WUNRN
CAMEROON - BREAST IRONING - HARMFUL TRADITIONAL
PRACTICE - DECLINE BUT CHALLENGES
A stone used for breast ironing is seen on a fire at Julie
Ndjessa's home in Douala, Cameroon. THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/Joe Penney
Misha Hussain and Anne Nzouankeu- 17 December 2013
DOUALA, Cameroon (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When
Mick-Sophie Anne started showing signs of puberty at age 10, her mother took a
hot stone and firmly pushed it down on her daughter's breasts in an attempt to
flatten her chest.
At dusk, in a small, dark kitchen out of sight of the
neighbours, Priscille Dissake would heat the fist-sized stone on a charcoal
fire and press Mick-Sophie's breasts every evening for two months. Dissake's
sister would help by pinning the girl down on the cold, hard floor to stop her
running away.
New government research shows that ‘breast ironing,’ as the
harmful custom is known, has seen a 50 percent decline since it was first
accidentally uncovered during a 2005 survey by the German Technical Cooperation
Agency (GTZ) on rape and incest in Cameroon.
A successful nationwide awareness campaign in schools,
churches and across media outlets has drawn attention to the harmful physical
and psychological consequences. However, despite the work of children’s rights
activists, 1.3 million girls are still victims of the brutal practice today.
Mothers do it to try to protect their daughters from premarital
sex, early pregnancy and rape.
"Mick-Sophie started developing breasts very early and
she was becoming attractive. I wanted to guard her childhood and protect her
from men," said Dissake, 46, speaking in the same kitchen where she had
applied the burning stone to her daughter’s body more than 20 years ago.
"I had Mick-Sophie when I was just 14, but her father
was never around. It was a really hard time for me and I didn't want the same
thing to happen to my only girl."
Dissake's efforts were in vain. By her own account and that
of her mother, Mick-Sophie was raped by an uncle at age 13. A year later, she
started having sex with a classmate. At 16, she gave birth to her first child.
The baby was six weeks premature and died a few hours later.
INTERNATIONAL PRACTICE
Although Cameroon is the only country where thorough
research has been carried out on breast ironing, rights groups believe the
practice is widespread across the region and among the West African diaspora,
including in Western countries with stringent child-protection laws.
"We Africans take our culture everywhere we go, so I am
sure it is happening in Britain and America too," said Margaret
Nyuydzewira, who was born in Bamenda in northwest Cameroon, where breast
ironing is common.
Nyuydzewira co-founded CAWOGIDO, an organization that
campaigns against breast ironing in Britain, where 9,600 Cameroonians live
according to the last census in 2011.
She said a couple of cases of breast ironing had been
reported in Birmingham and London over the past few years, but the prevalence
is likely to be far higher.
"People within the practising community know that it is
happening, but it is hidden and done at home. It's like FGM (female genital
mutilation) – you know it's going on, but you will never see anyone doing
it," she said.
"It's happening in Nigeria, in Burkina Faso, in Chad,
in CAR (Central African Republic) and other countries in the region too. They
just call it a different name in their local language," she said.
TEEN PREGNANCIES
Breast ironing is a relatively new practice that only began
to gain popularity around the 1930s when Cameroonians started moving from their
rural homelands to cities in search of jobs, anthropologist and aid worker
Flavien Ndonko said.
"In these cities, there was less social control and
norms as different cultures mixed freely. Soon, as girls started going to
school and finding opportunities outside the household there was more chance of
premarital sex," said Ndonko, who works for GIZ, the German state-owned
development agency.
"Meanwhile better hygiene, nutrition and healthcare
means that girls are shooting (growing) breasts much earlier, making them look
older than they are. The average age of breast growth for girls in Cameroon has
dropped from around 13-1/2 years old to just under 12 in the last 100
years."
As Cameroon remains a deeply conservative nation where
getting pregnant outside marriage is frowned upon and abortion is highly
restricted, mothers use breast ironing as an unorthodox form of contraception
to ensure their daughters don't fall pregnant and drop out of school.
The most recent social and demographic health survey
conducted in Cameroon in 2011 showed that 20 to 30 percent of Cameroonian girls
get pregnant before the age of 16 and a third abandon their studies.
