pride," she recalled recently. "I felt like I was doing the right thing in the eyes of God. I was preparing them for marriage by sealing their vaginas."
Now she feels like a butcher, a sinner, a mother who harmed her own flesh and blood, not to mention the thousands of other girls she says she circumcised in the last quarter-century as part of a traditional rite still common in Africa.
Slowly, genital cutting is losing favor. Parliaments are passing laws forbidding the practice, which causes widespread death and disfigurement. Girls are fleeing their homes to keep their vaginas intact. And the women who have been carrying out the cutting, and who have been revered by their communities for doing so, are beginning to lay down their knives.
Ms. Shuriye, an elderly mother of eight who is known far and wide in northeastern Kenya for her expertise as a genital cutter, is one of them.
When local members of Womankind Kenya, a grass-roots group opposing the practice, visited Ms. Shuriye's hut outside Garissa two years ago, she chased them off her property.
This was something her mother had done before her. She started as an apprentice while still an adolescent by holding down girls' legs for her mother to perform the rite, which opponents call genital mutilation. "I thought my mother would curse me from the grave if I didn't carry on the tradition," she said.
There were tangible benefits as well. She had prestige in her community and earned a good income, more than her husband did as a camel herder before he died of tuberculosis.
She said she had no use for those people who came around denouncing her way of life.
But the opponents were a determined lot. They knew that Ms. Shuriye was one of the longest-serving genital cutters around and that she held sway over the community. If only she could be converted, they figured, others would certainly follow.
Ms. Shuriye, a frail but feisty grandmother who wraps her head in colorful scarves, was rather set in her ways. Again and again she refused to hear their arguments.
"It was so difficult to change her mind," said Sophia Abdi Noor, the founder of Womankind Kenya, which works with the ethnic Somalis who live in Kenya's rugged North Eastern Province and has attracted local supporters throughout the region. "We knew she was respected, and we wanted her on our side."
Finally, the anti-cutting advocates tried a different tack. They showed up with religious leaders. Ms. Shuriye, a religious Muslim, could not chase them away. She sat down with some influential clerics in her community who had come to the realization that the tradition was harmful, and not dictated by or consistent with the teachings of the Koran.
The imams denounced the practice. They told her that the vagina was a part of the body, just as important in the eyes of God as an eye, a finger or a limb. Cutting it, they argued in their long session outside her home, is a sin.
They went even further. They told Ms. Shuriye that her sins required her to compensate the girls she had maimed. Each of them was due 80 camels, they said. Ms. Shuriye, prosperous by local standards but not that prosperous, was shaken.
She sobbed. Then she prayed. Finally she pleaded with the imams for a way out of her impossible situation. They said the only way to avoid paying the compensation was to seek the forgiveness of each of the girls she had cut.
That is when Ms. Shuriye turned from a cutter to an active opponent. She began making house calls on the girls who had gone under her knife. Many of them were women now. She explained her conversion and pleaded for their forgiveness. She cried each time, she said.
Most offered their blessings. A few saw opportunity in Ms. Shuriye's suffering and demanded the camels, which she did not have. And Ms. Shuriye was able to persuade a small number of the women in her tiny village of Ijara to join the cause.
Laws are not enough to stop the practice, which is carried out in at least 28 countries in Africa and elsewhere in the world.
Kenya banned the cutting of girls several years ago, but the local newspapers continue to carry reports of the ceremonies and of young girls fleeing the knife. Twenty-three of them are now under the protection of Ken Wafula, an activist who files civil protection orders to spare girls in the town of Eldoret.
In Tanzania, where cutting is also illegal, three young sisters sought refuge in a church after their father said they would have to undergo it. One of the priests took the girls to the police for protection, but the officers turned them over to their father, who had them cut the next day, and married soon after.
"This is a deeply rooted culture," said Ms. Shuriye, speaking though a translator in a mixture of Somali and Swahili. "It's religious. It's very difficult for people to leave it overnight."
Reflecting on her old life, Ms. Shuriye lamented the loss of status she had suffered since she had given up cutting. People in the community denounce her to her face, she said. Imams who still endorse genital cutting smear her name in some mosques.
With Ms. Shuriye's help, Womankind Kenya has managed to persuade 12 other genital cutters to denounce the practice. Of those, only about half are regarded as committed opponents. "Some of them, we suspect, are doing it in secret," said Ms. Abdi Noor, who has yet to persuade her own mother to give up cutting. "We hear rumors about them."
