WUNRN
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/449242/fighting-female-genital-mut
http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/2947/59/
Egypt –
Continuing Challenge of Female Genital Mutilation - FGM
Mona Eltahawy - Dec. 23, 2014
Perfectly healthy parts of, sadly, many girls' genitals are
still mutilated/cut by FGM because of obsession with female virginity.
Egyptian government figures put the rate of
female genital mutilation among women ages 15 to 49 at 91 per cent. Among
teenagers 15 to 17, it is 74 per cent. Unicef estimates that of the 125 million
women worldwide who have undergone genital cutting in the 29 countries where it
is most prevalent – mostly in Africa and the Middle East – one in five lives in
Egypt.
I am a 47-year-old Egyptian woman. And I am among the fortunate
few of my countrywomen whose genitals have not been cut in the name of “purity”
and the control of our sexuality.
Other than the tireless Egyptian activists who for years have fought to
eradicate it, very few talk about a practice that brings nothing but harm to so
many girls and women. In her books, the feminist Nawal El Saadawi has long
documented her own cutting at the age of 6 and her tenacious campaign against a
practice that is carried out by both Muslims and Christians in Egypt.
But why aren’t other prominent women speaking out by sharing their own
experience of surviving genital cutting? The silence comes at a great cost.
Many international treaties designate female genital mutilation a violation of
the human rights of girls and women. On October 30, the United Nations
secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, announced a global campaign to end it within a
generation.
Egypt first banned the practice in 1959, and then permitted it again in some
forms. When Egypt hosted the 1994 United Nations Population Conference, it was
embarrassed by a CNN report that showed a cutting procedure, despite official
claims that it was no longer practiced.
The government then allowed “medical” genital cutting – in which
the procedure is carried out in a medical environment or by a medical
professional – until 2008, when a universal ban was imposed after a 12-year-old
girl died the previous year during a procedure in a clinic.
The practice is sometimes erroneously referred to as circumcision. According to
the World Health Organisation, it “comprises all procedures that involve
partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to
the female genital organs for nonmedical reasons.”
The procedure has no health benefits. We hack away at perfectly healthy parts
of our girls’ genitals because we’re obsessed with female virginity and because
women’s sexuality is a taboo. This cutting is believed to reduce a girl’s sex
drive. And families believe their daughters are unmarriageable unless they are
cut.
In a BBC report broadcast to coincide with the current trial in Egypt, a
traditional midwife boasted that despite the ban, she had a waiting list of
mothers who wanted their daughters to be cut. The Guardian reported that many
in the village where Soheir al-Batea lived believed that genital cutting was
prescribed by Islam.
The grand mufti of Egypt pronounced it un-Islamic in 2007, but some local imams
persist in attributing the practice to a saying of the Prophet Mohammad. Across
Africa, Christians and animists follow the custom as well.
The 2008 Egyptian ban, which imposes sentences of up to two years in prison or
fines of up to 5,000 Egyptian pounds (about $700), has done little to curb the
practice.
“Medicalised” cutting is at 77 per cent – up from 55 per cent 20 years ago.
When I interviewed a 53-year-old survivor of the practice in Cairo for a BBC
radio documentary about women in the Middle East, she told me, “It must be
carried out, because that’s the way to maintain the purity of girls, to make
sure that the girl is not out of control. We don’t care if it’s against the law
or if they’re trying to stop it. We know doctors who are willing to continue
and have done so.”
Laws not enough
Laws are not enough. Countries that have succeeded in lowering the rate
of female genital mutilation, like Senegal, have used varied methods:
alternative rites of passage into womanhood, campaigns in which brides and
bridegrooms state that they both reject the custom, and the involvement of
clerics and priests.
Higher education levels, family relocation to big cities and sometimes the
death of the family patriarch can make a difference. Some of these factors
helped my own extended family end the practice. Mothers must not bear the blame
alone.
They subject their daughters to the same harm and pain that they themselves
experienced because they understand what is required of their daughters in
order to be married. Our society must learn to stop brutalising girls in the
name of controlling their sex drive.
We need nothing short of a recognition that ending female genital mutilation is
part of the “social justice and human dignity” revolution that we began in
Egypt in January 2011. We can better protect our girls when we recognise that
those chants of our revolution are essentially demands for autonomy and consent
– for all.