These figures could explain an unusual aspect of this
practice. The new research found that around 16 percent of girls - especially
in the Far North region where there is a tradition of child marriage - try to
flatten their own breasts with hot stones or pestles so they can delay their
sexual maturity and continue going to school.
MEDICAL PROBLEMS
Despite what Dissake and other mothers say about their good
intentions towards their daughters, they unknowingly risked leaving them with
severe physical and psychological problems, health workers say.
The government survey, funded by GIZ, found that a number of
respondents had a range of medical problems, including breast cancer.
"We found 20-year-old girls who had already been
diagnosed with breast cancer," Ndonko said. "We don't know if there
is a direct link between the practice and cancer, but it certainly raises
suspicions."
Thirty-two percent of respondents complained about pain in
the breasts and 17 percent spoke of cysts and abscesses. Thirteen percent
suffered heaviness of the breasts and eight percent permanent deformation,
according to the study
The lasting physical scarring and damage can have a
long-term psychological impact too, it concluded.
"As the girls sexually mature, they feel they cannot
show their breasts to their boyfriends or husbands," Ndonko said.
"Some girls felt so ashamed they were having sex without fully removing
their clothes so they can hide their breasts."
Ndonko coined the term "breast ironing" to try to
convey the pain and trauma adolescent girls feel. But both Ndonko and
Nyuydzewira believe mothers should not be criminalized but should be informed
of the consequences of the practice.
“We should educate them first, and then we should punish
them if they continue,” said Nyuydzewira.
Punishing mothers could prove difficult. In many cases, the
girls go along with it willingly, believing their mothers are protecting them.
But for Nyuydzewira, even if there is not a clear villain, there is a clear
victim.
"The responsibility has to lie with the mother because
the girls are still children and they are agreeing to do it out of fear and
respect," she said.
In the gloom of her kitchen, Dissake was overwhelmed with
guilt. “I meant well. I ask for forgiveness for what I thought was wisdom but
turned out to be ignorance,” she said.
“Breast ironing hurts more than childbirth," said
Mick-Sophie Anne. "I forgive my mother, but I'll never forget it."
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WUNRN
CAMEROON - ACTIVIST FIGHTS BREAST
IRONING, A RITUAL MUTILATION OF GIRLS
By
In
Cameroon, the breast, one of the most conspicuous signs of a woman’s femininity,
is a target for ritual mutilation. Breast ironing, apractice that involves flattening a young
girl’s breasts with highly-heated stones, pestles, spatulas or coconut shells
among other objects, is often carried out by an older female relative on a
victim.
It
is considered a human rights violation by the Friends of the United Nations Population Fund (UNPFA).
According
to UNPFA, one out of every four girls in Cameroon has been affected
by breast ironing, equating to nearly 4 million young women. Breast
ironing is primarily practiced in the Christian and Animist south of Cameroon,
and less frequently in the Muslim north, where only 10 percent of women are
affected. It is also practiced in Guinea-Bissau, Chad, Togo, Benin, and
Guinea among African countries.
As
a 14-year-old girl, Chi Yvonne Leina, now 32, became a witness to this custom,
which is practiced by all 200 ethnic tribes in Cameroon. She often went to
her grandmother’s hut after school, which is located in the Northwest region of
Cameroon, and usually heard the sounds of her cousins playing.
But
one particular day, the hut was eerily quiet.
“[W]hen
I approached the hut I heard my cousin crying inside,” Leina told theGrio. “I
was curious, so I peeped through a small crack in the door.”
What
Leina saw next would change her life forever. “I heard my cousin groaning
and I saw my grandmother warming a small grinding stone. [G]randma was using
that small stone, which she warmed on the fire, to press my cousin’s breast, and
was pressing hard on the breast, and she was crying.”
That
was Leina ’s first encounter with breast ironing. Although this practice can
result in physical damage in addition to retarding developing breasts, many elders
condone it. Mothers or close relatives of young girls who perform the
practice believe breast ironing will deter sexual predators.
Those
who carry out breast ironing hope to minimize young girls’ sexual activity, so
they get an education and become financially independent. Teen pregnancy
out of wedlock is on the rise in the region. Such a life event curtails any
hope a young woman has of pursuing a lucrative career.
