FGM – Africa – Role of Policymakers in Ending Female Genital Mutilation
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: February 1, 2010
WUNRN
UN News Centre – 6
February 2010
UN
OFFICIALS URGE REDOUBLED EFFORTS
TO
END FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION
_____________________________________________________________
Also via SVRI – Sexual Violence
Research Initiative
ROLE OF POLICYMAKERS IN ENDING
FEMALE GENITAL
MUTILATION – FGM: AN AFRICAN
PERSPECTIVE
By The Honorable Amina Salum Ali
(February 2010) The idea of intentionally harming—let alone
mutilating—healthy young girls stirs feelings of anger and injustice. The fact
that thousands of girls are mutilated daily in the name of culture, religion,
or gender is difficult to imagine. Yet this is the reality: More than 100
million girls and women around the world have been mutilated in the most
personal, intimate parts of their bodies.
Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting or
female circumcision, comprises all procedures involving partial or total
removal of the external genitals of girls and women for nonmedical reasons. The
practice has no health benefits and brings harm and grave pain to girls and
women.
FGM damages normal female genital tissues and interferes with the natural
functioning of women’s genitals. The devastating health and social effects to
women are both immediate and long term. The effects on health include urinary
and reproductive tract infections, which can lead to infertility. FGM makes
childbearing more difficult, increasing the risk to both mothers and children
of dying during childbirth; the sharing of razor blades may increase the risk
of HIV.
From a social perspective, FGM is recognized as a violation of the human
rights of girls and women. It reflects inequality between the sexes and
constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women. The practice
violates a person’s right to health and security and physical integrity; the right
to be free from torture and cruelty; and, indeed, the right to life, as the
procedure may result in death.
Who Is at Risk?
The number of women and girls affected by FGM is hard to fathom. The
numbers—100 million to 140 million women—exceed the size of the population in
my home country of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda combined. Another 3
million girls and women are at risk of being cut this year on the African
continent alone. Girls are usually cut somewhere between infancy and age 15,
often between 4 and 8 years of age. In some regions it is postponed until just
before marriage or at the time of childbirth.
Despite global efforts to promote the abandonment of the practice, FGM
remains widespread. In Africa, almost 28 countries practice FGM and there are
some reported cases in Western Asia as well as in India, Indonesia, and
Malaysia. In some developed countries, FGM is still being upheld by African
immigrants, some of whom send their daughters home to be cut.
FGM is a traditional practice passed down from generation to generation. Ending
it will not happen overnight; it is a practice which has been embraced for many
years in many cultures by Muslims, Christians, and Animists—although many
scholars make a strong case that no religion either mandates or sanctions this
harmful practice.
How Can We End FGM?
The most effective way to end FGM is through education, information, and
advocacy that will raise public awareness and bring about changes in attitudes
within communities where FGM is practiced. Several organizations have made the
case convincingly in countries such as Senegal (Tostan), Ghana (Navrongo), and
Ethiopia (IntraHealth and CARE).
Countries may pass laws to eradicate FGM, but legal instruments by themselves
cannot end the practice since traditions and beliefs are strong and deeply
rooted in societies. In order to eradicate a culturally embedded practice such
as FGM, legal actions must be combined with initiatives that bring about
changes in these beliefs and attitudes. Education is critical. This type
of change requires a complex partnership—laws provide a basis that can allow
governments and policymakers to end this practice and provide punishments when
it is carried out. At the same time, activists are empowered to do their work more
effectively when their efforts have a legal grounding. Clearly, public
education—raising awareness about its negative consequences—and the support of
community leaders are vital in producing behavior change, and have been
essential to the success of the campaign to end FGM.
International Human
Rights Covenants
There have been a number of successful initiatives in the global arena
thanks to the adoption of international legal instruments. The process of
creating international consensus on an issue such as FGM creates a forum for
brainstorming, discussion, and dialogue among policymakers interested in
achieving change.
Policymakers in Africa have a great role to play in enacting and implementing
the international conventions and protocols that advocate for women and
children’s rights in their own countries. They can draw on a number of policy
initiatives that have been undertaken thus far, as well as at the regional and
country levels. Consensus within the continent and within regions is especially
important, as it gives policymakers added authority to return to their home
countries and districts with resolution and determination to eliminate FGM.
Many international covenants provide powerful platforms to foster grassroots
efforts in ending FGM. As early as 1948, the Universal Declaration on Human
Rights provided a solid foundation for classifying FGM as a human rights
violation. In the intervening years, numerous efforts—including the 1987
Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel and Inhuman or Degradation Treatment
or Punishment, the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All
Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the 1995 Beijing Platform
for Action—have all soundly endorsed the elimination of FGM as a violation of
human rights.
Within Africa, numerous conventions provide further legal basis for ending
FGM, including the 1982 African Charter on Human and People’s Rights, which
addresses traditional harmful practices; and the 1999 African Charter on the
Rights of the Child. African countries themselves are increasingly adding their
voices to the calls to end FGM. Some form of legislation has been approved in
at least 18 African countries.