But everybody knows where Ms. Shuriye now stands. She is so vocal that she was recently invited here to the Kenyan capital for an international conference for reformed genital cutters organized by Equality Now, an international women's rights group based in New York. There were cutters from Tanzania, Somalia, Mali and Guinea, among other places Ms. Shuriye had never visited.
In some countries the cutting is limited to the tip of the clitoris, an effort to reduce sexual pleasure for women and reduce the likelihood that they will stray from their husbands. In the more extreme form that Ms. Shuriye performed, all of the external genitalia are removed and the vagina is sewn virtually shut.
At the conference, which ended Monday, Ms. Shuriye met women like her who also had been persuaded to give up their knives. She heard of the frustrations faced in trying to stop such a deeply rooted practice. She learned how some groups were training reformed cutters to earn money in different ways, like sewing or making soap.
Reporters at the conference questioned Ms. Shuriye, and a documentary film crew sat her down by the pool of the hotel for a long interview. "I like being an activist," she said.
Ms. Shuriye said that she had no idea how many girls she had cut over the course of her lifetime, but that she was determined to find as many of them as she can.
"This has got to stop," she said.
”Mosque: Girls Must Be Circumcised,” expatica.com, 8 Apr. 2004.
AMSTERDAM — For the first time in the Netherlands, a mosque has come out in support of female circumcision, according to a newspaper report Thursday.
The highly controversial statement on circumcision comes from a pamphlet “Fatwas of Muslim Women” provided by the El Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam for its open day. A fatwa is an official statement or order from an Islamic religious leader.
The pamphlet says that women who lie deserve 100 blows and the husband’s duty of care for his wife is negated if she refuses him sex or leaves the home without his permission, newspaper Trouw reported.
There have been many claims in the media in recent years about “imported brides” who are forced by their husbands to stay in the family home — unless accompanied outside by a male relative. Some of these women, it is claimed, live in total isolation from Dutch society.
The call for girls to be circumcised — removing part of the female genitalia — is likely to cause the biggest outcry so far. If done right, the mosque’s pamphlet claims, circumcision is healthy for both boys and girls.
But unlike male circumcision — in which the mosque claims that for reasons of hygiene, the male’s foreskin can be circumcised — there are absolutely no medical grounds for female circumcision.
Nevertheless, it urges that the foreskin of a girl’s clitoris should be removed, but not the clitoris itself — as is often wrongly assumed to be the case. Removing the foreskin would help the woman keep her feelings of lust under control, the pamphlet says.
In recent weeks, politicians have called for the Dutch government to do more to stop the practice among immigrant communities. To date, the Health Ministry has ruled out compulsory checks on girls to make sure they have not been circumcised.
The Pharos health centre for refugees said never before has a mosque in the Netherlands come out publicly in support of female circumcision.
Ironically, El Tawheed Mosque organised the open day to counteract negative publicity caused by previous controversial statements made by one of its imams which were condemned as fostering anti-western and anti-woman bias.
On one highly-publicised occasion, an imam referred to non-Muslims as “firewood for hell” and he forbade Islamic women to leave the family home without the permission of their husbands.
“Fatwas of Muslim Women” continues on this theme and states that science has proved men and women differ in “biological nature, physical capabilities and mental capacity”. It says it is unjust to give women the same “responsibilities, rights and duties as men”.
The pamphlet, written by a “prominent imam” and published in Egypt in 2000, was one of the many booklets available at the open day.
Trouw noted “Fatwas of Muslim Women” lacks any biographical information about the author, Mufti Ibn Taymyah (or Taymiyya).
He lived in the 14 century and has been described by Arabism scholar Hans Jansen as an “influential ideologue for militant Islamists”. Jansen has drawn comparisons between Taymyah and Osama bin Laden.
"Pakistan," DOS Report 2005.
The estimated 100 thousand Bohra Muslims practiced female genital mutilation (FGM). While no statistics on the prevalence of FGM among the Bohras existed, the practice reportedly declined.
