SUDAN/UK: Ending The Culture Of FGM

When I was "circumcised" I was five or six, but it happens to girls as young as four. It starts as a ceremony – the girl is bought clothes, gold earrings and bangles. She has henna put on her hands and feet: the preliminaries are regarded as a celebration where she is the centre of attention.

But later they take her and put her in a gadha, which is shaped like a deep dish. They lay her across it and hold her legs open; there are often three people holding her very tight when she's on the gadha, two holding her legs and hands, and one holding her chest and head.

The equipment is handmade: a sharp curved knife which is not sterilised. And the girl is given no anaesthetic. It is usually mostly women in attendance. They leave a little hole for urination. There are no stitches; they treat the wound with herbs, salt and water. It bleeds a lot and the victim is in great pain. I was horribly frightened and crying. The "ceremony" takes as little as 20 minutes or as long as an hour, depending on how much the girl struggles.

UGANDA: FGM Is A HUman Rights Violation

opinion

Uganda is a signatory to various human rights treaties and this has earned it a very positive image on the international scene as one of the countries that highly respect and observe human rights. However its biggest problem has always been implementation.

Women and children, given their vulnerability, have faced various human rights abuses at all levels, among which includes sexual exploitation, domestic rape, defilement, child labour, child sacrifice, domestic violence, child trafficking and female genital mutilation (FGM). However FGM has turned out to be more sensitive as the young women's health is put at risk when they undergo this practice.

Article 21 of the African Charter is on the rights and welfare of a child, protecting him/her against harmful social and cultural practices and this includes the elimination of all harmful practices affecting the welfare, dignity normal growth and development of the child.

ETHIOPIA: Saved From The Afony Of Female Circumcision

Millions of women around the world are subjected to genital mutilation. But, in Ethiopia, the practice is slowly disappearing, writes Paul Vallely

PAUL VALLELY

Hanna Abera with her aunt, Tijitu Obsu, who saved the seven-year-old from being circumcised

This is Hanna Abera. She is seven. Her mother and grandmother wanted to slice off part of her genitals. But she was saved by an extraordinarily brave intervention from her aunt after a British charity launched a programme of education on the consequences of female circumcision – which is still widely practised throughout parts of Africa and the Middle East.

GAMBIA: More URR Communities Abandon FGM/C

UGANDA: FGM Banned In Uganda, Other African Nations Ponder The Option

FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION is under fire from international humanitarian organizations, the international community and the United Nations. Calls to ban the dangerous and painful practice, which serves no useful purpose, have intensified and Africa, a continent where the ritual is most predominant, has started responding.

Senegal and Burkina Faso were among the first African nations to announce that the practice will be banned in their countries. Recently, Uganda too announced that FGM has been banned. We bring you a Ugandan newspaper report in which the parliamentarian who tabled Prohibition Bill in the Ugandan Parliament is interviewed by journalist Madina Tebajjukira of the Ugandan SUNDAY VISION. His responses provide food for thought for countries still procrastinating about outrightly banning Bondo.

EGYPT: Networking For A Purpose

In order to enhance the performance of the women rights' organisations in Egypt and the Arab world, a three-day conference was organised by German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the Network of Women's Rights Organisations (NWRO) in Cairo last week. The conference discussed concepts, contexts and challenges for collective work by women rights' organisations in the region.

Roland Steurer, director of GTZ Egypt, said that the conference was an Egyptian-German initiative in the context of GTZ's work on promoting gender equality. "We hope to receive larger support from the German government for our activities, and we will conduct a dialogue with the officials next June to have that aid," she said at the inauguration of the conference.

Women's rights' activities have existed in Egypt and the Arab world outside the state system through philanthropic activities since at least the early 1900s, according to Margot Badran, a senior fellow at Georgetown University in the US. She listed the role of early 20th-century activists like Malak Nasef and noted that feminist activists in the Arab world had been developing networking skills over a long period.

KENYA: Women Let Down Fight Against 'Cut'

Married women who consent to circumcision are undermining the fight against female genital mutilation.

Speaking at a reception to honour three girls who trekked for 46 kilometres from Embobut to the Tirap district offices to escape the cut, senior chief Benjamin Kipkemoi said many women had accepted that female genital mutilation was retrogressive but were under immense pressure from their communities to undergo the cut.

Barred

"They are ostracised and their husbands are barred from community meetings, forcing them to pester their wives to go for the cut," said the Sambirir location chief.

A coordinator at Marakwet Girls and Women Project, Ms Eunice Yego appealed to women to resist pressure to undergo circumcision.

GAMBIA: 2nd ropping Of The Knife By Female Circumcisers Held In Basse

The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices affecting the health of women and children (GAMCOTRAP) which has been engaged in consistent grassroots activism and social mobilization through training and sensitisation activities to raise consciousness of men and women on the effects of FGM on the reproductive health rights of women and girl-child. It was confirmed that the organisation has worked closely with the communities through an empowerment process to be able to bring about change. As a result of the series of activities, the organisation has been able to register immense success leading to the first public declaration made by 18 circumcisers and 3 communities to protect their children from FGM on the 5 May 2007. The sustained advocacy engaging the duty bearers at the community level has resulted to yet another success story.

The second dropping of the knife event through a public declaration by 60 circumcisers and 351 communities in the Upper and Central River Region of the Gambia was held on the 5 of December 2009 at the Basse Mini Stadium.

KENYA: Enditnow: In Kenya, Girls Say No To FGM

In Kenya, where Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) remains a serious problem, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) is implementing a project that is changing the attitudes and behavior towards the procedure in practicing communities within the country's western and northeastern regions.

UN/GHANA: UK Commits Itself To Defend Human Rights

Mr Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), on Thursday renewed the commitment of the world body to defend the rights of all people particularly the most vulnerable.

In a statement read on his behalf at the International Human Rights celebration in Accra, Mr Ki-Moon noted that no country was free of discrimination and called for concerted efforts to deal with the problem.

December 10 is International Human Rights Day, marking the anniversary of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Conventions.

This year's celebration is on the theme: "Embrace Diversity; End Discrimination" and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) organized a programme to mark the day in Ghana.    

UGANDA: Uganda Bans Female Circumcision

The Ugandan parliament unanimously passed a bill banning female genital mutilation, a traditional rite that has sparked an international outcry and is practiced in some African and Asian communities.

The practice, which involves cutting off a girl's clitoris, is also called female circumcision. In some communities in eastern Uganda, it is practiced in girls up to age 15.

Convicted offenders face 10 years in prison, but if the girl dies during the act, those involved will get a life sentence, according to officials in the east African country.

"A majority of Ugandans felt it is a disgusting act, but you have to remember that this is a cultural belief that has been practiced for generations," said Fred Opolot, the government spokesman. "That's what took the bill so long to pass."

MALDIVES: Attorney General: Practice Of Female Circumcision Gaining Momentum In Addu

The practice of female circumcision in the name of Islam is being revived in Addu atoll, the Attorney General has warned.

Speaking at a human rights function held on Thursday night, Attorney General Husnu Suood said that the people responsible for reviving the practice of female circumcision in Addu were religious scholars who preach that it was compulsory. He further said that it was imperative that the atrocious practice be brought to a stop.

UGANDA: Life Imprisonment Awaits Those Who Circumcise Ladies

Christmas merry making may have come a little early for gender rights' activists in the country after Parliament yesterday passed a new law that outlaws and criminalises female genital mutilation.

The new law, a private member's Bill drawn up by Kinkizi East MP Chris Baryomunsi, hands down a series of stern punishments to perpetuators of the crime, a maximum 10- year sentence and life imprisonment for those who commit aggravated female genital mutilation (FGM).

The Bill says a person commits aggravated FGM in situations where death occurs as a result of the act or where a victim suffers disability or is infected with the HIV virus.

It defines FGM as the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-therapeutic reasons.

UGANDA: Uganda bans female circumcision

(CNN) -- The Ugandan parliament unanimously passed a bill banning female genital mutilation, a traditional rite that has sparked an international outcry and is practiced in some African and Asian communities.

The practice, which involves cutting off a girl's clitoris, is also called female circumcision. In some communities in eastern Uganda, it is practiced in girls up to age 15.

Convicted offenders face 10 years in prison, but if the girl dies during the act, those involved will get a life sentence, according to officials in the east African country.

"A majority of Ugandans felt it is a disgusting act, but you have to remember that this is a cultural belief that has been practiced for generations," said Fred Opolot, the government spokesman. "That's what took the bill so long to pass."

Human rights activists have decried the practice, which they say poses major health risks for girls and may lead to death. It also causes complications during sex and child birth, activists say.

"The experience has also been related to a range of psychological and psychosomatic disorders," the United Nations Population Fund says.

UGANDA: Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Bill Ready for Debate

Kampala — A Bill outlawing female genital mutilation is ready to be presented to the House for the second reading and be passed into law, MPs have been told.

Addressing a regional parliamentary workshop on the theme "Consolidating political will for child well being" at Imperial Royale Hotel yesterday, the chairperson of the committee on gender, Beatrice Lagada, blamed the practice for the high drop out rates in Universal Primary Education (UPE).

She urged people in communities where the practice is still rampant to report perpetrators and parents who subject their girl-children to genital mutilation. Upon conviction for indulging in the practice, one faces a maximum jail term of 10 years.

The workshop was attended by MPs from Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo, and the Speaker of the East African legislative assembly. It was organised by the East African community secretariat, Parliament of Uganda and European Parliamentarians for Africa.

GHANA: MPs Decry Spate Of Violence Against Women ... Call For Stiffer Punishment

Some members of the country’s Parliament yesterday expressed worry at the rate at which violence is being perpetrated against women. In their various submissions in the House yesterday, the MPs for Savelugu, Ahafo Ano South and Mion constituencies, Mary Boforo Salifu, Balado Manu and Dr. Yakubu Alhassan respectively condemned violence against women in no uncertain terms.

Hon. Mary Boforo Salifu expressed dismay about the constant disregard for the law against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) which to her is still prevalent among several ethnic groups in the country, although the law that criminalized the act in 1994 was further strengthened by Parliament in 2007. “In the area of culture, Mr. Speaker, some communities still practice Trokosi, an outlawed custom which involves ritual servitude and sexual exploitation of girls.

There is constant disregard of the law against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM),” she noted, adding “the consequences against these inhuman acts are indeed worrisome. Aside the reproductive and maternal health problems, many women die and properties are being confiscated”.

NETHERLAND: 'Ambassadors' To Fight Female Genital Mutilation

Deputy Health Minister Jet Bussemaker appointed ‘ambassadors’ against female genital mutilation today at an international conference on the practice in The Hague.

The ambassadors, drawn from African communities in the Netherlands, will pass on information on the dangers of female genital mutilation to parents who originally come from countries where the custom is practiced, such as Somalia, Ethiopia and Sudan.

In a TV interview on Tuesday, Ms Bussemaker stressed that apart from causing terrible pain, female genital mutilation, also referred to as female circumcision or genital cutting, deprives women of their sexuality and carries grave lifelong health risks.

NETHERLANDS: Dutch Government: "Say No To Female Genital Mutilation"

The Dutch government has launched a national campaign against female genital mutilation, “Say no to FGM”.

Also known as female circumcision, FGM was relatively unknown in Europe before its introduction by migrant communities. It is a practise in which external female genital organs are either altered, injured, or removed, for reasons related to culture, religion, or both.

According to the World Health Organisation, about three million girls risk being submitted to this procedure every year in Africa. FGM can cause severe bleeding, and later complications in childbirth.

Better statistics in Africa

Speaking to national and international experts in The Hague on Wednesday, Dutch Deputy Health Minister, Jet Bussemaker, said that her government had no reliable statistics on the prevalence or FGM in the Netherlands.

 It is known to be widespread in the Somali community, one of the largest migrant groups in The Netherlands.

IRELAND: Over 2,500 Women In Ireland Have Undergone Female Genital Mutilation

A year after its publication, The National Action Plan on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has still not been adopted by any Government agency, and legislation outlawing it has not been implemented.

Director of Akidwa, the national network for African and migrant women, Salome Mbugua, said there was no explicit legal protection against FGM in Ireland, nor was it possible to protect a child from being taken overseas to have the procedure carried out.

UGANDA: Uganda Gender Laws Gain Support

At the beginning of November, the Uganda Law Reform Commission brought a new set of proposed gender-related laws before the Ugandan Parliament for debate in response to increased pressure from civil society groups. If passed, the proposed bills would alter laws concerning marriage and divorce, domestic violence, and female circumcision.

Uganda has a diverse society. The draft Marriage and Divorce Bill aims to consolidate laws pertaining to all forms of marriage recognized in Uganda: religious, civil and customary. The new law would ensure both partners fair access to matrimonial wealth during and after marriage, make marital rape illegal, and ban bride price, a practice that demands the husband pays the bride’s family to marry her.

According to statistics from the Uganda Law and Reform Commission, 78 per cent of women have experienced some form of domestic abuse. The Domestic Relations Bill would protect women in the private sphere through enforcing the punishment of perpetrators of domestic violence and providing guidelines for courts to follow with regards the protection and compensation of victims of domestic violence.

NIGERIA: Minister Tasks Security Agents On Violence Against Women. Children

Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Mrs. Salamatu Suleiman, has called on the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and other law enforcement agents, to ensure prompt report of violence against women and children.

Salamatu said this at the 10th anniversary of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, adding that the law enforcement agents should be legally binded to report any violence against women and children.

The theme of 2009 of International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women is “Commit, Act, Demand: We can end violence against women.”

According to her, “Nigeria Police and other law enforcement agents should be legally bound to seriously report violence against women and children and therefore should no more treat them with levity.”

KENYA: 350 Teenage Girls To Face The Knife

UGANDA: Female Genital Mutilation Has Positive Side

THERE are positive aspects of female genital mutilation (FGM), the Reproductive Education and Community Health (REACH)has said.

“We aim at conveying the message that we are not against the whole female genital mutilation ritual, but the actual cutting of the female genitalia. There are some good pre-FGM rituals,” Martin Cherukut, the REACH programme officer, said.

“For instance, teaching the girls how to take care of their future spouses on the pre-cutting night. These are basics every woman needs to know in marriage. Such teachings are held even among other tribes such as the Baganda. Cutting the female genitalia does not in any way qualify a girl to womanhood,” he said.

KENYA: 350 teenage girls to face the knife

At least 350 teenage girls are to be circumcised in the next two weeks in Marakwet East and Pokot Central districts.

A pre-initiation ceremony known as kitung’a will take place in Kapsiren village, Koibirir location, on the Friday that schools are to close.

A source from the provincial administration and several primary school teachers told the Nation at Tot trading centre on Tuesday that according to cultural beliefs, the stars, prevailing weather patterns, and other key elements had signalled that the initiations should go on in the next two weeks.

About 120 girls aged between nine and 16 years are to undergo the rite in Endow, Kaben, and Koibirir locations while 60 others are targeted in Cheptulel in Marakwet.

In the neighbouring Lomut and Arpolo sub-locations in Pokot Central, more than 150 girls will undergo the cut.

Koibirir chief Alfrick Lorem said the teenagers are to be initiated during the December holidays.

The initiations come amid stern warnings by the government that perpetrators would be prosecuted. Human rights activists have also threatened to sue the perpetrators of the outlawed practice.

Separately, three married women were circumcised on tuesday in Chepkwawai village in Chebororwa location, Marakwet West District.

According to anti-female genital mutilation crusaders, one of the women claimed that she was forced to undergo the rite or face excommunication by the society and divorce by her husband. The other two admitted that they had consented to be circumcised.

Marakwet East district commissioner Joseph Kisangau put FGM practitioners in the district on notice.

“We have instructed chiefs to be on the look-out throughout the December holiday. Should anyone circumcise a girl or woman, they will be arrested and prosecuted,” he warned.

Marakwet West district children’s officer Peter Kutere said the government had criminalised forced circumcision of girls and warned parents that they risked being jailed if their daughters underwent the rite.  

GHANA: Protect Us From Abuse - Kids Appeal To MPs

CANADA: Canadian Citizenship Guide Reads Tougher

The new government guide for people considering Canadian citizenship denounces African and Asian practices of genital mutilation and forced marriages.

Unveiling it in Ottawa Thursday, Minister of Citizenship Jason Kenney told reporters there is a new section called "Equality of Women and Men" that addresses specific problems.

