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Order Info: http://www.januspublishing.co.uk/bookshopdetails.php?pid=763
THE UNBIDDEN PAIN
Author: Berhane Raswork
Publisher: Janus Publishing Company LTD.
Cambridge, UK.
Year of Publication: 2014
About the Book
It
is a delectable and factual narrative accounts by an African woman on her
experiences in the fight against harmful traditional practices especially
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a deeply rooted act with traditional, cultural
and religious links. It records the challenges, dilemmas, intrigues, failures,
chagrin of traditional leadership including threats of death encountered in the
fight against the highly guarded, secretive, weighty and sensitive act as well
as the processes engaged in securing attention at local, regional and
international levels to enforce the rights of women to their prized bodily
part. The need to secure help for women and girls and bring to an end to their
travails and pain too difficult to describe coupled with unnecessary deaths
propped her into action. The danger of the practice which was laced with
invisibility, silence and indifference being exported by migrants and the
pseudo-practice of medical surgery in order to give it a new face greatly made
her resolve to find practical ways of securing change through bridge building
between Africa and Europe, a lifetime commitment.
The
196-paged book opens with a vivid prologue highlighting the gruesome nature
of mutilating the most sensitive part of the female anatomy without anesthesia
and under the most unimaginable and unhygienic conditions based on the
unsubstantiated misconception of checking promiscuity among girls and women and
preparing them for their husbands, etc. As an African issue, the book depicts
and meaningfully summarizes the context and content of each beginning section
of the book with flavored African proverbs which have loaded meanings thereby
setting the tone to enhance further understanding of the issues at stake.
The
leverage by Non-governmental Organizations (NGO) particularly the Inter-African
Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (IAC),
an organization which she cofounded, and describes as a ‘family’ handling a
family issue, the book gives a guided tour of the careful planning process to
ensure that FGM which had the potential of grounding the development of girls
and women and ultimately, nations, is eradicated. The book posits ways of
handling the ‘sensitive’ issue of FGM by highlighting the essence of
cooperation and partnership with national NGOs, women, men, media, governments,
parliaments, law enforcement agencies, and religious leaders, African Union
(AU), European Union (EU), International NGOs and the United Nations (UN). It
harps on the honoring of commitments and sustaining local, regional and
international synergies and initiatives as keys that have unlocked the
‘silence’ and ‘indifference’ that had enveloped the practice thereby paving way
for its eradication.
It
offers invaluable lessons on commitment to community responsibility and the
essence of awareness raising, advocacy, sensitization, education, lobbying and
eradication campaigns, sharpening commitments and perfecting strategies in the
eradication of FGM without ruffling many feathers. It sums up the struggle as a
productive one that has earned recognition within the UN as a human right and reproductive
health issue thereby engendering healthy engagement for keeping faith and hope
of actualizing the elimination of FGM and other harmful traditional and
cultural practices. This makes it must read for NGOs, medical professionals as
well as individuals aspiring to have a world where the fundamental rights of
all and particularly, that of women are recognized, fostered and maintained.