”Women Abandon FGM in Sierra Leone,” Feminist Daily News Wire, 8 Aug. 2006
Fifteen top practitioners of FGM (female genital mutilation) in Sierra Leone last weekend publicly announced their decision to abandon their positions as female circumcisers. At a rally organized by the Amazonian Initiative Movement (AIM), a local NGO, the women set their instruments on fire and proclaimed that they will now work towards “safeguarding the health of women and girls,” TODAY online reports.
The 15 women were well-known and responsible for about a third of the FGM in the town of Lunsar, TODAY online reports. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) “an estimated 100-140 million girls and women worldwide [have] undergone female genital mutilation — the removal of all or part of the female external genitalia as part of traditional initiation rituals or marriage preparation customs.” In Sierra Leone, approximately 90 percent of women have undergone female genital mutilation, reports UNICEF.
Health complications due to female genital mutilation include infection, excessive bleeding, and in some cases death. Studies have shown that the procedure may also cause “infertility, pregnancy and childbirth complications, and psychological problems through inability to experience sexual pleasure,” reports the World Health Organization.
United States
Background Research“U.S. Circumcision Jailing Fires Debate in Africa,” New York Times, 2 Nov. 2006.
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The jailing of an Ethiopian in the United States for circumcising his daughter with scissors has fueled a passionate debate across Africa, with many approving the punishment but some urging understanding.
In what is believed to be the first such case in the United States, Khalid Adem on Wednesday was sentenced to 10 years in prison for removing his 2-year-old daughter's clitoris in 2001.
The practice arouses horror in the West, but is still widespread in many of Africa's traditional societies.
``The punishment is appropriate because what he did is a violation of child rights,'' Bulti Gueteema, a senior official in Ethiopia's Ministry of Women's Affairs, told Reuters.
Ethiopian mother Elizabeth Gorge said it was ``revolting'' for a father to circumcise his own daughter by himself.
``Even the uneducated parents in rural areas do not do such practices on their own, they always seek assistance of women who specialize in this,'' she said in Addis Ababa.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said the practice was outlawed but still common in his Horn of Africa nation.
``If a whole community is involved in this practice, you cannot jail an entire community. You have to change the mindset, and that takes time,'' he said last week.
An estimated 3 million girls and women are mutilated or cut each year on the African continent, the United Nations' children's agency UNICEF says, in a custom viewed in many traditional cultures as a necessary rite of passage.
Circumcision is also used to control or reduce women's sexual desire to lessen the chance of promiscuity in marriage.
Opponents say it disfigures and sometimes kills, causes psychological harm, complicates childbirth later in life and reduces sexual pleasure for women.
The practice, also known as female circumcision, usually involves cutting off the clitoris and other genitalia parts.
t is often carried out by an older woman with no medical training, using anything from scissors to pieces of glass under no anaesthetic or antiseptic treatment.
‘TRY TO UNDERSTAND''
As populations move West, the custom has followed in immigrant communities.
``As long as this happens in a civilised society in the United States, it means our effort to eradicate this practice has failed,'' said Bjorn Ljungqvist, of UNICEF in Ethiopia.
In Kenya, it is known to be still common among traditional communities like the Maasai.
``If a woman is not cut, she remains a baby forever and cannot perform social rites with other women,'' Ben Koissaba, a Maasai elder in Kenya, told Reuters by telephone from the town of Narok in Kenya's Rift Valley.
``This (Ethiopian) man was doing it because he thought it would be a bad omen on his child if he did not. Maybe he should have been reprimanded not jailed, but we should try to understand his culture.''
In some Muslim countries of west Africa, considered among the continent's most conservative cultures, mutilation is common. Nine of 10 Malian women have undergone mutilation, for example, a European parliamentarian said this year. ``Circumcision is an affront to the physical and moral integrity of a woman and that is why I will always be against the practice,'' said Hadiza Moussa, a female teacher in Niamey, capital of Niger. ``Just like a man, a woman has her natural desires, notably to draw pleasure from sexual relations. No, we must outlaw this practice everywhere, especially because it can result in sterility.''
”Female circumcision trial may be first in U.S.,” CNN.com, 27 Oct. 2006.
LAWRENCEVILLE, Georgia (AP) -- The trial of an Atlanta-area father accused of circumcising his 2-year-old daughter with scissors is focusing attention on an ancient African practice that experts say is slowly becoming more common in the U.S. as immigrant communities grow.
Khalid Adem, a 30-year-old immigrant from Ethiopia, is charged with aggravated battery and cruelty to children.