"It's no secret that we've seen instances of culturally rooted abuse of women, so-called 'honor killings,' forced marriages, and spousal abuse, and even female genital mutilation," Kenney said. "We want to make sure that people understand that multiculturalism doesn't create an excuse to engage in those barbaric cultural practices."

UGANDA: Malinga Warns Parents On Female Genital Mutilation

The Minister of Uganda for Health, Dr. Stephen Malinga has said parents in Moroto, Kotido and Kapchorwa among other districts who conduct female genital mutilation on their daughters risk arrest.

Female genital mutilation is a common cultural practice among Pokot, Sebei and Tepeth ethnic groups of Uganda.

The Minister says female genital mutilation is outlawed and whoever practices or promotes it risk arrest and subsequent prosecution. He was today addressing residents of Moroto town council.

Malinga also called upon girls to discard the practice and report to police the parents and guardians who promote the practice.

Dr. Malinga says female genital mutilation is inhuman and risky to the girls’ life. Female genital mutilation is a culture requirement among the Pokot, Sebei and Tepeth for girls to enter into ‘womanhood.’

Female Circumcision: "Europe Should Learn From Africa"

Nine villages in Mali ban female circumcision, and celebrate this in a solemn ceremony;  a future bride in Ethiopia proclaims in public that she and her fiancé are happy that she has not been circumcised.

More and more men and women in Africa are saying ‘no” to the genital mutilation of their daughters, as a result of effective local interventions that have helped break ancestral taboos.

The incidence of female genital mutilation (FGM) is even regressing in Ethiopia, Guinea, Niger and Sudan, says Berhane Ras-Work, who has been fighting it for the past 25 years. Berhane Ras-Work is the Executive director of the Inter-African Committee (IA) on traditional practices, based in Addis Ababa.

In Sudan, women are taking a positive approach to the phenomenon.  Nafisa Nedri refuses to say that she is “not circumcised”. Instead, she says ‘I’m salima”. Her 19-year old daughter is salima too. Salima  means “whole, intact” in Arabic.

UGANDA: FGM On The Decline In Kapchorwa

FEMALE genital mutilation is on the decline in Kapchorwa district, the LC5 chairman, Nelson Chelimo, has said. He noted that despite the absence of statistics, the Sabiny were gradually abandoning the brutal practice.

“We have reached a level where the majority of the Sabiny know the danger of female genital mutilation. The communities that still carry out the practice do it out of ignorance. This calls for intensive education of girls and massive sensitisation,” Chelimo said on Saturday.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia. In Uganda, the practice is carried out among the Sabiny in Bukwo and Kapchorwa districts and the Pokot Karimojong in Amudat district.

The Tepeth Karimojong in Katikekile sub-county in Moroto district and the Kadam Karimojong in Moruita sub-county in Nakapiripirit district also carry out the practice.

African Activism Against Female Circumcision Is Focus Of New Film

A new film focuseson the fight by African activists against an ancient practice that is stillperformed each year on millions of girls: female circumcision, often known asFGM, or female genital mutilation. Opponents call it a human rights abuse thatdestroys a woman's ability to enjoy sex, is sometimes fatal, and frequentlyleads to lifelong pain and disability.

Agnes Pareyio helped found the Kenyan movement to end FGM“I was forcefully cut when I was 14 years,” says Kenyananti-FGM activist Agnes Pareyio. “Itried to resist; everybody was calling me a coward. There was a lot of peerpressure on me that forced me to prove to them that I was not a coward.  But I hated it. So, I grew up hating it andmade sure that not my daughter, not anybody who can listen to me, will undergoFGM.”

Spotlight on Beijing +15

I want to bring the spotlight back to the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) in 1995 ushered in a new era in terms of addressing women's empowerment and advancement. The inception of this platform carried with it a call for governments to accelerate their efforts towards addressing gender inequality.

In 2004, and in line with the BPFA, African member states reiterated their commitment to the provisions of the platform and to gender equality in general. African member states committed themselves to addressing challenges, as identified in the synthesis of the national progress reports on the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action (2004) at the 7th African Women's Conference held in October 2004 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Since 1996, the Eastern African Sub-regional Support Initiative for Advancement of Women (EASSI) has sought to hold governments to account on the status of the implementation of policies, programmes and legislation in the area of women's empowerment and advancement in each of EASSI's member states of Burundi, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda.

November 25Is Int'l Day For Elimination Of Violence Against Women

The United Nations Development Fund for Women enjoin people of the world to join the 16 Days of activism against gender violence, a campaign linking November 25th - the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women with December 10th, the International Human Rights Day. Since 1991 over 2000 organizations in 156 countries have participated in this campaign.

This year, a new advocacy program called "Say NO – Unite to End Violence Against Women," campaign, serves to spotlight international efforts to garner attention and action on the issue of violence against women.

The goal of the campaign is to reach 10,000 "actions" by March 2010, and one million in one year. Actions vary from volunteering at abuse shelters to donating to programs that protect victims of violence or educate women and girls.

Ending Violence Against Women Helps Achieve Development Goals

Violence against women and girls is a problem of pandemic proportions – in all continents. At least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused by an intimate partner in the course of her lifetime. The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, November 25th, is a unique opportunity to remind governments and societies of persisting and dramatic inequalities.

Despite the progress that has been made in achieving gender equality worldwide, women represent 60 percent of the world's poorest, less than 16 percent of the world's parliamentarians, two-thirds of the world's illiterate and, both in times of armed conflict and behind closed doors at home, they are still systematically subjected to violence.

The roots of violence against women lie in historically unequal power relations between men and women – and persistent discrimination against women. From domestic violence, to human trafficking and female genital mutilation, gender-based violence is a cruel reality in the 21st Century.

NIGERIA: First Ladies And Female Genital Mutilation

Among the dangers a woman faces in most poor nations of Africa, Asia and the Middle East (and some affluent ones) is the avoidable risk of being circumcised/cut as an infant or, more unwillingly, as a young adult.

The practice of female circumcision, or what has come to be known today as 'female genital mutilation/cutting' (FGM/C), evolved from the dark past of our human existence.

Defenders of the practice have done so on grounds of culture and tradition, or, more problematically, on religious-moral grounds that prescribe or condone the act of cutting off portions of a young woman's genital organs in the belief that this will make the woman more chaste.

It is said that about 3 million infants and young African girls go through the ordeal of mutilation yearly. This figure may be higher, considering that not all cases are reported by victims who are usually cowed by the feudalist tradition of subservience. A similar number is at the risk of going under the mutilators' knives in similar manner, experts say.

IRELAND: Pamela Izevbekhai Due Back Before Supreme Court

Sligo based Nigerian woman, Pamela Izevbekhai will represent herself as she is due to appear before the Supreme Court once again this morning.

Her fourth set of lawyers withdrew from the case last Friday after they told the court they had received threats.

Pamela Izevbekhai will represent herself when she appears before the Supreme Court later this morning.

Last Friday, her lawyers, Murphy Mc Elligott from Dun Laoghaire withdrew from the case after they informed the Court that they received a threatening postcard telling them to ”back off”.

This was her fourth legal team since her deportation battle began.

A date for her case is due to be decided today following her unsuccessful attempt last Friday to oppose the State’s application to admit additional affidavits containing new evidence disputing her case.

It emerged earlier this year that documents detailing the death of her daughter Elizabeth from Female Genital Mutilation in 1994 were forgeries.

UGANDA: Kapchorwa Leaders Petition MPs On FGM Bill

Leaders from Kapchorwa district have asked Parliament to revise some sections of the of female genital mutilation (FGM) Bill. Nelson Chelimo, the LC5 chairperson, said Section 4 of the Bill, that subjects a convict to 10 years imprisonment for carrying out self mutilation, was aggressive.

“Most women who carry out self mutilation do it out of social pressure. Some Sabiny communities believe that uncircumcised women could encounter difficulty in getting suitors. So Parliament should be lenient in enacting this section to avoid an unjust penalty,” he said.

Chelimo argued that Section 2 of the Bill that subjects a convict to a 10-year-imprisonment for carrying out FGM is hostile and not applicable to the local community.

Mutilating Women

The campaign to fight female genital mutilation is meeting new resistance not only in traditional societies but among Western anthropologists, says Barbara Crossette.

For a couple of decades, a small, underfunded nonprofit organization in New York called Equality Now has bolstered community groups in Africa that are making steady progress against the painful and destructive practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). But there is concern that an Equality Now-led campaign that has cost an unknown number of advocates their lives is meeting new resistance not only in traditional societies but also among Western anthropologists and other cultural apologists who put a higher value on a harmful practice than on the well-being of girls. Taina Bien-Aimé, Equality Now's executive director, calls it a "rites or rights" dilemma.

IRELAND: Supreme Court Hears Izevbekhai Case

Nigerian mother Pamela Izevbekhai has told the Supreme Court a sworn statement from a doctor asserting she never had a child who died as a result of complications from female genital mutilation (FGM) is untrue. She claims she has a certificate from another doctor to prove the child’s death.

Representing herself in the Supreme Court today after her fourth set of lawyers withdrew over what they described as a threatening anonymous postcard, Ms Izevbekhai said her first child Elizabeth died in July 1994 and she has obtained evidence from another doctor certifying this.

Her case was before the court today following an application from the State to have her entire appeal against the deportation of herself and her two daughters dismissed as an abuse of court process.

This application was adjourned but she unsuccessfully opposed the State’s application to admit additional affidavits containing new evidence disputing her case.

IRELAND: Postcard 'Thread' Leads To Pamela Going Solo On Case

LAST October, a postcard from Spain arrived in the offices of a solicitors' practice in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.

The firm, Murphy McElligot, had just taken over the case of Pamela Izevbekhai, the Nigerian asylum seeker whose attempts to fight deportation on the grounds that her daughters will be genitally mutilated has made her a cause celebre.

The card, posted in Alicante, warned: "Take my advice, back off. She is making a fool out of everyone. She is costing tax to Irish people. I know. I am Nigerian."

The solicitors took the card seriously. When Pamela Izevbekhai went to the Supreme Court on Friday in a last throw of the dice in her bid to stay in Ireland, McElligot Murphy asked the three judges if they could withdraw from the case.

The two female solicitors in the practice regarded the postcard as a threat and took it seriously enough to report it to gardai. They felt rather exposed, their barrister explained.

UGANDA: Agencies Unite Against Female Circumcision

Jackson (centre) chatting with some of the delegates at the launch on Tuesday

By Irene Nabusoba

THE United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have launched a joint programme to end female genital mutilation (FGM) by 2012.
 
FGM involves partial or total removal of the external female genitalia commonly practiced as a cultural passage to womanhood by some ethnic groups in Uganda.

The practice causes immense pain, bleeding, infection, abscess plus shock, sometimes leading to death.
Speaking during a half-day event to mark the alliance at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala on Tuesday, UNFPA’s country director Janet Jackson said the five-year programme will cost $43.5m (about sh82.7b).

GAMBIA: Discourse For Resourse: 200 Ex-Circumcisers And Their Assistants Call For The End Of FGM/C

Over 200 representatives convened on October 21st, at the WEC Mission Camp in Kampant, Western Region for a 2-day workshop to reinforce dialogue between ex-circumcisers and practising circumcisers and their assistants for an accelerated total abandonment of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in the Gambia. The workshop, which was organized by the Foundation for Research on Women's Health, Productivity, and the Environment (BAFROW), supported by UNFPA, timely coincided with the 4th Annual Congress of BAFROW's Association of Ex-circumcisers. Coming from around the country, a number of partners attended the ceremony, among which included Members of the Association of Ex- circumcisors, practising circumcisers and their assistants, BAFROW health promoters and health mobilizers, members of the coalition against FGM/C, members of BAFROW's Board of Directors, the Women's Bureau, network of journalists, community leaders, women's leaders, and religious leaders.

ETHIOPIA: FGM Virtually Eradicated In Two Zones

In a series of celebrations that mark a profound and historic watershed, tens of thousands of people converged on Durame town from October 29 to 31 to celebrate the virtual eradication of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the zones of Kembatta and Tembaro in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Regional State.

According to local non-governmental organisation, Kembatti Mentti Gezzimma-Tope (KMG), the virtual elimination of this harmful traditional practice suggests that well over 100,000 girls have been spared in this region, reversing in a single decade a practice so old some Christians and Muslims here mistakenly believed it was mandated by their religions.
“We called it ‘getting the dirt out,’ but we never said it out loud, because it was taboo,” said Bogaletch Gebre, founder chief executive officer of KMG, who returned to Kembatta, her birth place, in 1997, to start the NGO that would fight for the human rights of women and improve the environment for all people in the region.

UGANDA: 150 Girls To Fight Practice

A LOCAL non-governmental organisation, Reproductive Educative and Community Health (REACH), has trained 150 school girls to serve as advocates against female genital mutilation.

While passing out the girls at Iwemba Primary School in Bugiri district on Friday, the director, Christine Chelangati, said the organisation had embarked on a door-to-door campaign.

Chelangati said 52,100 girls had been trained as advocates since 2004 under the alternate right to passage programme. She hailed the Irish government and the gender ministry for spear-heading the fight.

The Bugiri district Woman MP, Justine Kasule, said over 200 cases of defilement in the district had this year been settled by local council courts after parents of the victims demanded for petty fines from the offenders.

Health Fears Over 'Designer Vaginas'

EXPERTS have warned of a shocking lack of evidence on the safety of "designer vagina" surgery.

A team have called for more research into the effects of of the cosmetic procedure known as labiaplasty.

They say the op - which can cost £3000 if carried out privately - can carry a risk of damaging the genital nerve supply and has been linked to impaired sensitivity and sexual function.

The scientists from University College London issued their warning after reviewing dozens of studies carried out between 1950 and April 2009.

In an article for BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, they said no properly designed studies were found among the literature.

They compared reducing the size of the labia to genital mutilation, which is linked to problems in childbirth, including haemorrhage and the need for Caesarean sections.

BURKINA FASO: Burkina Faso's First Lady Cals For Female Circumcision Ban

African countries must do more work towards banning female genital mutilation, Chantal Compoare, the first lady of Burkina Faso has said. Female genital cutting is carried out for religious or cultural reasons in some parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It involves the partial or complete removal of the female external genitals. It can cause death through haemorrhaging and later complications during childbirth as well as risks of infection, urinary tract problems and mental trauma. Worldwide between 100 and 140 million women have been operated on in this way, according to estimates from the World Health Organisation.

"I call on all African states to cooperate on all levels in order to speed up the elimination of the practice of female genital mutilation," Compoare told an international conference on the subject this week. The meeting in Burkina Faso’s capital, Ougadougou, aimed to bring together lawyers, aid organisations, government ministers and community leaders as well women from throughout the region who have dedicated, and sometimes even risked, their lives to ensure that future generations are not subjected to genital cutting.

Desert Flower, Directed By Sherry Horman

Gambia: Manneh Kunda Declares End To Female Genital Cutting

Tostan-Unicef and the Gambia Government community-led sustainable development project, currently under implementation in URR have once again demonstrated its commitment to the empowerment of the Gambian rural communities, following a declaration made by over thirteen communities including adopted communities in Basse and Jimara to abandon the practice of female genital cutting, and child forced marriages at a ceremony held at Basse Manneh Kunda. The ceremony was well attended by the dignitaries in URR, TAC members, local and influential leaders, traditional communicators, as well as the entire business community in Basse.
In his welcoming remarks, the Alkalo of Manneh Kunda, Alasana Kebba Manneh in a very joyful mood, welcomed the participants and thanked them for uniting the community of Manneh Kunda and pledged to abandon some harmful traditions that have negative health implications for women and young girls. This according to Alkalo Manneh is an indication that Tostan is one family.
For his part, the VDC Chairman Mr. Manlafi Sanyang said that the ceremony is historic as far as development and respect for human rights is concerned; that it is a clear manifestation that the knowledge gained through Tostan is being put into practice. He thanked them for their efforts and urged them to be more committed.

UGANDA: Police Arrests Moroto Parents Over Circumcision

Police has arrested 10 parents in Looro Sub County , Moroto district who allegedly last week conducted female genital mutilation on their daughters.

Female genital mutilation is a common cultural practice among Pokot, Sebei and Tepeth ethnic groups.

The Spokesperson of Police, Judith Nabakooba says female genital mutilation has been outlawed.

She says whoever practices or promotes it commits an offence leading to an arrest and prosecution.

Nabakooba advises the parents and guardians among the Sebei, Tepeth and and Pokot to discard the practice to avoid arrest.