In
its 2011 human rights report on Cameroon, the U.S. State Department explained
the cultural motivation for stunting breast growth among adolescent girls.
“The procedure was considered a way to delay a girl’s physical development,
thus limiting the risk of sexual assault and teenage pregnancy,” the report
states. “Girls as young as nine were subjected to the practice, which resulted
in burns, deformities, and psychological problems.”
Yet,
there is strong evidence that breast ironing does not achieve the desired
goals. “Statistics confirm that in addition to being a human rights violation,
the practice is ineffective in deterring pre-marital pregnancy,” according to a
Friends of the UNPFA press release. “One-third of unwanted pregnancies occur between
the ages of 13 and 25, with more than half falling pregnant after their first
sexual encounter.”
For
many women, including Leina’s cousin, the negative effects can be deep, long-lasting,
and counterproductive to personal growth.
“All
I know is she became suddenly a shy person, which she wasn’t before,” Leina
said. “And she fell out of school and got pregnant some years after.”
In
2007, the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) became one of the first
agencies in the west to report on the practice. Dr. Flavien Ndonko of GTZ,
in research he shared with theGrio, listed among breast ironing’s many
dangerous consequences: high fever, breast cancer, severe chest pain, infection
as a result of scarification, cysts, breast deformities and complete disappearance
of the breasts.
“Saying
that breasts are destroyed is an understatement,” Dr. Ndonko said in previously
published reports. “Adolescents are traumatized, mutilated. This is a
serious damage not only on their physical integrity, but also on their psychological
well-being.”
Despite
the suffering called by breast ironing, it persists in both rural areas and
cities. Older women, often in secret and unbeknownst to men, undertake
the torturous operation with faith that it will prevent the difficulties
suffered by young women who experience sexual assault, or sex without
preparation.
Authorities
have tried to stress the need for education and contraception as humane,
effective substitutes, yet this tradition, which some says dates back to the
1800s, continues.
Several
months after Leina witnessed her cousin’s agony, her grandmother attempted to
iron her breasts as well. Leina resisted and threatened to alert the entire
neighborhood, so she was spared. “From that day it came to my mind that
when you use your voice you can actually free yourself from some things,” she
said of the incident.
This
experience influenced the young woman’s decision to study journalism and women’s
studies as a university student.
During
the years since, Leina, has worked as a journalist for magazines and in
television, reporting extensively on breast ironing. One year ago she also
founded Gender Danger, a non-profit that helps spread awareness about breast
ironing in the hopes of ending the practice.
Mrs.
Agwetang is one of the 35 volunteers working for Gender Danger in Cameroon who
go into communities at least once a month to lecture girls and women about the
dangers of breast ironing.
“We
have women that we have trained on this very issue who can go out and also
support other women,” Agwetang said.
Leina’s
organization has already reached over 15,000 women. In the near future it hopes
to reach many more girls and women in Cameroon who are affected by breast
ironing daily.
Because
the custom is clothed in secrecy, taking place behind closed doors between
women, Agwetang believes many girls don’t know how to process the pain.
“Sometimes
there are certain things that happen to a girl at an age, and [at] that time
she doesn’t understand,” she told theGrio. “She just goes through the
things and she bares the pain and she just prays about it.”
For
Leina what is most troubling about breast ironing is the resulting the emotional
scars.
“Your
mom is doing that to you. What is the message she’s passing to you as a little
girl?” Leina said. “That you’re having breasts: It’s wrong, it’s shameful. You
don’t like your body.”
As
the practice is taboo, victims often suffer in silence. But thanks to Leina
and other activists fighting to end it, more victims and even perpetrators have
been speaking out against it.
“I
think it’s the culture,” Agwetang said. “They don’t want to talk about certain
things. But now that we are going out… they open up and they tell you their
experiences. And even some parents, they tell you what they did to their children
and they really regret it.”
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WUNRN
CAMEROON - GIRLS VICTIMIZED BY BREAST IRONING TRADITION - CNN
BREAST IRONING VIDEO
Article: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/07/27/cameroon.breast.ironing/index.html?_s=PM:WORLD
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