Human rights observers said they believe this is the first criminal case in the U.S. involving the 5,000-year-old practice.
Prosecutors say Adem used scissors to remove his daughter's clitoris in their apartment in 2001. The child's mother said she did not discover it until more than a year later.
"He said he wanted to preserve her virginity," Fortunate Adem, the girl's mother, testified this week. "He said it was the will of God. I became angry in my mind. I thought he was crazy."
The girl, now 7, also testified, clutching a teddy bear and saying that her father "cut me on my private part." Adem cried loudly as his daughter left the courtroom.
Testifying on his own behalf Friday, Adem said he never circumcised his daughter or asked anyone else to do so. He said he grew up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and considers the practice more prevalent in rural areas.
Adem, who removed a handkerchief from his pocket and cried at one point during his testimony, was asked what he thought of someone who believes in the practice. He replied: "The word I can say is `mind in the gutter.' He is a moron."
His lawyer, Mark Hill, acknowledged that Adem's daughter had been cut. But he implied that the family of Fortunate Adem, who immigrated from South Africa when she was 6, may have had the procedure done.
The Adems divorced in 2003, and Hill suggested that the couple's daughter was encouraged to testify against her father by her mother, who has full custody.
If convicted, Adem, a clerk at a suburban Atlanta gas station, could get up to 40 years in prison.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, using figures from the 1990 Census, estimated that 168,000 girls and women in the U.S. had undergone the procedure or were at risk of being subjected to it.
The State Department estimates that up to 130 million women worldwide had undergone circumcision as of 2001. Knives, razors or even sharp stones are usually used, according to a 2001 department report. The tools often are not sterilized, and often, many girls are circumcised at the same ceremony, leading to infection.
It is unknown how many girls have died from the procedure, either during the cutting or from infections, or years later in childbirth.
Nightmares, depression, shock and feelings of betrayal are common psychological side effects, according to the federal report.
The report estimated that 73 percent of women in Ethiopia had undergone the procedure, based on a 1997 survey.
Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of Equality Now, an international human rights group, said female circumcision is most widely practiced in a 28-country swath of Africa. She said more than 90 percent of women in Ethiopia are believed to have been subjected to the practice, and more in places like Egypt and Somalia.
"It is a preparation for marriage," Bien-Aime said. "If the girl is not circumcised, her chances of being married are very slim."
The practice crosses ethnic and cultural lines and is not tied to a particular religion. Activists say the practice is intended to deny women sexual pleasure. In its most extreme form, the clitoris and parts of the labia are removed and the labia that remain are stitched together.
"I had maybe read about it in Reader's Digest or some other journal, but not really considered it a possibility here," said Dr. Rose Badaruddin, the pediatrician for the Adems' daughter.
Many refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia come to Georgia through a federal refugee resettlement program.
"With immigration, the immigrants travel with their traditions," Bien-Aime said. "Female genital mutilation is not an exception."
Federal law specifically bans the practice, but many states do not have a law addressing it. Georgia lawmakers, with the support of Fortunate Adem, passed an anti-mutilation law last year. Khalid Adem is not being tried under that law, since it did not exist when his daughter's cutting allegedly happened.
Marianne Sarkis, "Female Genital Cutting (FGC): An Introduction," The Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project, downloaed from http://www.fgmnetwork.org/intro/fgmintro.html, 7 October 2006.
As you are reading this article, there are between eight and ten million women and girls in the Middle East and in Africa who are at risk of undergoing one form or another of genital cutting. In the United States it is estimated that about ten thousand girls are at risk of this practice. FGC in a variety of its forms is practiced in Middle Eastern countries (the two Yemens, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, and Southern Algeria). In Africa it is practiced in the majority of the continent including Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Mozambique, and Sudan.
Even though FGC is practiced in mostly Islamic countries, it is not an Islamic practice. FGC is a cross-cultural and cross-religious ritual. In Africa and the Middle East it is performed by Muslims, Coptic Christians, members of various indigenous groups, Protestants, and Catholics, to name a few.
Definition
FGC is a term used to refer to any practice which includes the removal or the alteration of the female genitalia. There are three main types of FGC that are practiced through the world : Type I or Sunna circumcision, Type II or excision, and Type III or infibulation. These three operation range in intensity, from the "mildness" of Type I, to the extreme Type III. Type II is a recent addition to FGC. I will explain in the next sections what each of these practices involve, and outline some of the short-term and long-term effects that they have. ...