Female genital mutilation is a culture requirement among the Pokot, Sebei and Tepeth for girls to enter into ‘womanhood.’

Waris Dirie: Supermodel Survivor

Somalian supermodel Waris Dirie has graced the pages of glossy magazines and starred opposite 007 as a Bond Girl.

Face for change: Dirie is a tireless campaigner against FGM.

But her glamorous appearances on catwalks and in magazines and films belies the personal battles Dirie has had to overcome.

Dirie is a leading voice against forced circumcision and female genital mutilation (FGM) and struggled to overcome her own circumcision at the age of five. The forthcoming film, "Desert Flower", based on her biography, tells her story.

Yet it is through her charitable foundation that Dirie hopes that the practice still common in traditions in parts of Africa, the Middle East, South American and Asia will not create more cases similar to her own.

UGANDA: Minister Blasts CSOs Over Domestic Relations Bill

The state minister for Gender and Culture has advised the civil society to redirect their efforts towards discouraging skimpy dressing by women rather than wasting time and resources on issues such as the Domestic Relations Bill.

Ms Rukia Isanga Nakadama said civil society organisations should discourage women against skimpy dressing because it hurts the dignity of women before they can tackle larger issues like the DRB.

“Why don’t you (civil society) talk about those who do not dress properly, why are you quiet about the nakedness of women and decide to only talk about the Domestic Relations Bill,” the Ms Nakadama said on Tuesday at a workshop organized by Islamic University in Uganda and sponsored by ISESCO/FUIW at Tagy Hotel, Kampala.

Recently, the civil society re-launched their demand for the speedy tabling of the new DRB which is meant to harmonise issues of marital property rights, sexual rights in marriage and domestic violence. However critics argue that the bill is not only controversial but attempts to criminalize the whole essence of bride price and legalise cohabitation.

NETHERLANDS: Koendeers Visiting Burkina Faso

Development minister Bert Koenders is visiting Burkina Faso between 15 and 17 October

Mr Koenders will talk with President Blaise Compaoré, Prime Minister Tertius Zongo and health minister Seydou Bouda. Their topics of discussion will include the crisis in Guinea-Conakry.

In addition, Mr Koenders will meet members of various organisations to discuss the development of health care and measures against female genital mutilation.

Accompanying Mr Koenders to Burkina Faso will be Radio 3FM DJ Eric Corton and Director of the Dutch Red Cross Cees Breederveld. On Friday, they will invite him to visit Red Cross malaria projects in Diébougou.

The proceeds of the Radio 3FM Serious Request this year will go to reducing malaria. On Saturday, Mr Koenders will invite Mr Corton and Mr Breederveld to visit a regional hospital and a number of civil society organisations in Gaoua.

NIGERIA: Violence Against Women Undermines Their Capacity

The violence suffered by most women in the home and work place undermines their capacity to effectively participate in private and public life, as they are allegedly treated and perceived as second class beings by their male counterparts.

The assertion was made by the Women's Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative (WRAPA)in its recent town hall meeting with women and male family heads in Kuje Area Council of Abuja, with a theme 'Raising Her Voice' Project (RHV).

The organisation described violence against women as sexual assault, battery, female genital mutilation, marital rape, child marriage, women trafficking, male child preference, withdrawal of the girl child from school, limitations on their ability to participate in politics, and also curtailing their capacity in the power relations between men and women.

"The lives of poor and marginalised women in Nigeria are characterised by susurration, which aggravates inequality and poverty of women, including failure in responsiveness of governance to citizens", the forum noted.

Urgent Action Needed By World Comminity To Stamp Out Violence Against Children, Newly Appointed Special Representative Tells Third Committee

Also Hears from Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, As It Begins Multi-Day Debate on Promotion, Protection of Rights of Child

Violence against children, and ways to stem that violence, figured prominently in a discussion between Member States and United Nations officials from the field of child rights, at the start of a multi-day discussion on the promotion and protection of the rights of children convened by the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural).

In her first appearance before the Committee, Marta Santos Pais, the Secretary-General's newly appointed Special Representative on Violence against Children, said she was counting on mutual support between herself and Member States to identify the most promising initiatives to stamp out violence against children. She made that statement in response to numerous questions posed by Member States on how she planned to conduct her work, and what role Governments were expected to play in the dispatch of her mandate.

EU: Will You Help Save A Girl From Mutilation?

Frontpage Interview’s guest is Ines Laufer, founder of the Task Force for Effective Prevention of Female Genital Mutilation, a network of Human-Rights-organisations and activists that is committed to measurable, broad prevention of genital mutilation (FGM) among migrant girls in the EU. Together with Lucy Mashua, a Kenyan victim of FGM, she now leads a new campaign, sponsoredgirl.com, to protect girls from this barbarity.

FP: Ines Laufer, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.

In our last discussion, we focused on how Germany has exposed a young girl to female genital mutilation and how Germany, and Europe in general, is not protecting young girls from this barbaric crime.

Today I would like to talk to you about a new campaign you have started. Tell us about it.

USA/GHANA: Lauderhill Event To Help Educate hana Women About Genital Mutilation

In remote villages in Ghana, Florence Ali sees firsthand the side effects of female genital mutilation.

Although banned by Ghana's laws, it's a cultural tradition still practiced in some villages, said Ali.

"We see the side effects particularly when women come in to deliver their babies,'' said Ali, president of the Ghanaian Association for Women's Welfare.

A World Health Organization study showed that women who have suffered the most serious form of genital mutilation have a higher chance of suffering from a post childbirth hemorrhage.

She said when some of the women return to their communities they isolate themselves because they're ashamed of their wounds.

Saturday night at a Ghanaian function in Lauderhill, Ali will speak about female circumcision, or genital mutilation, and her work to bring more awareness to this issue.

KENYA: Children Sexuall Abuse On The Rise

A report released by CRADLE, a non-governmental organization indicates that cases of sexual abuses remain highest at 73 percent of all reported cases.

According to the report, 79 percent of girls between the ages of 13 and 15 years and 21 percent of boys in the same age bracket have been sexually abused.

The report says the most common forms of abuse include defilement, sodomy, incest, sexual assault, child pornography, defilement of mentally impaired children and child sexual exploitation among others.

The report further says despite the government's efforts to stamp it out, Female Genital Mutilation continues among children mostly due to cultural persuasions.

Early marriages and cohabitation with minors were also cited as a form of sexual violence representing five percent of reported cases.

Assistant minister for lands Bifwoli Wakoli cited Nairobi's slum areas as the most affected by the vice, adding that male neighbours and relatives were the most notorious perpetrators of child abuse.

SWEDEN, DENMARK, NORWAY: Sweden, Denmark And Norway Try To Stop Genital Mutilation Among Immigrants At Home And Abroad

EU: Website Launched To End Female Genital Mutilation

A website dedicated to tracking the response of the European Union (EU) to female genital mutilation (FGM) has been launched by Amnesty International Ireland.

It will document the response of EU institutions and the Council of Europe to assess developments on preventing FGM and will feature an interactive map of Europe, which will contain information on prevalence rates and legislation on the issue in member states.
Click here

The campaign — the site for which is located at www.endfgm.eu — is committed to ensuring the EU delivers a definitive strategy to end FGM in Europe and to protect women and girls who flee their countries for fear of being mutilated.

GHANA, BURKINA FASO, TOGO: Ghana, Burkina Faso & Togo Issue Joint Communique

About 120 Delegates from three neighbouring countries, Ghana , Burkna Faso and Togo, at the end of a three day tri-partite cross border meeting held in Tenkodogo in Burkina Faso, issued a communiqué to reinforce cross border cooperation and peaceful co-existence among their people.

The three, also agreed to increase development activities in the decentralized cross border areas, and encourage twinning between communities and local government authorities.

The three delegations discussed security, social welfare, decentralized cooperation, culture, sports and free movement of people and goods.

In the domain of security, they committed themselves to fight against the proliferation of arms, armed robbery, goods and cattle rustling, and deepen collaboration among security services in the three countries.

AUSTRALIA/KENYA: Refugee Girls Face Deportation And Mutilation

For many Kenyan women, female circumcision is part of their culture.

Two female immigrants to Australia have been told that they are going to be deported back to Kenya to face genital mutilation.

Grace Gichuhi, 22 and Teresia Muturi, 21 went to Australia in July of last year on tourist visas. They then applied for protection with the Australian Immigration Department which was subsequently refused.

Both Grace and Teresia left Kenya in fear for their safety. Grace’s mother was killed for refusing to be circumcised and now Grace faces the same threats on her life. Teresia has fled an arranged marriage to a 70 year old man and has angered her family by also refusing to be circumcised.

Changing Lives

An ancient Chinese proverb goes that women hold up half the sky. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn want that to be appreciated — on the ground. In the opening pages of this gripping call to conscience, the husband-and-wife team come out swinging: “Gendercide,” the daily slaughter of girls in the developing world, steals more lives in any given decade “than all the genocides of the 20th century.” No wonder Kristof and WuDunn, whose coverage of China for The New York Times won them a Pulitzer Prize, declare the global struggle for women’s equality “the paramount moral challenge” of our era.

Their stories in “Half the Sky” bear witness to that bold claim. Kristof and WuDunn describe Dalit women, Indian untouchables, who swarmed, stabbed and emasculated a serial torturer and murderer — in a courtroom. Further north, Mukhtar Mai, the victim of a Pakistani gang-rape, did the unthinkable for a Muslim village woman. Not only did she expose her assailants, but she incurred the wrath of her country’s president, Pervez Musharraf, endured abduction by his henchmen, started a school and even made an ally of her resentful older brother.

AUSTRALIA/KENYA: Government Failing 'Silent Asylum Seekers'

The Australian Immigration Department has been criticised for failing to adequately protect people facing human rights abuses in their home countries.

A young Kenyan woman who came to Australia for World Youth Day wants to stay because she claims she will be circumcised if she returns to Kenya.

She has been told she does not qualify for refugee status, but the Catholic Church has taken up her cause.

When Teresia Ndikaru Muturi arrived in Australia for World Youth Day last year, she knew she never wanted to go back to Kenya.

"Because I'm fearing my own mum for how she's forcing me to marry [an] old man, to leave school and yet I don't want to leave my school. Also I'm fearing to be circumcised," she said.

Her mother is a member of the outlawed Mungiki sect which practices female genital mutilation.

Ms Muturi says the sect believes you can only become a full woman and get married once you are circumcised.

GHANA: Ghanian Women To Know More About Genital Mutilation

In remote villages in Ghana, Florence Ali sees firsthand the side effects of female genital mutilation.

Although banned by Ghana's laws, it's a cultural tradition still practiced in some villages, said Ali.

"We see the side effects particularly when women come in to deliver their babies,'' said Ali, president of the Ghanaian Association for Women's Welfare.

A World Health Organization study showed that women who have suffered the most serious form of genital mutilation have a higher chance of suffering from a post childbirth hemorrhage.

She said when some of the women return to their communities they isolate themselves because they're ashamed of their wounds.

USA: Opening Remarks At Combating Violence Against Girls Event

I want to start by saying something that I believe with all my heart, and, obviously, those of you who are here believe it also, that the issues related to girls and women are not an annex to the important business of the world and the United Nations, they’re not an add-on, they’re not an afterthought; they are truly at the core of what we are attempting to do under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that is the guiding message of this organization and what each of us in our own countries is called to do on behalf of equal opportunity and social justice.

NETHERLANDS: Man Cleared Of Daughter's Genital Mutilation

A court has cleared a man of mutilating his 5-year-old daughter's genitals in the Netherlands' first trial linked to alleged female circumcision. The district judges in Haarlem said Friday there is no doubt the girl was mutilated but there is insufficient evidence to convict her father, Mustapha El M.

Prosecutors said the girl told a carer that her father had cut her with a pair of scissors, but judges said the statement was not strong enough evidence to convict him. El M. (30) was convicted of beating and biting his daughter and was sentenced to three months imprisonment for the abuse.

The trial was supposed to send the message that the Dutch justice system is serious about suppressing female circumcision, a practice which in some African cultures is considered a rite of passage. There have been dozens of successful such prosecutions in France.

KURDISTAN: A Woman's Strengh Cannot Be Hidden

If you entered a room full of women, she would instantly be the one who captures your attention. Young, charismatic, and with a disarming, contagious smile, Arian Arif comes across as one who must have attended a prestigious university and lived most of her life in the West. One would never imagine that this 31- year old journalist left Kurdistan just 3 years ago – she completed her studies in Sulaymaniyah until finding love with a Kurdish man living in Norway. Born in Sulaymaniyah, Ms. Arif previously taught mathematics at a grade school level and worked in a number of ministries before her journalistic talent was discovered by the mother of Kurdish politician, Dr. Barham Salih.

“It was my only wish in this life to live and die in Kurdistan, and only leave for vacations. Fate would have it different – I left Kurdistan because I fell in love with a man in Norway.” She continues furiously, “People think that living in Norway has made me conscious about women’s issues and that it’s because I’m outside my homeland that I speak my mind about women’s rights in Kurdistan. They could not be more wrong; in fact, I am less active here than I ever was in Kurdistan.”

UGANDA: MPs Table Female Genital Mutilation Bill

A Bill seeking to impose tough penalties for people involved in female genital mutilation (FMG) has been tabled in Parliament. The Private Members’ Bill was yesterday tabled by Kinkiizi East MP Dr. Chris Baryomunsi (NRM).

If passed, a person found guilty of aggravated FMG will be liable to life imprisonment. FMG refers to the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-therapeutic reasons.

The practice is mainly carried out in Kapchorwa and Bukwo districts during the even year. Launching a campaign against the practice in Nakapiripirit district recently, President Yoweri Museveni described the practice as brutal and backward. “God knew what he was doing when he created us. Do you think you are more intelligent than God?”

According to the Bill, a person commits aggravated FMG in situations where death occurs as a result of the act or where the victim suffers disability or is infected with HIV/AIDS.

ETHIOPIA: In Ethiopia, African Women Parliamentarians Condemn Female Genital Mutilation

© UNICEF Ethiopia/2009/Zeleman

Aregash Agegnehu, shown here with her daughter, is a former practitioner of female genital mutilation/cutting who has renounced it.

In a room filled with visiting dignitaries and members of the Ethiopian National Assembly, Tadeletch Shanko’s voice was whisper-quiet as she talked about the difficult subject of female genital mutilation/cutting, or FGM/C.

VIDEO: Watch now

UK/KENYA: New Documentary, The Cut, To Educate About FGM, Female Genital Mutilation

Freelance journalist and photogrpaher, Linda May Kallestein, has produced a short documentary, The Cut, aimed at raising awareness of the sufferin to women caused by female genital mutilation.

The Cut is a 12 minute documentary about Mary (fourteen years old) and Alice (early twenties) from Kenya. Both are affected by the traditional rite of passage into womanhood: genital cutting.

Mary and her community are preparing for her ceremonial cutting.

Alice is studying to be a social worker to work against female genital mutilation. As the first in her community to refuse the practice, she has paid a high price for her choice to break with tradition.

Alice tells of the different myths she encounters in the community around her, as to why circumcision is practiced. Mary, on the other hand, has no voice. She just goes through the preparations and rituals in silence.

DOWNLOADABLE FILM: The Cut

EGYPT: Female Circumcision Crackdown

Reports on Thursday said that the first doctor in Egypt was being charged under a new Egyptian law that forbids the controversial practice of female genital mutilation, or FGM. The man allegedly illegally circumcised a young girl last week and is being charged after a local hospital notified the authorities following the 11-year-old girl’s admittance into the hospital with heavy bleeding as a result of the procedure.

According to al-Arabiya news organization, the doctor performed the procedure at the girl’s Minya home – some 400 miles south of Cairo – for 150 Egyptian pounds ($27).

He said he performed the operation using a scalpel and the girl remains in critical condition.

In summer 2008, Egypt’s Parliament passed a law that ostensibly bans the controversial procedure. Not that it should have needed to legislate against FGM – it was already officially banned in the country during the mid-nineties – but with doctors continuing to perform the procedure on girls as young as five, Parliament felt it was necessary to intercede.

PUBLICATION: Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting - UNFPA Report

Global Consultation on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting

CHAD: HUman Rights Comittee Adopts Recommendations On The Report Of Chad

The Human Rights Committee concluded today its ninety-sixth session, during which it considered and adopted concluding observations and recommendations on the reports submitted by Tanzania, the Netherlands, including the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, Chad and Azerbaijan on how those countries implement the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. During this session, it also finalized its concluding observations on the situation of civil and political rights in Grenada, which the Committee reviewed in the absence of a report on July 18, 2007, at its ninetieth session.

