The progress towards ending Female Genital Mutilation
Posted 1:51 PM by Internal Voices in Labels: 11th edition
Jenny Ching-Wei Lee, UNICEF Brussels
While sitting in the European Commission Directorate-General Justice’s conference on Violence Against Women, I could not help but think back on an episode of the National Geographic hit show, The Dog Whisperer, where Cesar Milan suggested to a dog owner that he neuter his dog. The dog owner’s response was something along the line of “Would you castrate a man? No. So I’m not going to neuter my dog.”
Undoubtedly, extreme measures taken to limit men’s sexual urges are rarely seen or heard of anywhere, but sadly, this is not the case for women. Female Genital Mutilation or cutting (FGM/C) is defined by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as “all procedures involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” FGM/C is carried out on girls that are usually under the age of 15. This is mainly due to cultural, religious and social reasons that stem from gender inequality. Families and communities that conduct FGM/C believe that it is a way to prepare girls for adulthood and marriage. FGM/C is presumed to reduces a girl’s sexual urges and shows that the girls are “clean”.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that there are currently 100 to 140 million girls and women, globally, whose human rights have been violated as a result of genital mutilation. In Africa alone, about three million girls and women are still at risk of being dismembered every year.
UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Centre found that parents who cut their girl(s) are motivated by doing what they assume to be best for their children: Most of them understand the potential health risks connected to genital mutilations, which include infection, infertility, complications during child birth and death. However, in these cultures and communities, FGM/C is seen as part of the girls’ and women’s gender identity. Families who choose not to mutilate their female children are usually placed at a low social status, and as a consequence, their un-mutilated girls are shunned in society.
Many families feel that there is no other option; if they want their girls to be honoured and given in marriage, they have to cut them. For some people, FGM/C is a social norm, where the individual’s choices are conditioned by those of others. The Donors Working Group on FGM/C, has therefore provided a solution – collective abandonment. Collective abandonment refers to communities, where FGM/C is a prerequisite for marriage; a group of families agree not to cut their girls, and allow the children in these respective families to marry each other, therefore demonstrating the benefits of abandoning FGM/C. This group does not need to form the majority of the community, but once enough families have joined in the initiative, a “tipping point” will be reached. This “tipping point” is where the people who still consider practicing FGM/C realize that the benefits of cutting their girls no longer out-weight the risks. Although the “tipping point” has not been reached yet, there has been good progress in the notion of collective abandonment.
“The Dynamics of Social Change: towards the Abandonment of FGM/C in Five African Countries”, published by UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Centre, shows that in the five countries that formed part of the study (Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal and Sudan), there have been dramatic decreases in the amount of people who encourage FGM/C. Although the prevalence of FGM/C remains high in these countries, this indicates that people are starting to question the merits of this practice – and are slowly, but surely, reaching the tipping point.
Picture: UNICEF/NYHQ2009-1489/Holt
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