Type I -- Sunna Circumcision
The first and mildest type of FGC is called "sunna circumcision" or Type I. The term "Sunna" refers to tradition as taught by the prophet Muhammad. This involves the "removal of the prepuce with or without the excision of part or all of the clitoris (See the World Health Organization definition). Type I is practiced in a broad area all across Africa parallel to the equator. Fran Hosken enumerates the following countries: Egypt, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania in East Africa to the West African coast, from Sierra Leone to Mauritania, and in all countries in-between including Nigeria, the most populous one. There are also reports of Type I taking place in areas of the Middle East such as in Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. ...
Type II - Clitoridectomy
The second type of FGC, Type II, involves the partial or entire removal of the clitoris, as well as the scraping off of the labia majora and labia minora . This takes place in countries where infibulation has been outlawed such as Sudan. Clitoridectomy was invented by Sudanese midwives as a compromise when British legislation forbade the most extreme operations in 1946...
Type III - Infibulation or Pharaonic Circumcision
The third and most drastic type of FGC is Type III. This most extreme form, consists of the removal of the clitoris, the adjacent labia (majora and minora), and the joining of the scraped sides of the vulva across the vagina, where they are secured with thorns or sewn with catgut or thread. A small opening is kept to allow passage of urine and menstrual blood. An infibulated woman must be cut open to allow intercourse on the wedding night and is closed again afterwards to secure fidelity to the husband. Hosken also reports that infibulation is "practiced on all females, almost without exception, in all of Somalia and wherever ethnic Somalis live (Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti). It is also performed throughout the Nile Valley, including Southern Egypt, and all along the Red Seas Coast.
FGC is mostly done in unsanitary conditions in which a midwife uses unclean sharp instruments such as razor blades, scissors, kitchen knives, and pieces of glass. These instruments are frequently used on several girls in succession and are rarely cleaned, causing the transmission of a variety of viruses such as the HIV virus, and other infections. Antiseptic techniques and anesthesia are generally not used, or for that matter, heard of. This is akin to a doctor who uses the same surgical instrument on a number of women at the same time without cleaning any of them. ...
Effects of Female Genital Cutting
Beyond the obvious initial pains of the operations, FGC has long-term physiological, sexual, and psychological effects. The unsanitary environment under which FGC takes place results in infections of the genital and surrounding areas and often results in the transmission of the HIV virus which can cause AIDS. Some of the other health consequences of FGC include primary fatalities as a result of shock, hemorrhage or septicemia. In order to minimize the risk of the transmission of the viruses, some countries like Egypt made it illegal for FGC to be practiced by any other practitioners than trained doctors and nurses in hospitals. While this seems to be a more humane way to deal with FGC and try to reduce its health risks, more tissue is apt to be taken away due to the lack of struggle by the child if anesthesia is used.
Long-term complications include sexual frigidity, genital malformation, delayed menarche, chronic pelvic complications, recurrent urinary retention and infection, and an entire range of obstetric complications whereas the fetus is exposed to a range of infectious diseases as well as facing the risk of having his or her head crushed in the damaged birth canal. In such cases the infibulated mother must undergo another operation whereby she is "opened" further to insure the safe birthing of her child. Girls undergo FGC when they are around three years old, though some of them are much older than that when they undergo the operation. The age varies depending on the type of the ritual and the customs of the local village or region.
Justifications
In various cultures there are many "justifications" for these practices. A girl who is not circumcised is considered "unclean" by local villagers and therefore unmarriageable. A girl who does not have her clitoris removed is considered a great danger and ultimately fatal to a man if her clitoris touches his penis.
One of the most common explanations of FGC is local custom. Women are often heard saying that they are unwilling to change these customs since they have always done it this way and are not about to change. Oftentimes the practitioners are kept ignorant of the real implications of FGC, and the extreme health risks that it represents.
Family honor, cleanliness, protection against spells, insurance of virginity and faithfulness to the husband, or simply terrorizing women out of sex are sometimes used as excuses for the practice of FGC.