Regarding the initial report of Chad, the Committee welcomed that the Chadian Constitution granted the Covenant precedence over domestic law and the adoption of a law prohibiting female genital mutilation, early marriage and domestic and sexual violence. The Committee also noted with interest the establishment of the National Commission to investigate violations of human rights that took place during the events of February 2008, as well as the establishment of the Ministry of Human Rights and the Promotion of Freedom in 2005.

LIBERIA: Liberia Is Writing New History For Its Women And Girls, Delegation Tells Women's Antidiscrimination Comittee, Admiting Great Challenges In That Endeavour

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women recognized the legislative and policy steps of Liberia to ensure women's rights and empowerment, but today expressed deep concern over the continued prevalence of discriminatory practices in that conflict-worn sub-Saharan nation, such as sexual and physical violence against women and girls.

Presenting Liberia's first through sixth periodic report on compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Vabah Gayflor, Minister of Gender and Development, said the Government was working to create a more equal and non-discriminatory society, economy and State by making gender mainstreaming a priority in the country's development of the rule of law, security, health care, education and the formal economy.

"This commitment is not an empty verbal promise, but one that we, as a Government take seriously," Ms. Gayflor said. "We are in the process of writing a new history for our nation's women and girls."

SUDAN: Sudan's Female Genital Mutilation Countered By Henna-Dyed Hands

Sudan has tried to eradicate female genital mutilation since 1946 to little avail. But now women's health groups have taken the crusade in their hands--or rather, their own painted hands--in an effort to subvert the practice.

NGOs are training midwives and henna artists to cooperate using a secret code communicated through henna tattoos. Called the henna technique, a special design dyed temporarily on the skin can indicate to a midwife that a mother wants to avoid genital mutilation on her daughter. The tattoos serve as a bridge to discuss what is traditionally taboo. In turn, a midwife can stage a fake circumcision.

"It's underground," said Mawahib Mohamed of the Sudan Council of Volunteer Agencies (SCOVA). "It's totally something that women would invent." She said that midwives from the eastern and mountainous Nuer region invented the technique.

USA: Obama Moves To Grant Political Asylum To Women Who Suffer Domestic Abuse

The Obama administration has moved to grant political asylum to foreign women who suffer severe physical or sexual abuse from which they are unable to escape because it is part of the culture of their own countries.

The decision, made evident in a court case involving a battered women from Mexico, ends years of dispute over the issue which saw the Bush administration stall moves toward recognising domestic violence as legitimate grounds for asylum made during Bill Clinton's tenure.

The department of homeland security has told an immigration court that it regards the woman, identified only as 42-year-old LR, as potentially having grounds to apply for political asylum because she feared she would be murdered by her common-law husband who repeatedly raped her at gunpoint and tried to burn her alive when he discovered she was pregnant.

UGANDA: Uganda Moves To Ban FGM

The Ugandan parliament will pass a law banning female genital mutilation (FGM), President Yoweri Museveni has announced.

According to the statement issued by the presidency, the new law will protect young women, further saying those who would continue to perform the practice would face the death penalty if a girl dies as a result of the procedure.

"The way God made it, there is no part of a human body that is useless. Now you people interfere with God's work. Some say it is culture. Yes, I support culture but you must support culture that is useful and based on scientific information," President Museveni told local reporters.

Last year, the United Nations passed a resolution that called FGM a violation of the rights of women and said it constituted irreparable, irreversible scars on women.

NAIROBI: Doctors Asked To Stop Female Cut Operations

Doctors and nurses were on Monday asked to desist from carrying out female genital mutilation in their clinics.

BURKINA FASO: "If It Wasn't Good, God Wouldn't Have Made It

'They said they were going to give us ostrich eggs,' Esther Mbarga, aged 49, recalls. "'They're huge,' they said. 'Come and we'll give them to you.'" Aged ten or eleven, she and her friends had never seen an ostrich egg. They were really excited. They were taken deep into the bush and waited expectantly. Then, one at a time, they were led off to have their genitalia mutilated. Esther was pinned to the ground by four women and cut by a fifth. She limped away bleeding and crying. It was hard to walk and urination was incredibly painful for days afterwards. For some reason, the women weren't happy with the excision. On further checking they decided that there was more to cut. They cut more the following day and yet more a week later.

Esther lives in Burkina Faso where female genital mutilation is not legal but is still carried out covertly. Female genital mutilation comprises 'all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons'. Not only may the clitoris be partially or wholly removed, but also one or both of the labia. Sometimes the vaginal orifice is narrowed by cutting and repositioning the labia. The World Health Organisation estimates that 91.5 million girls over the age of 9 in Africa have been mutilated in one of these ways. According to the most recent U.N. statistics, 72.5% of women in Burkina Faso aged between 15 and 49 have undergone genital mutilation. In the majority of cases this procedure is arranged and carried out by the older women in a community.

CANADA: Mom's Deportation Order Killed

Until her deportation order was killed, Roseline Awolope feared she would be killed and her two daughters would face genital mutilation if they were sent to Nigeria. (DAVE ABEL/Sun Media)

Tears of joy rolled down Roseline Awolope’s face as her deportation to Nigeria — and the possible genital mutilation of her young daughters — were put on hold by a federal court judge.

“I am so happy that I haven’t stopped praying,” a weeping Awolope said today. “This is a great country and we are so happy that we don’t have to go back.”

Awolope, 35, a single mother of four — Joseph, 10; Blessing, 8; Grace, 6; and Canadian-born John, 1 — were slated to be deported Thursday after her refugee claim was turned down by an immigration and refugee board.

The case was appealed to the high court, where Mr. Justice Frederick Gibson killed the deportation order late Monday.

UGANDA: Uganda Seeks To Criminalise FGM But It Must Do More Than Just Pass The Law

Seeking to make FGM illegal, Museveni wants to ban female circumcision and criminalize it.  Press Secretary Tamale Mirundi told CNN that those who continue to perform the practice could potentially face the death penalty if a girl dies as a result of the procedure. "If a girl dies during circumcision that would be murder," Mirundi said. "The punishment for murder in Uganda is death. You will be hanged."

This is a strong stride in the right direction but it’s just that- a stride- and is not enough. Although the BBC listed Uganda as one of the 14 African countries which had banned FGM as early as 2004, an article by IRIN in 2007 tells a different story:

“Beatrice Chelengat, programme manager of an FGM awareness campaign sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund in the eastern Kapchorwa district, said 647 women aged between 11 and 31 were subjected to FGM in 2002 out of an estimated 13,000 females in that age group. The figures for 2004 and 2006 were 595 and 426 respectively, she said, adding that anti-FGM campaigns in the area were bearing fruit.”   

UGANDA: Museveni, Traditionalists Differ On Female Circumcision

Uganda - While the Ugandan leader, Yoweri Museveni, criticized Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as ‘interference’ with God’s works and then banned the age-old practice in his country, some traditionalists here are set to resis t the government’s action.

In view of the absence of a law to effect the ban, furious activists described it as mere lip service which would not stop traditionalists from continuing with the practice.

Last week, Museveni told a gathering in the Nakapiripiriti district – home to pastoralist ethnic groups: Sabinys, Pokots and Karamojong, found in the landlocked east African country’s remote northeastern region, that a law was in the offing t o ban the stigmatizing practice.

"Now, you people interfere with God's work. Some say it is culture. Yes, I support culture but you must support culture that is useful and based on scientific in formation," Museveni said, after some elders told him that the practice was part of their culture.

UGANDA: FGM Cause For High Population Growth Rate

The Member of Parliament for Tingey, Herbert Sabila has revealed that Female Genital Mutilation is one of the main causes of the high population growth rates amongst the Ugandan communities like the Sabiny that have this cultural practice.

This comes amidst a determined crack down on this cultural practice in the country and follows the tabling of private members bill on banning of the practice of FGM.

Sabila has told journalists at Parliament that FGM causes high population growth rates because it is partly the cause of the high fertility rates of the women in the communities that have this practice.

He says FGM causes high fertility rates because the girls undergo the cultural practice at about 14 years after which the girls are considered to be women mature enough to bear children.

Sabila says since the women begin having children at such an early age due to the influence of FGM, they are most likely to produce more children in their lifetime.

CANADA/NIGERIA: Mom Fights To Stay In Canada

A Toronto resident says she'll be killed and her two young daughters forced to undergo painful female genital mutilation if they're deported on Thursday to their native Nigeria.

Single mom Roseline Ijiola Awolope, 35, with daughters Blessing, 8, Grace, 6, and sons, Joseph, 10, and Canadian-born John, 1, are scheduled to be deported, following the rejection of her refugee claim by an immigration and refugee board.

The family and lawyer appeared in a federal court on Queen St. W. yesterday, calling on a judge to kill the deportation order on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.

Mr. Justice Frederick Gibson will deliver his ruling before Thursday.

Awolope, who has undergone female mutilation and face marking, said she fled Nigeria after refusing to have the tribal custom performed on her daughters. Her ex-husband's family was forcing her to have it done to the children.

"They threatened to kill me if I refused it for my daughters," she sobbed yesterday. "I had to run away from my country with the children."

TANZANIA: Human Rights Committee Consideres Report On Tanzania

The Human Rights Committee this morning concluded its consideration of the fourth periodic report of Tanzania on the measures undertaken by that country to implement the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Presenting the report, Mathias Meinrad Chikawe, Minister for Constitutional Affairs and Justice of Tanzania, said that the laws of marriage, inheritance and succession were the subject of a protracted debate, which related not only to issues of gender equality, but also involved deep religious and strong cultural beliefs. The legislation was currently in the process of review in order to take on board the rights of every citizen. The process was delicate and sensitive and if not property handled might become volatile. Regarding the issue of access to education for women, the Government had recorded significant achievements since the last periodic report. Tanzania had put in place policies as well as legislation to govern compulsory primary education enrolment, secondary education, access to education for those who had missed the opportunity for formal education, as well as affirmative education programmes for girls. The Government had also recognized the need for having women in decision-making positions. Women now constituted not less than 30 per cent of the Members of Parliament and the House of Representatives. Regarding marital rape, the issue was an alien concept in Tanzania that required a deeper and wider debate.

EGYPT: Support For Female Circumcision Declining In Egypt

The history of female circumcision, also called female genital cutting or mutilation, is unclear. Some say it's a religious requirement for Islamic women, while others point out that the practice pre-dates the spread of Islam. The practice is controversial in many countries. Westerners decry the practice, yet, it persists in many African and Islamic countries because of strong cultural support.

Now, new research finds the practice is losing support in one large country - Egypt. In that country, historical evidence indicates that female cutting has been done since the time of the pharaohs. Traditionally, it's been seen as a requirement to make girls marriageable.

But the current government in Egypt banned female circumcision in the 1990s and strengthened the restriction in 2007 after a high-profile case where a 12-year-old girl died after the ritual.

WEST AFRICA: “Pleasure hospital” under construction for FGM/C victims

BOBO-DIOULASSO, 6 May 2009 (IRIN) - Construction has begun of West Africa’s first clinic for reconstructing clitorises for victims of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Amid high demand, the US non-profit Clitoraid is funding the clinic, dubbed “Pleasure Hospital”, in Bobo-Dioulasso, western Burkina Faso.

Financed through the non-profit’s “Adopt a clitoris” campaign that sponsors women wishing to have clitoral reconstruction, Clitoraid raised more than US$50,000 to build the facility. Construction began in March and is expected to be completed by September.

Once opened, US-based gynaecological surgeons will offer free clitoral reconstruction surgeries to FGM/C victims from across West Africa. Currently too few surgeons are available to serve the number of women who want to reconstruct their mutilated clitorises and the price in private clinics remains unaffordable for most, according to the few surgeons trained on the procedure in Burkina Faso where the surgery was pioneered in 2006.

“Clitoraid decided to build the clinic in Bobo-Dioulasso because it is at the crossroads of several West African countries,” said Mariam Banemanie, president of Clitoraid’s local NGO partner, Voices of Women.

SWITZERLAND: Parliament Tackles Genital Mutilation

A parliamentary committee has drawn up a proposal to strengthen the law against female genital mutilation. The draft of a new code would specifically punish the practice, even if the acts were committed in a foreign country where they’re not illegal. Those convicted of the act would be sentenced to up to10 years in prison. Parliamentarians were mostly in support of the measure, although some said it doesn’t go far enough. Women’s rights NGO Alliance F is also calling for more education to prevent the practice in the first place.

GAMBIA: A Public Pledge To End Female Genital Mutilation And Cutting In Gambia

The festive atmosphere in this village in the Upper River Region was reminiscent of a wedding. But the singing and dancing was, in fact, part of celebration at which 24 neighbouring villages publicly declared the end of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) practises in their communities.

 Kobaie Nyabaly a former FGM/C practitioner walked briskly to the podium and boldly gave her testimony before the crowd of more than 600 onlookers, including religious leaders, village chiefs, and youth groups.

“There were times when the children collapsed and some even went into a coma,” she recalled of her time practicing FGM/C.  “The parents would bring various items to be sacrificed to save their children. We told the parents to go and see the sorcerers, they were told that it was the work of witchcraft.  I never knew that my knife was the witch.”

GAMBIA: Fight Against FGM Boosted - As 24 Communities Drop The Kife In Urr

Basse Urr — In what could be described as yet another victory in the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM), about 24 communities in the Upper River Region on Sunday the 14th June, solemnly declared publicly that they will no longer circumcise their girls.

UGANDA: Uganda To Outlaw Female Circumcision

Uganda will pass a law banning female genital mutilation, which is rampant among pastoralist tribes in the country's eastern region, the president said in a statement on Friday.

"The way God made it, there is no part of a human body that is useless," President Yoweri Museveni told a gathering in the eastern Karamoja district.

"Now you people interfere with God's work. Some say it is culture. Yes, I support culture but you must support culture that is useful and based on scientific information," he added.

Last year, the United Nations passed a resolution that called female genital mutilation a violation of the rights of women and said it constituted "irreparable, irreversible abuse".

FRANCE: Female Genital Mutilation, A Social Reality In France

Its a little-known fact that in Europe there are almost 7 million circumcised women. In France there are at least 60,000 adults and several thousand minors who have been circumcised.

Female circumcision is also carried out on babies just a few days old, too young to be able remember it. Few survive.

The practice has been widely reported in the media and happens less often today in France, but it hasn't been completely eradicated. Despite efforts to stop the practice, every year around 20,000 young women risk circumcision in France.

In France, all children have to have medical tests until the age of six, after which its impossible to check the physical integrity of a child.

So now, some parents wait until a young girl turns six before taking them on holiday to their country of origin and circumcising them.

TANZANIA: Bringing Hope To Tanzanian Village

Mara Huber spent some time during Christmas in 2006 chatting with the Immaculate Heart Sisters of Africa while they were visiting her mother-in-law.

   Huber, director of UB's Center for Educational Research, learned a lot during this conservation. She learned of the desperate plight of women and young girls in Africa, specifically in Tanzania, who are denied education and subjected to violence on an almost daily basis.

   In Tanzania, violence against women and girls, including domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, female genital mutilation and sex trafficking, is a considerable problem. Females are harshly limited in what they can do day-to-day.

   School and social life ultimately do not exist for females in Tanzania. Rather than a school, girls are taught in a log in the middle of a field.

   Upon learning of the conditions that they were living in, Huber knew that she had to take action.

GAMBIA: 24 Communities Pledge To Abandon the Practice of FGC, Early / Forced Marriages

Through the intervention of Tostan International to end the practice of female genital cutting Africa, over 24 communities in both Wuli and Sandu pledged to stop both the cultural practice of FGC(FGM), early marriage and forced marriage at a ceremony held at Sandu Dasilameh.

In his welcoming remarks, the Alkalo of Dasilameh Kajali Danso expressed happiness over what he called historic in the history of his village. He pointed out that the Tostan intervention in his village has brought about significant changes. He thanked the participating communities for their large turnout and urged them to unite as one family.