Beyond Laws
In addition to laws, there are other effective tools that must be used in
order to achieve the elimination of FGM, including better access to education
and women’s empowerment, socioeconomic development, and innovative methods to
replace FGM.
Education is critical to changing people’s attitudes toward FGM—not only
education on the harmful impact of FGM on women and infants, but education as a
source of empowerment for women, as a means to bring information to women, as a
first step in giving them power to make informed decisions. By education, I am
not just speaking about schools and books. Gender education, sexual and
reproductive health education, education about the value of women directed
toward all people—including men and boys—is vital to making the needed change.
These programs must be offered through schools, in families, and in the
community so that all people—from the unskilled worker to the highest-level
decisionmaker—can fully comprehend the emotional, physical, and psychological
damage that FGM imposes upon women and societies. And youth in particular
should be targeted by these educational and advocacy efforts to ensure that FGM
is not passed on from generation to generation.
The laws and education must take root in Africa, but there is also an
important role for Western countries to play in raising awareness about FGM by
providing information to national policymakers, and donors and funders who can
exercise influence through supporting laws and programs that eliminate FGM.
A woman’s marriageability is one of the key considerations in the
continuation of FGM. Therefore, socioeconomic development initiatives in Africa
are important, as they can eradicate poverty and enhance the economic status of
women. If education and career opportunities for women are fostered, dependency
on men for their livelihoods will decrease. Once women perceive other viable
options for security and survival besides marriage, it provides them with an
opportunity to cease the practice. Economic development programs must
especially target and empower women by providing microfinance, skills
development, and more opportunities for education to the girl child.
Alternative rites-of-passage ceremonies have been proposed as among the
promising approaches to ending FGM. Various grassroots organizations in East
Africa, particularly in Tanzania and Kenya, have used this approach, which
maintains traditional symbolism and values while adding an empowering program
of reproductive rights and health education. Traditional dances, singing and
feasting, gift giving, and the teaching of values and norms of culture without the
cutting have yielded success.
Lessons From
Tanzania
During my recent trip to Tanzania in December 2009, I met with girls and
women, advocates, and leading women politicians to get a sense of how things
have changed in the last few years in Tanzania since I lived there. They told
me there have been some successes but also some setbacks. They reported that
many excisors, the women who perform the cutting, have laid down their tools
and undergone income-generation programs so that they can stop the cutting and
yet have alternative means of livelihood. At the same time, it was disturbing
to hear that the cutting continues in many regions but is now being done in
less detectable manners. For example, it is now being performed on women at the
time of childbirth, so that when they return from giving birth, they have been
cut. Also, it is being performed on infants before the age of one year.
The women I spoke with felt strongly that there is still a desperate need
for more advocacy efforts, for closer interaction between policymakers at
all levels from the grassroots to society’s opinion leaders, and for the
inclusion of youth. I heard time and again that more funding is needed for
capacity-building and income-generation programs for women. Only by supporting women
in this way will there be a change in society’s philosophy on marriage; only
through giving opportunities to women to attain status in society will FGM be
ended.
They felt too that grassroots efforts are crucial, where the messages of
education and empowerment can resonate, where community and cultural leaders
encourage women’s groups in villages to design new rites-of-passage rituals.
These new rituals can be an opportunity for education of young women on sexual
reproductive health issues, on HIV and other health-related topics, and for
life skills education to prepare young women for the future.
Conclusion
As we look for solutions to FGM, we must remember that it is not just about
abandonment, it is also about empowerment—empowerment through educating women,
men, and communities at large. It is about raising consciousness so that people
can change their attitudes toward this outdated cultural practice. Women’s
self-worth should not be tied to undergoing female genital mutilation; rather,
women should be respected and respect themselves because of their positive
contributions to society. The elimination of FGM is a health, social, and
economic issue to be vigorously pursued by policymakers everywhere.
The Honorable Amina Salum Ali is the Permanent
Representative of the African Union to the United States. Ambassador Ali would
like to express her gratitude to all the women and men in Africa who have
worked to end this harmful traditional practice, and especially to the
Tanzanian policymakers who gave of their time to meet with her on her recent
trip, specifically: the Honorable Fatma O. Ali and Honorable Zuleikha, Members
of Parliament; the Honorable Halima Mohamed Mamuya, Member of Parliament in the
Special Seat for Women; and the Honorable Fatma Tawfik, chairperson of the
Ruling Party Women’s Organization for Dodoma Region, who is also chair of the
NGO Women Awake. Special thanks also to Charlotte Feldman-Jacobs and Jay
Gribble of the Population Reference Bureau for their editing, support, and
encouragement of this paper. This article is based on an upcoming Occasional
Paper by Ambassador Amina Salum Ali. Born and raised on the island of Zanzibar
and educated in India, Ambassador Ali has held various ministerial positions in
the Tanzanian government, including Minister of Finance and Minister of the
Treasury, as well as Member of Parliament.
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