Some people believe that FGC is a barbaric practice done to girls and women in some remote villages in foreign countries of the world. However, up until a few decades ago, it was still believed that the clitoris is a very dangerous part of the female anatomy. Who can forget S. Freud who stated in one of his books entitled Sexuality and the Psychology of Love that the "elimination of clitoral sexuality is a necessary precondition for the development of femininity."
As recently as 1979, the "Love Surgery" was performed on women in the United States. Dr. James E. Burt, the so-called Love Surgeon, introduced "clitoral relocation" (i.e. sunna circumcision) to the medical establishment. He believed and acted upon the idea that excision does not prevent sexual pleasure but enhances it. Dr. Burt practiced in Ohio for almost ten years before he was exposed after which he gave up his license.
Because of the large number of cases of FGC and some of the deaths it has caused, FGC is now outlawed in some European countries (Britain, France, Sweden, and Switzerland) and some African countries (Egypt, Kenya, Senegal).
Medicalization
There has been a movement in the last ten years to perform circumcision in hospitals where the conditions are much more sanitary, and anesthesia can be used. However, this allows for the removal of more tissue because the girl is not struggling as much.
Alternative Rituals
In many cultures, FGC serves as an initiation rite, and any efforts to eradicate it must take this into consideration. Some of the most successful eradication efforts have taken place in areas where FGC was replaced with "initiation without cutting" programs whereas a girl still goes through some initiation rites but this time, without any blood.
Alternative rituals are currently being implemented in countries like Ghana and Kenya, that do not include any bloodletting. A girl will still undergoes the celebrations and the rituals that usually accompany the circumcision ritual , however, the procedure itself is either replaced with a small pricking elsewhere on the body to let out a small drop of water, or bloodletting is completely done away with.
Other successful programs have also experimented with giving midwives monthly salaries for putting down their knives and becoming health care workers. They are now trained in various aspects of female health, and go from village to village educating women about the harmful effects of female circumcision, and the importance of proper nutrition during pregnancy, how to protect from sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, and proper usages of condoms, among other health topics.
Eradication
It is also important to note that even though FGC is currently illegal in many countries in Africa and the Middle East, this has not reduced the number of the girls that are mutilated every year. The governments of these countries have no way of monitoring the spread and practice of FGC. The United Nations, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization has considered FGC to be a violation of Human Rights and have made recommendations to eradicate this practice. However, trying to fight FGC on legal terms is ineffective since those who practice it oftentimes do not report it. FGC is also widely practiced in villages and remote places where the government does not have an easy access.
A better and more effective approach would be a cooperation on the national level as well as the international level. The UN and the WHO have already taken the first step in abolishing these practices. Countries also need to have rigid laws that deal with FGC cases. This is also insufficient by itself. Anthropologists, educators, social scientists, and activists have to go into these villages and areas and educate the practitioners of the dangers of FGC. Female Genital Cutting can only be abolished by a grassroots approach which would take into consideration all aspects of a particular culture and try to work within that system of beliefs to eradicate this practice.
In the United States level, there are many efforts that are being made in order to abolish the practice locally and internationally. The National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), a networking organization have brought together social scientists and medical practitioners from all over the world who are fighting FGC as well as male circumcision. NOCIRC has also founded the FGC Awareness and Education Project in August 1996. One of the goals of the project is to create an FGC Module which will provide information and training material to health care professionals. NOCIRC has also organized the International Symposium on Sexual Mutilations.
The Research, Action & Information Network for Bodily Integrity of Women (RAINBO) has been conducting research and grass-roots programs internationally as well as in the United States on women's reproductive sexual health as well as on female genital mutilation.
On the National Level, Congresswoman Patricia Shroeder introduced H.R. 3247, a bill to outlaw FGC in the United States in the fall of 1994. The bill was then combined with The Minority Health Initiatives Act, H.R.3864. This bill was then combined with H.R. 941 on February 14, 1995 which was to be cited as the "Federal Prohibtion of Female Genital Mutilation of 1995." The bill was passed in September 1996.
Some overdue effort is being made to abolish FGC, but there is still much work to be done. Education of ourselves, as well as of others is a way that we can begin acting upon the convictions that human rights should not violated, and that violence against women is intolerable. Many people are still unaware that practices such as FGC are still widely practiced, and only an awareness can bring this inhumane practice to a halt.