Mr. Bakakry Fofana a community development assistant CDA resident in the village who is also the chairman of the steering committee underscored the importance of the day for the participating communities, Tostan Unicef and the Gambia government as twenty four communities pledged to abandon the practice of female genital cutting, early marriage and force marriage. This according to the steering committee chairman is one of the greatest achievements registered so far by the rural communities; noting that it materialised after an intensive three year community empowerment program jointly implemented by Unicef, Tostan and the Gambia government, on issues of democracy and good governance, human rights and responsibilities, problem solving, health and hygeine. He pointed out that the weekly cleaning exercise initiated by the Tostan intervention and adopted communities is complementing the effort of the department of state for health. Mr. Fofana while urging communities to sustain the project activities thanked Unicef for their generous support over the years making it possible to witness such a very important ceremony in the history of The Gambia and URR in particular. He also commended the executive director of Tostan International Madam Molly including popularly called Sukaina Njie in Senegal, for her unflinching support and dedication to the empowerment of African countries which he said cannot go unrecognized.

GAMBIA: Reaching The FGM/C Tipping Point

"In politics and sociology you reach a tipping point and once you've reached it, things change," says Min-whee Kang of the UN Children's Fund. "This is what we're aiming at to stop female genital mutilation and cutting in The Gambia."

Tales Of Struggle And Strengh: Human Rights Watch Fest Marks 20 Years

KENYA: Kenyan School Rescues Girls From Facing Female Genital Mutilation

Kampala — Mercy Naserian had a grand dream. The bright eyed 14-year-old wanted to become a lawyer and help her Masai people settle community disputes (criminal or civil).

At the age of 10 and in P.5, Naserian topped her class of 100 pupils and her teachers were sure she would fulfill her dream. But in 2005, Naserian was married off to a 69-year-old man. According to Naserian, the man gave her parents 45 heads of cattle.

"I thought it was for my older sister," she narrates, tears welling in her eyes. But when she learnt that the cows were her bride price, she sought advice from one of her educated cousins. "I told her I wanted to become an important person in my community to help other girls who have been oppressed by culture," she says.

Many men in the Masai community think of their daughters as a source of income. When a man comes to the home intending to marry the girl, he will bring the father 40 or 50 cows in exchange. The girl will then be circumcised first before she is given away.

GAMBIA: Senegambian Scholars Condemn FGM

Islamic scholars in The Gambia and Senegal are the latest to join gender and human rights activists in condemning Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a phenomenon that has generated protracted debate over the years.

The scholars noted that Muslims should stay healthy - physically and mentally - in order to perform the duty of worship that human beings are created for, arguing that any practice that may tamper with the security of the body or mind of man should be looked into.

These remarks were made by the scholars during presentations on the topic 'Harmful traditional practices (Female Genital Mutilation)', on Thursday, at the Sheraton Hotel in Brufut. According to Ebrahim Touray, second secretary general of the Gambia Supreme Islamic Council, Allah warned believers in Suratul Ahsab, verse 36 in the Holy Qu'ran, that they should desist from contradicting His commandments as well as the orders of his prophet, Muhammad (SAW).

GAMBIA: International Forum On Harmful Traditional Practices Under Way

Wassu Gambia Kafo, an international NGO, operating in the Gambia since 1999, has organized a three- day international forum on harmful traditional practices at the Sheraton Resort Hotel in Brufut. The forum began on the 5 of May and ends today the 7th Mary 2009.

Delivering her opening remarks, the vice President, Aja Isatou Njie Saidy has noted that the Gambia government discourages all harmful practices and health hazards mainly through public education/ sensitization through creating awareness of the harmful effects of it. She further noted that harmful traditional practices are happening in Africa and many parts of the world and the practices endanger the lives of women globally ranging from fattening, foot binding, early marriages, incest, tattooing, tribal marks, and food taboos to female genital mutilation. She dilated that the harmful effects of FGM/C informed by medical practitioners namely; complication with child birth, VVF and other long term health complications for women, violate the rights of girls and women to bodily integrity. She mentioned that Gambia is one of twenty eight (28) countries in Africa that are practicing FGM. Statistics has it; she noted that UNICEF cluster survey or mics 2007 show a prevalence of almost 78%. “This figure indicates that a lot more work needs to be done in the area of FGM/C” she said. Vice President Njie Saidy stated that, it is the Gambia’s intention to redress the issue through sensitization GIEC and also to take alternative ways to address this global problem and concern. “We now realize that it is indeed a deep rooted traditional practice that has been passed on from generation to another since the pharsant and or Nubian era or days”. She said.

BURKINA FASO: Clinic To Fight Taboo Of Female Mutilation

Abibata Sanon, above, is one of the first women in West Africa to undergo the genital reconstruction procedure at a private clinic. Olivier Asselin for The National

Africa’s first clinic designated for the reconstruction of female genitalia will open in Bobo-Dialousso this year. The clinic will offer free reconstructive surgery to women from across West Africa.

About 70 per cent of Burkina Faso’s seven million women are victims of female genital mutilation (FGM), a deep-rooted practice in West Africa. The ritual, common in a stretch between Senegal and Benin, can cause complications such as serious infections, excessive bleeding and stillbirths.

GAMBIA: Summaru On GAMCOTRAP Intervention On FGM

The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices affecting The Health of Women and Children (GAMCOTRAP) is a grassroots women’s rights organization established in 1984 and affiliated to the Inter African Committee (IAC). Since then GAMCOTRAP has been involved in advocacy work to end FGM and Other Harmful Traditional practices inimical to the health and wellbeing of women and girl-children in the Gambia in partnership with the Ministry of Health.

Government’s partnership with GAMCOTRAP in the fight against female genital mutilation is through the Ministry of Health. To that effect a Memorandum of Understanding was signed since 2000 and this enabled GAMCOTRAP to work at the community level where health care providers are empowered with health effects of FGM to be included in their health talks. Similarly the Ministry of Health has in the past years provided secretarial support under the PHPNP project to strengthen the institutional capacity of GAMCOTRAP. Similarly, GAMCOTRAP has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of education since 1997 and a lot of work has been done through these partnerships at country level in terms of policy and social mobilization at community level.

IRELAND: Pamela Recruits New Lawyers In Deportation Fight

THE woman at the centre of the alleged female genital mutilation (FGM) case has got new lawyers to fight her case.

Nigerian-born Pamela Izevbekhai is fighting a bid to deport her and her two daughters because of her fears they may be subjected to FGM.

Last month, it was revealed that documentation used to support her original claim to stay here had been forged. The lawyers who had fought her case up until then asked the Supreme Court to be allowed not to represent her any more.

The Sligo-based woman was told last month by Chief Justice John Murray to have new lawyers in place before May 28, when an application by the State to have her entire case dismissed will be heard. Ms Izevbekhai was not in court yesterday.

Empathy and Rage: Female Genital Mutilation in African Literature

EMPATHY AND RAGE:
Co-Edited by Tobe Levin and Augustine H. Asaah

This collection is a first - scholars analyse this subject as a theme in literature.

In an unusual symbiosis, activism and scholarship join hands to hasten the end of this egregious
human rights abuse.

The collection examines representations in creative writing by African and African-Americans including Nura Abdi, Mariama Barry, Calixthe Beyala, Osman Conteh, Waris Dirie,
Nuruddin Farah, Fatou Keita, Fadumo Korn, Ahmadou Kourouma, Christian Mambou, Nawal El Saadawi, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Awa Thiam and Alice Walker. et al.

In their efforts to end FGM, the governments of Germany, the UK, Italy and the European Union (Brussels) have drawn on the expertise of Tobe Levin who has written many articles and chapters for
books on FGM.

Empathy and Rage - these words bracket a spectrum of feelings people confront when they think about the millions of women and girls who have undergone bolokoli, takhoundi, tukore, or gudni’in - names in local languages for a procedure that mutilates women’s private parts or Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

Contributors to the collection include: Anne V. Adams, Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, Muthoni Mathai, Marianne Sarkis and a translation from the French of contributor Herzberger-Fofana’s obituary placing it in the context of the work as a dedication to Sembene Ousmane, a true African pioneer of the exposure of this practice through film.

Tobe Levin is a Professor at the University of Maryland College in Europe, an adjunct to the University of Frankfurt, and non-resident Fellow, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University. Levin became an activist against FGM in 1977 and co-founded FORWARD - Germany, a registered charity modelled on FORWARD
UK, in 1998.

Augustine H. Asaah is an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Ghana where he teaches African Francophone Literature and has pioneered research into African feminist literature and gender-based violence in African fiction.

Published by AYEBIA CLARKE PUBLISHING LTD, 7 Syringa Walk, Banbury, Oxfordshire, OX16 1FR, UK

T: +44 (0)1295 709228 F: +44 (0)1295 267681 E: becky@ayebia.co.uk W: www.ayebia.co.uk

KENYA: Saying 'No' To 'The Cut' In Kenya

AUSTRALIA: Australia Takes Tough Line On Female Circumcision

Female circumcision is called female genital mutilation (FGM) in Australia and it's a crime. Those performing it face a possible seven-year prison term and those who don't report it risk a stiff fine.

In Sydney's outer suburb of Auburn, there's a specialist FGM clinic that has been in operation for over 10 years and sees around 40 women a year. The typical patient is in her 20s, is about to wed, and was operated on by a village midwife in an African or Middle Eastern country when she was young. The clinic adopts the World Health Organization definition of FGM as a surgical procedure "involving partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons."

There is anecdotal evidence that the law is being broken and FGM is being performed in Australia. Ten doctors have reported being approached by parents looking to have it done.

IRAQ: Iraqi Women Suffer Regular Domestic Violence - UN

The vast majority of Iraqi women face domestic violence on a regular basis and many commit suicide because of it, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

To "escape the cycle of violence", many women turned to suicide.

Iraq should "investigate incidents involving gender-based violence, in particular the so-called 'honour crimes' perpetrated against women, and take measures to ensure that persons found responsible for committing these crimes are held accountable and brought to justice", UNAMI said.

IRELAND/NIGERIA: Nigerian's Woman Case Put Back Untill May 28th

Nigerian woman Pamela Izevbekhai's case before the Supreme Court has been put back until May 28th.

She is challenging her deportation and that of her two daughters.

Earlier this month, her legal team applied to withdraw their representation of her, stating that they had received conflicting instructions from her which went to the root of the case.

It relates to whether her claim that she had a daughter who died from female genital mutilation in Nigeria is truthful or not.

Lawyers for the State said they had new evidence which, if correct, would show her case was based on a lie.

BELGIUM: Genitally-Mutilated African Girls Risk Deportation From Belgium

Belgian authorities will expel African girls who, after getting political refugee status for declaring that they were threatened with genital mutilation in their countries of origin, afterward, voluntarily returned to their countries to get excised, an official source told PANA here.

The Belgian police have undertaken investigations on over 20 suspected women from sub-Saharian Africa, who risk losing their rights of residence.

By order of the government, the police will demand these women to produce, at regular intervals, medical certificates showing that they have not undergone any genital mutilations, after being accepted as political refugees in Belgium.

Belgian law protects, at the political level, all women threatened with genital mutilation in their countries of origin.

UN 14th Report On The Human Rights Situation In Iraq

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) issued today its fourteenth report on the human rights situation in the country covering the period from July to December 2008. The report, produced in cooperation with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, notes that although the period covered was characterised by further improvements in security, the overall human rights situation in Iraq remains a matter of concern.

The report describes a range of human rights abuses and reiterates that security will be sustainable if additional steps are taken in order to strengthen the rule of law and address impunity. The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq (SRSG) Staffan de Mistura, while recognizing various efforts by the Ministry of Human Rights, urged the Government of Iraq to take advantage of the improved security, stating: “This is an opportunity for Iraq to advance all aspects of the rule of law and human rights by further introducing legal reforms, strengthening the judiciary, improving the conditions of detention and enabling access to justice.”

UGANDA: MPs Call For Banning Of FGM

Parliament

Members of Parliament have unanimously agreed to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), widely practiced in parts of the country, even before the FGM Bill is presented in the House for debate.

In a presentation by Kinkizi East MP Chris Byaromunsi mid last week on the dangers associated with FGM, pictures depicting physical and emotional pains women and girls undergo during genital mutilation process, left MPs frightened.

FGM is cultural obligation in some communities the main purpose of which is to satisfy men interests.
The presentation showed a woman feeling acute pain as she was being cut. It also depicted the apprehension women and girls go through before undergoing the exercise.

Besides, it demonstrated vividly the consequences of FGM such as future birth complications, permanent scars on the private part and the inability to control urine among others.

EGYPT: Egypt Has Yet To Feel Impact Of FGM Ban

In the year since Egypt outlawed female genital mutilation the government hasn't prosecuted a single case. Nonetheless, some activists say the law is a tool, among others, for gradually dismantling an ancient tradition.

CAIRO, Egypt (WOMENSENEWS)--This month, 10 villages in Niger, sponsored by UNICEF, pledged to end female genital mutilation--the traditional and widespread coming-of-age practice of cutting off all or part of a girl's clitoris--within their communities. Also this month, local chiefs in the northern Kambia district of Sierra Leone signed an agreement that girls should not undergo the ritual until the age of 18, so they can have a say in the matter. Unfortunately, progress has not come fast enough for some; a 7-year-old Kenyan girl bled to death in early April after being cut.

GHANA: Judge Says State Protection From FGM Available In Ghana

High Court

Judgment was given by Mr Justice John Edwards on February 25th, 2009.

Judgment

There is sufficient evidence of the existence of state protection for those threatened with female genital mutilation (FGM) in Ghana to justify refusing a Ghanaian woman asylum.

The available country of origin information suggests that the weaknesses of the state protection system in Ghana is more due to a reluctance on the part of the general population in the northern part of the country to report incidents of FGM to the authorities than to an attitudinal problem on the part of the police.

Background

A mother and daughter fled Ghana in September 2005 and arrived in Ireland on September 22nd. The mother applied for asylum on her own behalf and that of her daughter, aged one.

The mother came from a village in the northern part of the country, but worked for many years as a hairdresser in Obuasi- Adansi. She had four children with her partner whom she married in September 2005.

KENYA: Kids Alive In Kenya With Linda Mugo

Ever since God confirmed His covenant with Abraham through circumcision in Genesis 17, male circumcision has been a rite of passage among many cultures for males.

However, national director of Kids Alive in Kenya, Linda Mugo, and her team are trying to stop another rite of passage: the practice of female circumcision.

This practice can be damaging to young girls and cause female genital mutilation.

"In some cultures, they take the practice too far, and this is when it becomes female genital mutilation," Mugo said. She explained that the females are circumcised to force them to remain pure. They are also denied sexual pleasure, which forces them to remain faithful to their husbands.

"These girls have been forced into female circumcision simply because it's a way of life where they come from," Mugo said.

Female Genital Mutilation Debate

Women are subjected to female genital mutilation because they are likely to bring shame to their families, said a Muslim prayer leader Friday during an awareness conference.

But Imam Farooq Aboelzahab does not personally condone the act of circumcision on women because he believes the procedure hurts them and takes away a part of their dignity.

"This is a very touching and hard issue," he said. "The concept of shame has deprived us of a vital knowledge."

Female genital mutilation (FGM) dates back as early as 450 BC and is considered a cross societal, cultural and religious practice, affecting more than 130 million women worldwide. Typically the procedure occurs on girls 4 to 12 years of age and is very popular in parts of Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia.

IRAN, IRAQ: The Horrors Of Female Circumcision

Four-year-old Shwen screams during her circumcision in Suleimaniyah, in Iraq's Kurdistan.

Golnaz Esfandiari wrote about this issue in March:

NIGER: Ten Villages Unite To Say 'No' To Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting In Niger

© UNICEF Niger/2009/ Bisin

Communities publicly vow to end female genital mutilation/cutting in Kiki village, western Niger.

Ten villages in western Niger have decided to put an end to female genital mutilation or cutting (also known as FGM/C), publicly calling all inhabitants in the Tillabery region to give up this practice, which threatens girls’ lives.

VIDEO: Watch now

“We have decided to definitively put an end to female genital mutilation in our villages and to continue sensitizing neighbouring villages so they also give up the practice,” declared M. Babobou Pana, leader of one of the villages.

NIGER: African Villages Denounce Female Circumcision

Ten villages in western Niger have publicly denounced the practice of female genital mutilation, according to a UNICEF report.

Representatives from the West African nation's Tillabery region have called for all people living there to end the practice, the report said.

"We have decided to definitively put an end to female genital mutilation in our villages and to continue sensitizing neighboring villages so they also give up the practice," said N. Babobou Pana, leader of one of the villages.

Heading the call was Kompoa Tamkpa, a former traditional practitioner.

