Sacdiyo Sheikh Hamud and other Somalilander women rights activists fight an uphill battle to limit FGM in Hargeisa. |
© afrol News / Unicef |
A team from the Norwegian public broadcaster 'NRK' last week
visited Hargeisa, where it easily found practitioners of the outlawed practice
of FGM (also referred to as "female circumcision" or "female cutting"), which is
widely condemned as strongly harmful to women and girls, also by many Muslim
religious leaders.
The Somalilander women performing FGM did so
privately or in open cooperation with public health facilities in Hargeisa,
where most worked as midwifes. Among Somalis, female genital mutilation is very
widespread and the UN estimates that 98 percent of women in Somaliland and
Somalia have been subjected to the harmful practice.
In most countries
where the large Somali Diaspora is represented, however, FGM is strictly
outlawed. Research nevertheless shows that a majority of Somali parents living
abroad ignore the laws of their host country and continue exposing their
daughters to this culturally based practice.
And as southern Somalia
remains an unsafe destination, peaceful Somaliland has emerged a safe haven for
Somalis wanting to visit friends and family. Or wanting to stick to traditions.
The 'NRK' team met with ten FGM practitioners in Hargeisa saying they
had performed the cut on at least 185 Somali girls living in Norway. The
practitioners further confirmed that Norway-based parents were popular clients
as they paid "well", typically euro 20 each girl. European summer holidays were
seen as the top season for these women performing FGM.
Based on these
data, it is estimated that thousands of young girls are brought to Hargeisa each
year from Europe alone to undergo the mutilation. Somali women rights
organisations all over Europe and North America have for years tried to address
this practice, knowing that each summer holiday, hundreds of young girls are
taken to Hargeisa for just this reason.
In Norway, this revelation
caused a public outcry and fuelled the debate about how to better enforce
national legislation outlawing FGM. Politicians have proposed anything from
information campaigns targeting Somalis in Norway, to obliging medics to report
cases they come over to the police and introducing obligatory health tests for
girls returning from summer holidays in Somalia.
While Somali parents
living abroad can be taken to court for child abuse after having taken their
daughters to Somaliland to undergo FGM, the Hargeisa practitioners operate in
full legality. Attempts to outlaw FGM in Somaliland have so far failed.
But there are an increasing number of Somalilander voices calling for
government action against FGM. Poet and journalist Bashir Goth recently
protested against the "physical torture and mutilation of women's God-given
sexual organs," adding the "practice should be banned and Somaliland should join
other pioneer African countries including neighbouring Djibouti in ratifying the
Maputo Protocol that seeks to outlaw FGM."
Also among Somalilander
health workers, there is an increased discussion about the harmful practice.
Hargeisa midwife Safia Dualleh Farah, who guided the 'NRK' team, strongly
objected the practices but said she understood her colleagues performing FGM.
"They are cutting the girls on their spare time because they earn too little
working in hospitals or health centres. They say they cannot afford to stop,"
she told 'NRK'.
A few women groups in Hargeisa have started to raise
awareness on the harms and dangers of FGM, but little has been achieved so far.
As Somaliland remains a non-recognised country, little international effort is
put into fighting FGM here, contrary to for example neighbouring Ethiopia, where
a majority of young mothers now reject the practice following intensive
information campaigns.
The UN children agency UNICEF together with the
Senegal-based women rights organisation Tostan until know have been able to
arrange a few sensitising seminars in Somaliland, focusing on "human rights to
ensure human dignity," according to Tostan Somaliland supervisor Suleiman Mahdi
Sh Hassan. The Hargeisa government so far however has shown little interest in
supporting this work.