WUNRN
FGM - Female Genital Mutilation -
Facts
WHO - World Health Organization -
February 2013
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SOMALIA - DECREASE IN FGM + SOME
SHIFT TO LESS SEVERE SUNNAH FORM
- Seven-year-old Istar Mumin lies on a bed,
motionless, in one of the rooms of her family home in
“I am in pain. I cannot move. They cut me,” a
teary-eyed Mumin, who was visibly weak from the procedure, tells IPS.
Elsewhere in the house her mother, Muhibo Daahir, is
in a celebratory mood as their family entertains guests who are here to
celebrate Mumin’s circumcision.
The age-old practice of Female Genital Mutilation
(FGM) is banned by the current Somali constitution. But it is still widely
carried out, particularly in
According to a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
advocacy paper titled “Eradication of Female Genital Mutilation in Somalia”,
“FGM can have severely adverse effects on the physical, mental and psychosocial
well being of those who undergo the practice.
“The health
consequences of FGM are both immediate and life-long. Despite the many
internationally recognised laws against FGM, lack of validation in Islam and
global advocacy to eradicate the practice, it remains embedded in Somali
culture.”
The paper also states “long-term complications include
loss of libido, genital malformation, delayed menarche, chronic pelvic
complications and recurrent urinary retention and infection. FGM victims are
also prone to a number of obstetric complications because the foetus is exposed
to a range of infectious diseases and faces the risk of having its head crushed
in the damaged birth canal.”
The practice is regarded by
However, there is no specific law against female
circumcision, and the practice remains widespread in both rural and urban areas
in this Horn of Africa nation.
Daahir is defensive when asked why she allowed her
daughter to undergo circumcision.
“Our religion allows us to purify our daughters so
that they can get married when they are mature. The government cannot stop us
from practicing our religion,” Daahir tells IPS.
She says that her daughter, just like “other girls of
this time,” was circumcised in the Sunnah form of circumcision prescribed by
the Islamic religion.
This method involves the partial cutting of the
clitoris. Another form of FGM practiced in
Daahir says, however, that unlike in the past, a
qualified nurse and not an untrained traditional circumciser carried out her
daughter’s circumcision. Her point of view is widespread in the country’s
capital.
But in regions of
“Everyone now knows that in
In April, UNICEF released a survey based on interviews
conducted in
According to UNICEF, the United Nations
Population Fund–UNICEF Joint Programme, has engaged over 300,000
community members and stakeholders in discussions on abandoning FGM in Puntland
and
Perhaps the reason the practice has decreased in the
north is that the area has enjoyed relative stability over the past two
decades, while the rest of the country was caught up in a clan-based civil war
that began in 1991. Awareness campaigns and public education about the dangers
of FGM could not be conducted in these volatile areas as they were in
Attitudes towards FGM are changing. However, activists
here tell IPS that Somali society is not abandoning the ritual but is instead
adopting a less severe form of FGM known as Sunnah.
“Somalis are not leaving their girls uncircumcised,
although they are not using the crude Pharaonic form of the practice but using
Sunnah, which in comparison to the traditional one is non-invasive,” Halimo
Ali, a social activist in
Ali says she finds that people are now taking to the
Sunnah form of FGM, in which less than five percent of the cut is done,
compared to the Pharaonic form which “completely wipes out everything.
“I am aware of the study done in Puntland and
Maryan Aalim is a mother of seven daughters.
“All of my daughters are circumcised in Sunnah, but
the eldest was circumcised in the traditional way. I chose the Sunnah
circumcision because that is the one allowed by Islam,” she tells IPS.
Sheikh Omar Ali, a senior cleric in
“There is only one form of circumcision that is
prescribed by Islam and it is the Sunnah form. The Pharoanic form predates
Islam and is un-Islamic,” he tells IPS.
Local activists say the total eradication of the
practice is their ultimate goal but they add that the “cultural shift” in
Somali society needs to be recognised, and that the evolution of the practice
could be seen as a positive step towards total elimination of FGM in
“People now recognise the negative effects of the
extreme form of FGM on women and girls and have adopted the Sunnah form. It is
not what we want, yet it is a step in the right direction,” Raho Qalif, a
school teacher in
She says the practice will eventually fade out of
Somali culture and notes a “trend,” saying that to circumcise girls in the
Sunnah form has now become “fashionable.”
“Everyone now knows that in
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FIGO - International Federation of
Gynecology & Obstetrics
"LESS SEVERE" FORM OF FGM
BEING PRACTISED IN SOMALIA
21
June 2013 - Activists in southern Somalia have reported that despite
awareness-raising campaigns having successfully challenged attitudes towards female
genital mutilation (FGM), the country is still carrying out the practice -
albeit in a "less severe" form.
Halimo Ali, a social activist working in Mogadishu, told Inter Press Service:
"Somalis are not leaving their girls uncircumcised, although they are not
using the crude Pharaonic form of the practice but using Sunnah - which in
comparison to the traditional one is non-invasive."
Schoolteacher Raho Qalif told the publication that the shift toward less severe
FGM - while not what activists wanted - represented "a step in the right
direction".
Meanwhile, Unicef statistics suggest that in the northern Somali regions of
Puntland and Somaliland, the number of FGM cases has significantly
declined.
Around 75 per cent of the regions' girls under the age of 14 were found to have
undergone the practice, compared with 99 per cent elsewhere in the country.
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