"I have given up the bad work, because it does not bring anything to our village," she said. "We thought it was good for women, that it was going to bring them success. But we found out that it does not bring anything."

Female genital mutilation, which is also called female circumcision, is commonly performed on young girls without anesthesia, and is extremely painful and traumatizing, UNICEF said.

EU: The Barbarians Practice Female Genital Mutilation

The European Parliament has adopted a resolution calling for the practice of female circumcision and genital mutilation to be made unlawful in all European Union countries through laws and administrative provisions, prevention systems, and education and social measures, and in particular, wide dissemination of information regarding the existing protection mechanisms available. The resolution also insisted that women and girls who are granted asylum in the EU because of the threat of female genital mutilation should have regular check-ups by health authorities and/or doctors as a preventive measure so as to protect them from any threat of mutilation being carried out subsequently in the EU.

MEP Claire Gibault of France, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) spokeswoman on the Women’s Committee, who was instrumental in steering through this resolution, said: “I am pleased that the European Parliament, by adopting this report, decided to give refugee status to women and young girls who risk genital mutilation in their home country. It is reasonable and responsible to study this on a case by case basis even if there is only a slight glimmer of evidence.

SIERRA LEONE: Chiefs Ban Genital Cutting For Girls Under 18

Photo: Bryna Hallam/IRIN

Ceremonial knives owned by members of the women's Bondo society

In Sierra Leone village chiefs, community members and women who perform female genital cutting have signed an agreement stating that girls in northern Kambia district will not undergo genital mutilation – or ‘cutting’ – before age 18.

The number of girls being cut during the December 2008-January 2009 initiation season in Kambia dropped drastically, according to Finda Fraser, advocacy coordinator at local non-profit Advocacy Movement Network (AMNet), which runs a ‘Say No to Child Bondo’ campaign in the district.

Most Sierra Leonean girls – the World Health Organization estimates 94 percent – are initiated at puberty into ‘Bondo’, also known as the Sande Secret Society. As part of the rite, a woman known as a ‘sowei’ in the Mende language cuts the clitoris and prepares the girl for adulthood through singing, dancing and teaching domestic skills. For the initiation girls spend up to three months in the bush.

SIERRA LEONE: Leaders In Sierra Leone Sign Female Genital Mutilation Agreement

An agreement stating that girls under 18 will not undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) in Sierra Leone was recently signed by village chiefs and other community leaders, including women who perform FGM. The agreement affects the Kambia district, which is in the northernwestern part of the country.

At puberty, the majority of girls in Sierra Leone are initiated into the Bondo Society, a secret society of women that uses circumcision to initiate new members abducted the women. Gloria Bella, of Sierra Leone's Human Rights Commission, told IRIN, "community leaders feel that [initiation] is their culture, they feel offended by lobbyists, and don’t listen…We need to listen to their fears and try to allay them, and make sure they know we are not coming in to challenge traditional authority." John Marah, who works against FGM in Sierra Leone through local NGOs, also told IRIN "We are against just the cutting, not the training. You can still have a rite of passage. It's just a change of mentality."

IRELAND/NIGERIA: Nigerian Report Contradicts FGM Claims Of Diplomat

THE NIGERIAN government told a UN committee last year that the prevalence rate of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the country was 32 per cent, and that in some regions the figure was as high as 65 per cent.

This contradicts remarks by the Nigerian ambassador to Ireland this week that FGM was a “non-existent issue” in her country.

Insisting that asylum seeker Pamela Izevbekhai and her two daughters were safe to return to Nigeria, Kemafo Nonyerem Chikwe said: “FGM happens to be an ancient practice that is no longer in the consciousness of Nigerians. It is something that is completely insignificant in the present Nigerian culture.”

However, in response to queries last May from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Nigerian government cited the findings of a survey carried out by its own National Bureau of Statistics in 2006.

IRELAND: Ireland To Deport Nigerian Woman And Daughters

(R-L) Nigerian woman Pamela Izevbekhai,daughters, Jemima and Naomi, with the Mayor of Sligo Veronica Cawley Photo: IRISHTIMES.COM

The government of Ireland has decided to deport Pamela Izevbekhai, a Nigerian woman seeking political asylum in Ireland.

According to a report by The Sunday Times, the government has refused to offer Pamela Izevbekhai a deal that would allow her to stay in Ireland with her two daughters in return for dropping her legal challenge against her deportation.

NIGER: 10 Villages in Niger Kick Against Female Circumcision

Ten villages in western Niger have decided to end the practice of female genital mutilations, including female circumcision, publicly calling inhabitants in the Tillabéry region to abandon such a practice which is dangerous to the lives of girls, women and babies, according to a press release from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), made available to PANA Tuesday.

According to the release, the prevalence of female genital mutilation/female circumcision (FGM/FC) in Niger fell considerably between 1998 and 2006, from 5 to 2.2 per cent.

However, this figure masks significant regional disparities: the regions of Tillabery, Diffa, and Niamey are mostly concerned by this practice.

About 66 per cent of women living in Gourma, in the western part of Niger near Mali, are circumcised.

"UNICEF hails this statement to abandon female circumcision, considered by Niger authorities as a serious violation of women's and girls' rights," said Akhil Iyer, UNICEF country representative in Niger.

EGYPT: Egypt Wrestles With 'Female Genital Mutilation'

(NHRC-Qatar)

AUSTRALIA: Court Bars Father From Taking Daughter Female Circumcision

THE Family Court has for the first time intervened to prevent a father from taking his nine-year-old daughter back to Africa to have her circumcised.

Family Court judge Paul Cronin ordered the man, who is an Australian citizen of African descent, to surrender his passport and that of his daughter.

Justice Cronin banned the father from "removing or attempting to remove the child, born in March 1999, from the commonwealth of Australia".

It is not clear whether the order was successful, since the man, known only as Mr Abbas, failed to appear in court.

Female circumcision, also known as genital mutilation, has been a crime in most Australian states since the late 1990s.

The law makes it clear that it is an offence not only to circumcise one's own daughter, or any other female child, but also to encourage or enable any other person to do it; or to leave the country for the purpose of having it done.

BURKINA FASO/WEST AFRICA: Clitoral Reconstruction Is A Luxury

Amid high demand from victims of female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) for clitoral reconstruction surgery available in Burkina Faso, the procedure remains unaffordable for most.

“The demand is very high in Burkina Faso and from neighbouring countries,” said Michel Akotionga, one of the first gynaecologists in Burkina Faso to perform the reconstructive surgery. “Last week two women from Côte d’Ivoire came for the clitoral surgery,” he added.

Pioneered by the French urologist Pierre Foldes when he worked in Burkina Faso with victims of FGM/C, the surgery has been offered in Burkina Faso since 2006.

Since 2001 975 women have had state-funded genital repair surgery, which did not include clitoral reconstruction, according to the National Commission against Excision (CNLPE). The general surgery entails repairing the vaginal opening to alleviate menstrual and urination pain but does not reconstruct the clitoris.

KENYA: Girl Bleeds To Death After Undergoing FGM

A woman was yesterday arrested after her seven-year-old daughter bled to death after female circumcision.

It is female circumcision season in Wajir District, despite concerted efforts to discourage the practice.

"She was brought to the hospital more than 24 hours after circumcision. By then it was too late to save her life," said Mrs Ardo Mohammed, a nurse.

She said the girl underwent infibulation, the worst form of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) common in North Eastern Province.

Police intercepted family members planning to bury the girl. An elderly circumciser was also arrested after a brief search.

Deputy OCPD Job Lesinayu said they would be charged with murder.

But relatives want the two released, arguing the death was pre-ordained.

Ritual’s defence

"No parent would want to see her child die. At least the police should allow her to mourn her daughter," a former councillor, Mr Kunow Ibrahim, said.

IRELAND/NIGERIA: Deportation Case Mother Had Fake Baby Death Papers, Inquiry Told

A NIGERIAN woman who is facing deportation used forged documentation to back up claims that her first child died after being subjected to female genital mutilation, a garda investigation has been told.

Inquiries by the garda national immigration unit in Nigeria have uncovered apparent discrepancies in the case presented by Pamela Izevbekhai to the High Court and Supreme Court in Dublin and to the European Court of Human Rights.

A Nigerian obstetrician has dismissed a document, allegedly signed by him, as a forgery. He also rejected Mrs Izevbekhai's claim that she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, in February 1993 and that the girl died on July 16, 1994, following female genital mutilation.

The findings represent a potentially serious blow to the prospects of Mrs Izevbekhai overturning a Supreme Court decision supporting her deportation in her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

IRELAND: Harney Considers Law To Ban Female Genital Mutilation

MINISTER FOR Health Mary Harney is examining the possibility of introducing specific legislation to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), according to the Department of Health.

A spokesman for the department said legal advice obtained in 2004 indicated that the practice was covered by the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997.

The spokesman said the advice “strongly indicated that female genital mutilation would constitute an offence under the . . . Act”. A conclusion has not yet been reached as to whether further legislation is necessary.

“The Minister is in the process of examining the possibility of introducing specific legislation to ban female genital mutilation in the context of UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s (UNCRC) recommendations,” he said. The UN had urged Ireland to prohibit the practice by law, he said.

NIGERIA: Nigeria Ready To Take The Stand Over Genital Mutilation Claims

Nigeria's minister for justice has offered to testify in an Irish court against Nigerian citizens who claim political asylum on the grounds they will be forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) if deported.

Michael Aondoakaa, a senior figure in the Nigerian government who is also the African country’s attorney-general, made the offer to Conor Lenihan, the integration minister, at a meeting held at the justice ministry in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, last Friday, according to a memo seen by The Sunday Times.

Aondoakaa is thought to have been referring to the case of Pamela Izevbekhai, the Nigerian woman who has appealed against her deportation, on the grounds that her two daughters, Naomi, 8, and Jemima, 6, will be forced to suffer the fate of their sister, Elizabeth, who she says died after FGM in 1994.

Izevbekhai has fought a highprofile legal battle to stay in Ireland since November 2005 after her application for asylum was rejected by the Office of the Refugee Applications Commissioner and the Refugee Appeals Tribunal. She appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg last year. It has yet to decide if it will hear the case.

IRELAND: Mutilation Fear at Centre Of Long Asylum Battle

NIGERIAN mother Pamela Izevbekhai's fight to be allowed to stay here because she said she feared her two daughters would be subjected to female genital mutilation if she was deported has become a headline story over the past two years.

She came here at the end of January 2005 and immediately claimed asylum status. Ms Izevbekhai said she arrived in Ireland from Nigeria via the Netherlands, and had been waived through without a visa by the immigration authorities at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam.

But immigration officials say there is no evidence she was in the Netherlands and suggest her version of her movements would be highly unlikely. Her application was fully processed and she was informed in November 2005 that she was to be deported. Her case has been fought through the courts since she was arrested in early January 2006. Officials disclosed that she applied for a UK visa in September 2003 and was issued with a multi-visit visa for six months.

SPAIN: Catalan Police In Crusade Against Female Genital Mutilation

In Cataluña alone, 4,846 girls under the age of 19 at risk of enduring this barbaric ritual practice

THANKS to the efforts of Cataluña’s regional police force, Mossos d’Esquadra, during 2008, 104 girls living in the region have been spared from having to go through the suffering caused by female genital mutilation, a practice that is carried out mainly in African and Asian countries. Officers have prevented 18 from going ahead so far this year. Since 2000, the Mossos have made contact with families of girls whom they consider may be at risk of undergoing this procedure, considering their country of origin and the fact that they may not have abandoned this type of tradition. They explain the dangers it involves, and attempt to dissuade them from returning to their country of origin for the ritual to be performed or from having it carried out by clandestine witch-doctors residing in Spain. The parents are also informed that in Spain, this practice is considered a crime punishable by law.

UK: Thousands of girls subjected to genital mutilation

23/03/2009: The NHS is offering to reverse FGM/cutting amid concerns that there are 500 victims a year with no prosecutions.

Despite having been outlawed in 1985, 'female circumcision' is still practised in British African communities, in some cases on girls as young as five. Police have been unable to bring a single prosecution even though they suspect that community elders are being flown from the Horn of Africa to carry out the procedures.

The NHS is to advertise free operations to reverse FGM/cutting.

The advertisement will appear from next month on a Somali satellite TV station much viewed in Britain. It features Juliet Albert [FGMNet.org: Related links: Juliet Albert, and BBC interview on reversing FGM], a midwife who does the reverse operations, and promises, in English and Somali, confidentiality for victims of female genital mutilation.

USA: Anti-Circumcision Activists Rally Today To Demand US Ban Circumcision

12 years ago today, the US passed a law banning female genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision.  To mark the anniversary, protesters marched in Washington DC to protest that male circumcision is still legal.

These activists call themselves "intactivists", and are pushing for an end to public funding for circumcision.  So far, 16 states, including Washington State, have banned Medicaid funding for the purposes of circumcision.  According to the International Coalition for Genital Integrity, state governments can save $1 million a year by cutting public funding for circumcision.

Circumcision is an increasingly controversial topic in the US.  In 2006, 56% of male infants were circumcised in the US, meaning the foreskin is removed from the penis in an elective surgery, usually performed in the first 24 hours of life.  This rate has been going down in the US.  Outside the US, circumcision is not routinely practiced in any other Western industrialized country.

KENYA: In One Kenyan Diocese, An Alternative Rite Of Passage For Girls

A Kenyan diocese is giving girls a chance to grow up without participating in the traditional tribal rite of female circumcision, a practice that carries the risk of disease or death.

Catholic workers in the Diocese of Meru developed "An Alternative Rite of Passage," pulling elements from the traditional rite referred to as female genital mutilation.

In other areas of Kenya, programs to stop the circumcisions were tried and failed. Meru diocesan officials decided to begin slowly. They began by talking to each group of what they described as "stakeholders" in the practice and educating them about the dangers of female circumcision.

Joseph M'Eruaki M'Uthari, the diocesan social development director, and Martin Koome, program coordinator, said they spoke with community leaders, members of the councils of elders, parents and the girls themselves to make sure they knew the diocese did not condemn the people's culture.

SOMALIA: Case Study:Female Circumcision, The Daughter

When Zarah was 7 she saw her older sister being pinned to the ground by a room full of women. Then she heard her sister scream and quickly realised that she was next in line to have her genitals mutilated.

Unfortunately for Zarah, now 33, there was nowhere to run in her aunt’s home in Somalia. Both she and her sister, then 10, had been taken there by their mother for a “holiday”. “When that happened to me, I immediately lost all trust in my mother and I think that hasn’t changed to this day,” Zarah said. “In fact, I’ve lost trust in both my parents because my father was also aware of what was going to happen to us.”

Zarah said that the psychological scars were worse than the pain. She has nightmares, and relationships have been ruined by her fear of intimacy.

KENYA: Women's Rights Campaigner Swaps Kenya For Shieldinch

She grew up in a Kenyan village where she had to walk 10 miles a day to fetch water and dreamed of escaping to become a teacher.

Now, 15 years after moving to Scotland and becoming a prominent campaigner for African women's rights, Khadija Coll has found an entirely new platform: television soap River City.

Somalian-born Ms Coll, a former finalist for the Scotswoman of the Year award, run by The Herald's sister paper the Evening Times for her campaigning work against female circumcision, is delighted by the enthusiastic response she has had to her first ever acting role, as Congolese asylum seeker Makemba in the BBC Scotland soap. She hopes it will signal the start of more appearances in TV drama for similar characters.

Makemba, who featured in the episode that aired on Tuesday night, is an asylum seeker from war-torn Congo who is taken in for a couple of nights by Shirley (Barbara Rafferty). Makemba's heart-rending story, of how she has not seen her son since she was separated from him in an African refugee camp, deeply moves Shirley's flatmate Viv (Louise Jameson) - and appears to have had the same effect on viewers.

IRELAND: Ireland Considers Female Genital Mutilation Ban

It was reported last week that Irish Minister for Health Mary Harney is examining the possibility of introducing specific legislation to ban female genital mutilation (FGM) in Ireland. The director of the network of African women living in Ireland, Akina Dada wa Africa (AkiDwA), Salome Mbugua, said she would welcome such legislation but it “must include the principle of extraterritorially to reduce the risk to immigrant girls and women being taken abroad for the purpose of genital mutilation”.