Selected Resources
Organizations:
FGM Awareness and Education Project P.O.Box 6597 Albany, CA 94706
RAINBO 915 Broadway, Suite 1109 New York, NY 10010-7108 (212) 477-3318
Atlanta Circumcision Information Center David J. Llewellyn, Director 2 Putnam Drive, N.W. Atlanta, GA 30342
Women's International Network News Fran Hosken 187 Grant Street Lexington, MA 02173 (617) 862-9431
Equality Now P.O. Box 20646, Columbus Circle Station, New York NY 10023 USA.
"World Health Organisation: Female genital mutilation," Women in the Middle East, No. 43, May & June 2006.
What is female genital mutilation? Female genital mutilation (FGM), often referred to as 'female circumcision', comprises all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural, religious or other non-therapeutic reasons. There are different types of female genital mutilation known to be practised today. They include:
Type I - excision of the prepuce, with or without excision of part or all of the clitoris;
Type II - excision of the clitoris with partial or total excision of the labia minora;
Type III - excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation);
Type IV - pricking, piercing or incising of the clitoris and/or labia; stretching of the clitoris and/or labia; cauterization by burning of the clitoris and surrounding tissue; scraping of tissue surrounding the vaginal orifice (angurya cuts) or cutting of the vagina (gishiri cuts); introduction of corrosive substances or herbs into the vagina to cause bleeding or for the purpose of tightening or narrowing it; and any other procedure that falls under the definition given above.
The most common type of female genital mutilation is excision of the clitoris and the labia minora, accounting for up to 80% of all cases; the most extreme form is infibulation, which constitutes about 15% of all procedures.
Health consequences of FGM
The immediate and long-term health consequences of female genital mutilation vary according to the type and severity of the procedure performed.
Immediate complications include severe pain, shock, haemorrhage, urine retention, ulceration of the genital region and injury to adjacent tissue. Haemorrhage and infection can cause death.
More recently, concern has arisen about possible transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) due to the use of one instrument in multiple operations, but this has not been the subject of detailed research.
Long-term consequences include cysts and abscesses, keloid scar formation, damage to the urethra resulting in urinary incontinence, dyspareunia (painful sexual intercourse) and sexual dysfunction and difficulties with childbirth.
Psychosexual and psychological health: Genital mutilation may leave a lasting mark on the life and mind of the woman who has undergone it. In the longer term, women may suffer feelings of incompleteness, anxiety and depression.
Who performs FGM, at what age and for what reasons?
In cultures where it is an accepted norm, female genital mutilation is practiced by followers of all religious beliefs as well as animists and non believers. FGM is usually performed by a traditional practitioner with crude instruments and without anaesthetic. Among the more affluent in society it may be performed in a health care facility by qualified health personnel. WHO is opposed to medicalization of all the types of female genital mutilation.
The age at which female genital mutilation is performed varies from area to area. It is performed on infants a few days old, female children and adolescents and, occasionally, on mature women.
The reasons given by families for having FGM performed include:
. psychosexual reasons: reduction or elimination of the sensitive tissue of the outer genitalia, particularly the clitoris, in order to attenuate sexual desire in the female, maintain chastity and virginity before marriage and fidelity during marriage, and increase male sexual pleasure;. sociological reasons: identification with the cultural heritage, initiation of girls into womanhood, social integration and the maintenance of social cohesion;
hygiene and aesthetic reasons: the external female genitalia are considered dirty and unsightly and are to be removed to promote hygiene and provide aesthetic appeal;
. myths: enhancement of fertility and promotion of child survival;
. religious reasons: Some Muslim communities, however, practise FGM in the belief that it is demanded by the Islamic faith. The practice, however, predates Islam.
Prevalence and distribution of FGM
Most of the girls and women who have undergone genital mutilation live in 28 African countries, although some live in Asia and the Middle East. They are also increasingly found in Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA, primarily among immigrants from these countries.
Today, the number of girls and women who have been undergone female genital mutilation is estimated at between 100 and 140 million. It is estimated that each year, a further 2 million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM.
Current WHO activities related to FGM
Advocacy and policy development
A joint WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA policy statement on FGM and a Regional Plan to Accelerate the Elimination of FGM were published to promote policy development and action at the global, regional, and national level. Several countries where FGM is a traditional practice are now developing national plans of action based on the FGM prevention strategy proposed by WHO.
Links
The Global Persecution of Women
Glossary