Female Genital Mutilation And Double Standards

Where exactly does female genital mutilation occur? While female genital cutting or mutilation (FGC/FGM) in some African countries receives attention, the same cannot be said about a related practice in Western countries, according to Ronan Conroy, associate professor at the Department of Epidemiology at the Royal College of Surgeons. Given the growth in cosmetic plastic surgery of vaginoplasty and vaginal rejuvenation, he asks:

"How can we judge African societies as being barbaric and not condemn equally the cutting of women in the West solely to fulfil male masturbation fantasies?"

Conroy is the speaker at a public meeting on the subject this Wednesday at 7 PM at the Galway One World Centre.

FGM is partial or total removal of external female genitalia or other injury to female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Conroy caused controversy with an editorial in the British Medical Journal in 2006. He pointed out that female circumcision was practised in Europe and America in the 19th century and arguing that Western medicine was driving the advance of FGM by promoting the fear that a "natural biological variation is a defect". He wrote that:

"The high moral tone with which those in richer countries criticise female genital mutilation would be more credible if we in the rich North had not practised it and did not continue to practise it."

UK: Female Genital Mutilation On british Turf

Latest reports indicate that approximately 500 girls a year have their genitals mutilated in Britain.

It may come as no surprise to the knowledgeable political and cultural observer that the poor victims of these crimes are not from Christian or Jewish families, nor from Hindu or Buddhist ones. They are to be found predominantly in Muslim households. And being Muslim is a status that gives the victims, and all future victims, the unfortunate distinction of being part of a group that society can’t help, because the lib-Left has made sure that the Muslim culture can never be criticized and, therefore, that its sufferers can never be protected or saved.

Fact: female circumcision is illegal in Britain. But this doesn't mean that British law enforcement is doing anything about this crime that Muslim communities are perpetrating against their little girls.

The reality: five hundred girls’ genitals are mutilated every year in Britain. Not one arrest. Not one incarceration.

ISRAEL: Female Circumcision Among Israel's Negev Bedouins Has Virtually Disappeared

ISRAEL: Female Genital Mutilation By Bedouins Ends

The once prevalent custom of female genital mutilation among Israel's Bedouin population in the Negev has virtually disappeared, researchers said.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev professor of psychiatry Robert H. Belmaker said female circumcision, also referred to as "female cutting," is still practiced in many cultures around the world and is a culturally entrenched procedure -- and unless a prohibition of the practice is accompanied by educational efforts, the effectiveness of legal action is low.

In 1995, Belmaker studied the Bedouin of Southern Israel, a heterogeneous group of tribes for which female genital mutilation was a common practice. At the time, a large number of women said that they planned to continue the custom, which involved a ritual incision but no tissue removal, and would perform it on their daughters.

Fifteen years later, researchers decided to re-survey the Bedouin population. They again focused on women in the tribes previously reported to have performed this practice.

SUDAN: Letter To Sudan President On Female Genital Cutting

Re: Memorandum on the Repeal of Article (13) in the Child Act, 2009 In this crucial moment of the history of our beloved Sudan, we would like to address you with great hope that this memorandum will meet your full attention along with your immediate response, we all expect from you a positive response to this memorandum as it presents fair and objective claims relevant to the protection and safeguarding of the heath of women and girls, and the protection and promotion of their rights.

The Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is one of most hazardous practices that endanger the bodily integrity, physical and psychological health of women and girls in Sudan. According to the 2006 Sudan Household Survey (SHHS) implemented by the Ministry of Health and the Central Bureau of Statistics, the practice of FGM among girl Children in Sudan amounts to %69.4. This aggravating fact was encountered by sincere efforts led by the Sudanese educated, intellectuals, enlightened religious men, Sufi sects since the era of Shaiekh Hamad Wad Umm Maryoum. Also, the non governmental and voluntary efforts to eliminate the FGM practice continued. Realizing the gravity of the FGM and its negative health, psychological, economical and social consequences, the State has adopted the National Strategy for the Elimination of FGM 208-2018 in partnership with the civil society organizations, the UN Agencies and the specialized international organizations.

KENYA: Crisis Sends Maasai Aid Project Back To Basics

To catch a ride to Nairobi Michael Ole Sayo, a 24-year-old Maasai living in Kenya's Rift Valley, negotiates fields of volcanic rock boulders, spiky thorn trees, and lions.

These days, however, the more immediate threat is one that here on the Rift Valley floor should seem remote. The world financial crisis is impeding funding for the projects he has initiated to help the Maasai community.

"It is a new problem," says the 6-foot three (1.9 m) tribesman who carries a cellphone and memory stick rather than the traditional spear: "One I'm not sure how we can fight."

One of a generation of mobile young Maasai as comfortable in the internet cafes of downtown Nairobi as in their parents' daub huts, Ole Sayo, who has secondary education and a fistful of diplomas, has given up job opportunities in the city to stay and work with the community.

SIERRA LEONE: Genital Mutilation: Women Fight Africa's Taboo

The female journalist was snatched by members of a secret society, forcibly stripped and made to parade naked through the streets. It might sound like an atrocity from the time when Sierra Leone was ripped apart by a bloody civil war, but in fact the public humiliation was exacted in the diamond-rich eastern town of Kenema just this month. The woman's alleged crime was reporting on female genital mutilation.

While the attack was condemned by media watchdogs as "disgraceful behaviour worthy of a bygone age", one woman who was not surprised was Rugiatu Turay. When she was 12 Ms Turay was stolen away by family members and underwent what some politely refer to as "circumcision". She calls it "torture". For the past six years, she has been waging a war against the practice, which many in Sierra Leone, including senior politicians, see as an initiation rite.

SOMALIA/UK: CaseStudy: Female Circumcision, The Husband

It took a death threat to stop Abdi’s wife from circumcising their two daughters, aged 2 and 4. She called him from Somalia while on holiday to say she wanted to carry out the procedure.

Abdi, a London-based Somali, said that his wife’s eagerness to circumcise their daughters was fuelled by a combination of religious, cultural and tribal pressures placed on her after she took the girls to Somalia for a brief summer break last year.

But he refused to be swayed, despite his wife’s argument that the girls would improve their chances of attracting a good husband because they would be perceived as being more traditional and pure.

“I told my wife and her mother — who was really eager to have my girls circumcised — that if they dare do it, I will kill my wife,” he said. “And I also said I will take the girls to the GP when they return from Somalia to make sure that they didn’t have it done to them.”

UK: Britain Gives Reverse Female Circumcision

Britain's National Health Service says it is offering reverse female circumcision services for women mutilated by circumcision procedures.

The Times of London reported Monday that NHS officials will advertise the free medical procedures next month to enable women whose genitals were mutilated by circumcision procedures to receive medical attention.

The advertisement is scheduled to air in both English and Somali on a Somali satellite TV station that is popular in Britain.

A Foundation for Women's Health, Research and Development study found that more than 7,000 girls in Britain once faced a high risk of genital mutilation as a result of circumcision procedures.

Such procedures range from the removal of all external vagina parts to the removal of a woman's clitoris, The Times said.

PHILIPPINES: Global Support Urged For Momen's Emancipation

The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has called for a universal declaration of war on sexist policies that had kept millions of women in Asia, Africa, Latin America and even Europe the source of cheap labor, even as chattel, as the economic crisis threatens to impoverish 22 million women worldwide.

In its latest report, "Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009, Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability," UNIFEM stressed that the  conditions of women in many countries would worsen as the financial meltdown deepens, with demand for durables hitting rock bottom and consumers worldwide hold on to their cash and spend only for basic needs.

The same report noted that women actually are in the majority in many countries dependent on agriculture, tending cattle and vegetable patches as men seek regular wages or are compelled to work overseas for higher pay.

TANZANIA: From Magomeni To Miami, Violence Thrives

It is not uncommon to hear a woman screaming in the middle of the night in many of our neighbourhoods. Yet no one will ever go to the rescue of the lonely voice.

Perhaps she is being beaten up just because she did not open the door in time for her husband who is just returning home at 3.00 a.m. drunk.

That is their business; we are used to it. Not so? In fact, we even comfort ourselves that it might be safer not to `interfere`.

The International Women`s Day is observed every 8th of March each year but this year`s theme was aimed at getting all of us to raise our collective voices against violence on our mothers and sisters. (Perhaps we should appropriately have screamed together in the dead of the night? Just a thought…)

On this day, women worldwide join their voices to fight gender inequalities of which they mainly are victims.

Violence against women prevails everywhere - from the walls of Masaki to the shacks of Magomeni. Rihanna, the American R&B superstar has recently brought the discussion back about rich wives (or girlfriends) who are battered by their spouses.

KURDISTAN: Female Genital Mutilation Said To Be Widespread In Iraq's, Iran's Kurdistan

Tahereh vividly remembers the day in her native town of Marivan in Iran when she was circumcised with a razor, leaving her with physical and psychological pain that endures nearly 45 years later.

"We were five sisters --we didn't really understand what was happening. My mother just said that someone was coming to our house," says 48-year-old Tahereh, who is one of many women who have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM) in Iranian Kurdistan.

"Then they took all of us -- we were 2, 3, 4 years old -- and the operation was done," says Tahereh, who asked that her real name not be used.

FGM, defined as the intentional alteration or injury of female genital organs for nonmedical reasons, is common in many northern African countries as well as some places in Asia and the Middle East.

But rights activists and NGO workers say the practice, also known as female circumcision, is also widespread in Iraq's and Iran's Kurdish regions.

IRELAND: 'Women Should Be Safe From Female Genital Mutilation' - Burke

Fine Gael MEP Colm Burke has said Ireland needs to introduce legislation to criminalise the practice of female genital mutilation.

Speaking in advance of International Women's Day Mr Burke said: "Women should be safe from female genital mutilation (FGM), and measures need to be put in place to address the needs of women and girls who are at risk."

Burke recognised Ireland's recent commitment - as one of 15 EU Member States - to launch a national action plan on FGM.

"It is estimated that more than 2,500 women living in Ireland have undergone FGM. The Irish plan highlights the risks FGM poses to women and girls, both in Ireland and internationally, and sets out policy goals to address its detrimental effects.

"The enactment of a law to place an outright ban on FGM is critical to the elimination of this damaging practice in Ireland. Such a law would send out a clear signal to potential practitioners of this tradition that FGM is wholly unacceptable in Irish society.

TANZANIA: FGM Still Prevalent In Tanga Region

Despite various efforts by the government and non-governmental organizations to alert the public on the dangers of female genital mutilation (FGM), the practice is still being carried out in some parts of Tanga Region, it has been observed.

Random interviews conducted in Kilindi District, Tanga Region, FGM is being carried out secretly in some villages which can hardly be reached by the non governmental organisations or government officials.

According to Pagwi Ward Executive Officer Josephat Paul, however the villagers were gradually becoming aware of the dangers of FGM.

The African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) through its Kilindi-based Nomadic Youth Sexual Reproductive Health project has been in the forefront in sensitising the residents.

He said that at first it was hard to change people`s notion about FGM, a practice they have been carrying out for hundreds of years, but were beginning to understand the dangers of the practice with time.

UK: Thousands Of Girs Mutilated In Britain

The NHS is to advertise free operations to reverse female circumcisions, with experts warning that each year more than 500 British girls have their genitals mutilated.

Despite having been outlawed in 1985, female circumcision is still practised in British African communities, in some cases on girls as young as 5. Police have been unable to bring a single prosecution even though they suspect that community elders are being flown from the Horn of Africa to carry out the procedures.

The advertisement will appear from next month on a Somali satellite TV station much viewed in Britain. It features Juliet Albert, a midwife who does the reverse operations, and promises, in English and Somali, confidentiality for victims of female genital mutilation.

The advertisement was expected to help to undermine demand for girls to be circumcised, and to popularise the reversal procedure, Ms Albert said. Thousands of such operations have been carried out at specialist clinics and hospitals around Britain and demand is growing slowly.

KENYA/TANZANIA: Witch Hunt: Africa's Hidden War On Women

In villages across Africa, old women suspected of witchcraft are hacked to death, while young girls are mutilated to preserve their virginity. But attitudes are changing – and thousands of lives are being saved. Johann Hari reports from Kenya and Tanzania.

Across Africa, a war is being waged on women – but we are refusing to hear the screams. Over the past fortnight, I have travelled into the secretive shadow world that mutilates millions of African women at the beginning of their lives, and at the end. As girls, they face having their genitalia sliced out with razors, to destroy their "filthy" sexuality and keep them "pure". As old women, they face being hacked to death as "witches", blamed for every virus and sickness blowing across the savannah.

For decades, we have not wanted to know, because it sounded too much like the old colonialist claims of African "primitivism", used as an excuse by our ancestors to pillage the continent's resources. Our bad memories stop us hearing their bad experiences. But today, a rebellion of African women has begun, in defence of their own bodies, and their own freedom. They are asking for our support, and receiving it from Comic Relief and the tens of thousands of people raising money for them tomorrow. This is the story of the great African feminist fightback – and how you can be part of it.

RWANDA: Overcoming FGM, Its Causes And Manifestations

Kigali — Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), as a practice has been in existence for centuries and has deep cultural roots. The expression "Female Genital Mutilation" received greater attention in the 1970s to give it a clear distinction from male circumcision due to of its gravity.

Female genital mutilation includes a range of practices involving the complete or partial removal or alteration of the external genitalia for non-medical reasons. It was adopted by the UN in 1991 under recommendations from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Between 100 and 140 million women and girls around the world have undergone some form of FGM.

Statistics from UNDP, UNICEF, WHO give varying estimates of the number of girls who undergo this painful practice and give a range of between 2 to 3 million.

SENEGAL: Senegal Groups Fight Tradition To Protect Women And Girls From Violence

The theme of this year's International Women's Day was women and men united to end violence against women and girls. Reports of violence against women and girls are on the rise in Senegal, and outreach workers say there could not have been a better theme.

Violence against women and girls in Senegal does not just refer to domestic violence and rape.

Women's groups are also fighting long-standing traditions of polygamy, female circumcision and the forced marriage of girls as young as nine years old. It is a battle they say is made more difficult by traditional Senegalese society and a lack of resources.

Siggil Jigéen is a network of 17 organizations that promote women's rights and fight violence against women in Senegal.

The group is based in Dakar, but has recently extended its activities to Kolda, Matam and Tamba, three cities where they have noticed spikes in violence.

IRELAND: Dublin MEPs Give Their Backing To Anti-FGM Campaign

Irish candidates for this summer’s European elections are backing a campaign to end female genital mutilation in Europe, launched to mark International Women’s Day today.

Amnesty International’s campaign calls for the adoption of a definitive strategy to end the practice and to provide protection to women and girls who flee their countries for fear of being mutilated.

FGM is practised in 28 African countries and in some parts of Asia and the Middle East. The European Parliamentary Committee on Women’s Rights claims that around 500,000 women in Europe have been subjected to it. ‘‘Over 2,500 women living in Ireland have survived genital mutilation,” said Amnesty Ireland programmes director Noeleen Hartigan.

GAMBIA: International Women's Day Celebrated

On Sunday 8 March, 2009, the world celebrated the International Women's Day.

It is a day that offers the world the opportunity to reflect on the status of women, with the objectives of highlighting their contributions, achievements as well as their limitations in terms of promotion of gender equality and empowerment at all levels.

In marking this very important day, very important messages have been delivered by prominent people. The Daily Observer herein reproduces the messages from The Gambia's vice president, Aja Dr Isatou Njie-Saidy; the US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton; the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon; and the Female Lawyers' Association of The Gambia (FLAG).

Vice president Aja Dr Isatou Njie-Saidy

Goodwill message on the occasion of the International Women's Day, March 7th 2009, by H.E. the vice president and Secretary of State for Women's Affairs, Dr. Ajaratou Isatou Njie-Saidy.

Theme: "Women and men united to end violence against women and girls"

UGANDA: Patriarchy Fuels Female Circumcision

A lot has been said about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Many people argue that unless a girl has this procedure done, she is not a woman and that removal of the practice would lead to the demise of their culture.

But what has been the role of men in perpetuating FGM? Can we start to give FGM a male face and work around boys and men’s selfishness and cultural myths that perpetuate it?

It is important to demystify the myth that unless a girl has this procedure done, she is not a woman. Some view the clitoris and the labia as male parts on a female body, thus removal of these parts enhances femininity of the girl.

The practice raises human rights issues because it is girls aged four to ten who are Circumcised. Some Sabin men believe that unless a woman has undergone this procedure she is unclean and will not be allowed to handle food and water.

SIERRA LEONE: FGM: Let's Stop This Cruel Practice Against Girls

Much has been said and continue to be said about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This is a practice which includes the removal or the alteration of the female genitalia. In simple words, it is the removal of a young girl’s clitoris and often all external genitalia. That sounds horrible, but that’s exactly what happens. The practice is widespread in Africa and the Middle East.

According World Health Organisation, between 100 and 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM. In Africa alone, about three million girls are at risk for FGM annually

This practice is internationally recognized as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.

The Protocol on the Rights of Women, adopted in Maputo by Member States of the African Union in 2003 which entered into force on 25th November 2005 condemns FGM.

SIERRA LEONE: The Bondo Debate: An Affront To The Sierra Leonean Woman

This piece is partly a response to Mr. Donald Georgestone’s very misleading and uninformed piece in Cocorioko and other online outlets, calling for a ban Bondo and by extension Female circumcision. What is a little despicable is the reproduction of the untruth used by Western propaganda machinery to make his argument.

This piece will also disagree with Mr. Yankuba Kai-Samba who said children below eighteen years should not be initiated. This is the classic age of consent argument westerners have consistently used to eradicate African cultures they do not understand.

In the end I would argue that we should respect the rights of Sierra Leonean women to make decisions with respect to their “secret society”.
Let me start by stating that the average westerner since the advent of their contacts with Africans has been fascinated with African sexuality. There are myths and legends about the sexual prowess of the African male and how the women are promiscuous.

Perception of Primary Health Professionals About Female Genital Mutilation: From Healthcare To Intercultural Competence

The practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a deeply-rooted tradition in 28 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, carries important negative consequences for the health and quality of life of women and children. Migratory movements have brought this harmful traditional practice to our medical offices, with the subsequent conflicts related to how to approach this healthcare problem, involving not only a purely healthcare-related event but also questions of an ethical, cultural identity and human rights nature.

Methods: The aim of this study was to analyse the perceptions, degree of knowledge, attitudes and practices of the primary healthcare professionals in relation to FGM.

A transversal, descriptive study was performed with a self-administered questionnaire to family physicians, paediatricians, nurses, midwives and gynaecologists. Trends towards changes in the two periods studied (2001 and 2004) were analysed.

Results: A total of 225 (80%) professionals answered the questionnaire in 2001 and 184 (62%) in 2004.

UGANDA: FGM Has Turned Women Into Objects

Female genital mutilation (FGM) poses a serious challenge to the Government and politicians, most especially women Members of Parliament, women lawyers and other women organisations in this country.

FGM is a traditional practice where a girl’s external genitalia are partially or wholly cut off to initiate her from childhood to adulthood, according to Sabiny customs. This leads to the question: Does culture in Uganda supersede human rights?

I know some cultures are difficult to uproot, but if they are dangerous to human lives, force must be applied.

The FGM practice has turned women into objects where they are subjected to severe pain, hiding under the cover of culture. It should not be allowed by those in authority.

GHANA: The Rise Of Ghanaian Women: Matters Arising

The past few days have brought us good news about the status of Ghanaian women in national affairs. For the first time in the country’s history, two women are in authority in the Judiciary and the Legislature. This achievement is remarkable and indicative of what our women can do in national development if barriers that hinder their progress are removed. That’s what I want to say in this article.

The rise to these positions by Justice Georgina Wood (as Chief Justice) and Justice Joyce Bamford-Addo (as Speaker of the fifth Parliament of the Fourth Republic) is good news, which suggests strongly that our women have come into their own to make their presence felt in national life. They can no more be shoved aside in appointments to public office. These new developments are a welcome relief for us to celebrate in a system that has for many generations, unfortunately, remained heavily patriarchal.

UGANDA: Not All Cultural Practices Are Acceptable

When evil thrives in any society, it is an indication that the 'good' people are doing nothing, or for one reason or another, have been forced to fold their arms and look on, helpless to intervene.

Let this not be the case with female genital mutilation (FGM). Granted, it is cultural, but does that mean we just have to accept whatever culture dictates we do, even when it is a clear violation of a woman's rights?

How far must we go to de-humanise a person all in the name of culture?

Parliament says they are going to pass a bill to criminalise FGM, but how much more time do they need? How much longer must we wait before this finally comes to pass?

TANZANIA: Mahanga Warns Against FGM Prastices In Dar

The Ukonga Member of Parliament (MP), Dr Makongoro Mahanga, has warned Kitunda and Msongola Wards residents in Ilala District, Dar es Salaam over practising Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) to young girls.

Dr Mahanga, who is also the Deputy Minister for Labour, Employment and Youth Development, said at the weekend that the FGM was illegal and totally against human rights. He warned that those who perpetuate the practice will have legal action taken against them.

He was reacting to recent reports that some girls were forced by their parents to leave their homes after escaping from being cut. The MP was touring the constituency to inspect implementation of election manifesto of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).

SUDAN: Finally, Sudan Passes Law To Stop The Cut

UGANDA: Crimialise Female Genital Mutilation

A group of Members of Parliament have drafted a Bill seeking to criminalise the female genital mutilation (FGM) common among communities in some parts of the country. The MPs are concerned that the Government has not taken the initiative to enact a law criminalising the FGM.

Genital mutilation is most prevalent in Kapchorwa, Bukwo and Karamoja. Studies, however, indicate that the practice also exists in Kamuli, Kamwenge, Isingiro and Masindi.

The FGM is on the rise in Karamoja, where thousands of girls aged 10 to 15 are being circumcised and then forcefully married off, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

Genital mutilation involves the cutting or removal of the clitoris and other vaginal tissue, often under unsanitary conditions. According to the World Health Organisation the prevalence could be 5% in Uganda.

UGANDA: Support MP's Move On Genital Mutilation

The decision by Kinkizi County East Member of Parliament, Dr. Chris Baryomunsi, to present a private member's Bill seeking to abolish female genital mutilation (FGM) is laudable. It is, in fact, long overdue.

Several generations of Sabiny women have had to endure this inexplicable surgeon's knife, all in the name of perpetuating a culture whose rationale is difficult to comprehend. What good is in a culture that celebrates the maiming and traumatising of women?

Scientifically, there are no known benefits arising from this practice, which involves the cutting off of the clitoris, often using crude instruments.

In some cases, women who faced the knife are reported to have died due to excessive bleeding; others have been permanently maimed. Yet those who reject the knife are ostracized, if not banished.

MALI: Mali To Cut Female Circumcision To 65% By 2012

Mali's National Programme to fight Female Circumcision (PNLE) plans to reduce the practice from 85% to 65% by 2012, PANA reported Thursday.

The plan resulted from an action plan that evolved from a workshop that involved the Malian technical services, the civil society organisations as well as technical and financial partners.

The action plan serves as a road map for all stakeholders in the fight against Female Genital Mutilations (MGF).

Ending FGM is among the priorities of the Malian government, which has set up a national action committee for the elimination of the practice, which is harmful to the health of women and children.

UGANDA: FGM Can Be Defeated By Joint Effort

Some 500 girls were circumcised in Sebei region over the Christmas period! This is an alarming rise in Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) because the number of mutilated girls stood at 90 in the previous circumcision season.

The ritual involves the removal of the clitoris and the entire labia. Why is this done? It is only through the FGM that a woman becomes a ‘full’ woman and commands respect in society. The dangers of FGM are real and cannot be trashed away as propaganda by people who do not understand Sabiny culture. The affected women experience complications during child birth, suffer chronic infections and excessive bleeding.

The sensitisation programme undertaken by the Reproductive, Educative and Community Health (REACH) project, had reduced FGM in Kapchorwa. Unfortunately, REACH seems to have gone back on its promise to set up a girls’ school in the district, sponsor the education of girls and give the ‘surgeons’ heifers. This strongly suggests that it is not because of culture alone that FGM has persisted. Underlying the practice of FGM is poverty. Circumcised girls find social security in marriage and their parents get richer through bride price.

UGANDA: 'Surgeons' Want Compensation Before They Lay Down Their Knives

WITH the high rate of unemployment in Uganda, it is sometimes hard to imagine that on a good day, someone can earn up to sh800,000 a day.

It is even harder when that person is an illiterate old woman of over 60 years. And yet, this is a true story in the areas of Kapchorwa and Bukwo districts.

Except that for these old women, they are making money off the suffering of many of the young girls in this region. These women are the "experts" in circumcising girls in a practice known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

For every girl cut, the surgeon is paid sh50,000, while those who are already married pay sh80,000. On a good day, a surgeon can perform over 10 surgeries.

According to figures with the Kapchorwa Local Government, there are about 100 mentors in Kapchorwa district, while Bukwo has 50. According to Sabiny culture, the mentors are highly regarded senior women who prepare young girls, normally 14 years old, to undergo genital mutilation.

People Of Note: 'Lost Maiden' Puts The Spotlight On A Dangerous Tradition

Chisom Ozigboh-lee is a special person who can be counted among the brave individuals who are willing to stand up and say enough to certain outdated mores and traditions.  Although Ozigboh-lee has met some opposition concerning her position she understands its time to stand against an age old tradition that is literally causing the death of many African women.  This ancient ritual apparently spread from the Nile and its tributaries into adjacent regions such as Palestine. It spread through migration routes into Northwest Africa, and across the Sahara and Sahel regions into the West African savanna. The practice has been conducted along the Red Sea Coast into the Horn of Africa and parts of East Africa, Central Africa and regions within Southern Africa. This is a practice that was known at one time to certain indigenous Andean and Australian ethnic, religious, and cultural groups and among Bedouin groups in Israel and surrounding areas. The practice was also known in parts of Malaysia and Indonesia as well.  Many cultures viewed it as a rite of passage into adulthood.  Thus, it should be understood, female circumcision has been and continues to be a well entrenched cultural lifestyle that has existed for centuries.

GAMBIA: Women's Activist Named Gambian Of The Year

A women’s activist, Dr. Is atou Touray, has been named Gambian of the Year 2008 by a Gambian magazine, the third woman to win the award after Mrs Isatou Njie Saidy, the Gambian vice president and Mrs. Harriet Ndow, an educationist.

This was contained in a letter on Monday to Dr. Touray, Executive Director of the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (GAMCOTRAP).

Mr. Swaebou Conateh of the Gambia Communication Agency and Baroueli Enterprise, publishers of The News and Report weekly, stated that she was selected because of the way she had courageously pursued gender equality.

Dr Touray had also stood against harmful traditional practices affecting the health of women in the socio-cultural context that still distanced itself from any serious public discussions of such well rooted sensitive taboos and traditional practices.

UGANDA: 500 Girls Mutilated Over Christmas

ABOUT 500 girls were circumcised in Sebei region over the Christmas period, a sharp rise in Female Genital Mutilation from just 90 in the previous circumcision season.

Bukwo and Kapchorwa local leaders said 490 girls aged between 10 and 21 years underwent the ritual that now involves the removal of not only the clitoris but also the entire labia.

The removal of the labia is an influence from the Kenyan Pokot who live side by side with the Sebei. The removal of the entire labia does not only cause excessive bleeding, but also exposes the girls to more chronic infections, painful sexual intercourse and more complications during child birth.

KURDISTAN: 'I Just Wish I Could Be The Way I Was'

EGYPT: Activists Fight Female Circumcision

Amal Mahmoud, 44, cringed as she recalled the ceremony which took place after her circumcision in a small town south of Cairo 32 years ago. 

"The whole family was gathered in celebration. Everybody was eating and the children were dancing to Egyptian music on full volume," Mahmoud told Al Jazeera.

"Suddenly, the wound [from the operation] tore open, and blood stains spread all over my white dress."

She tried to dance in step with her cousins but the pain was unbearable.

"I was 12 and in deep pain ... I collapsed."

UGANDA: Criminalise FGM Now To Save Young Girls

Kampala — Women of Bukwa on their way to a female genital mutilation exercise.

SHE lay on an old sack spread on the dirty ground, her legs spread wide apart. An old woman with dirt-smudged fingers bent over her with razor blades. A man stood at her head holding it between his feet so she could not move. A crowd of mainly children curiously stared as the old woman cut bits of her private parts.

Female genital cutting/mutilation is not only a dehumanising act, it is an abuse of human rights and has implications on women's health and rights. But it continues to take place.

In the past two weeks alone, over 100 girls have undergone the gruesome practice in Bukwa district, at the north-eastern border between Uganda and Kenya.

TOGO: Aridjetou Oumorou, "For Non-Virgins, I Was Paid More Than Twice As Much"

Photo: Phuong Tran/IRIN

Aridjetou Oumorou

TCHAMBA, Aridjetou Oumorou, 65, had been carrying out female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) for more than four decades until 2003, having started as an assistant to her mother, a community healer in central Togo. The region has the highest concentration of FGM/C in Togo.

Five years ago, she and other women who live in Tchamba, named after the community’s predominant ethnic group, were recruited to join a microcredit programme that required her to put down her knife and attend workshops in order to qualify for an annual business loan.

“I inherited my knife and my profession from my mother. The first time I cut a girl on my own, she kept on bleeding and bleeding. I went to my mother who gave me some leaves that I mixed with red earth and placed in a plate.

“I then placed the plate under the girl and she sat in it. The bleeding stopped. If there is a lot of blood and I got it in my eyes, that could be blinding. I know other women like me who became blind from this work.

“If the woman or girl is not a virgin, there can be complications, so we have to prepare her with a ceremony in which we kill a small rooster and cut it in half and rub her body with the bird. We then bury the other half of the bird, asking ancestors for their permission to remove the girl’s clitoris.

“For non-virgins, I was paid more than twice as much because of potential complications, at least US$20 [in 2001]. For virgins, I was paid $6.

BENIN-TOGO: Can Microcredit Turn FGM/C Cutters to New Trades?

Photo: Phuong Tran/IRIN

Aridjetou Oumorou, a participant in a microcredit programme in Togo that tries to turn FGM/C practitioners to legal work

For years, the Togolese government and its NGO partners have been trying to convince women who perform female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) to trade in their knives for microcredit loans and agricultural equipment.

Despite a 10-year-old law in Togo that criminalises FGM/C some ethnic groups in Togo still report clandestine cuttings.

While the number of women reporting having undergone FGM/C in Togo has decreased by half since 1996 to seven percent of the population in 2008, according to a recent UN-funded government study, it is not clear what role income-generating activities have had in this drop.

FGM/C, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and Population Fund (UNFPA), refers to the removal of all or parts of the external female genitalia or to other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

Five years ago Aridjetou Oumorou, 65, received her first loan from the NGO Tama’de, which means hope in one of the country’s ethnic languages in central Togo, where she had earned her living as a circumciser for more than 40 years.

SUDAN: It Takes More Than a Law to Stop the Cut

Photo: Ben Parker/UNICEF

Attitudes and misinformation will have to be overcome for a law passed in November 2008, prohibiting FGM in Southern Kordofan, to translate into genuine abolition

A law passed in November 2008 prohibiting female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in the state of Southern Kordofan is unique in Sudan. But for it to translate into genuine abolition, deep-seated attitudes and misinformation will have to be overcome.

More than two-thirds of women in the state have undergone FGM/C, according to a 2006 household survey conducted by the Ministry of Health.

"All my daughters have been circumcised," Asia Abdalla Jibril, a tea-seller, told IRIN in Kadugli, the state capital.

"The clitoris is dirty. If you undergo FGM you become clean," Jibril said. In Sudan, the Arabic word “tahur”, which means purity, is often used for FGM/C.

IRAQ: For Kurdish Girls, a Painful Ancient Ritual

TUZ KHURMATU, Iraq

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned.

As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan's mother smiled with pride.

"This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember," said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. "We don't know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it."

UGANDA: Sebei Lose Battle Against Female Circumcision

Kampala — Girls are paraded after undergoing circumcision in Bukwo in eastern Uganda. The traditional practice can sometimes lead to over-bleeding

When you enter Bukwo, a remote district in eastern Uganda, you are welcomed by a billboard saying: "Stop female circumcision, it is dangerous to women's health". Any person would expect the Sabiny, who inhabit the area, to take the message seriously, but the turn of events reveals otherwise.

KENYA: 200 Marakwet Girls Forcefully Circumcised

EGYPT: Activists Fight Female Circumcision

The Egyptian government says that circumcising young girls is illegal and inhumane [Bauomy]

Amal Mahmoud, 44, cringed as she recalled the ceremony which took place after her circumcision in a small town south of Cairo 32 years ago. 

"The whole family was gathered in celebration. Everybody was eating and the children were dancing to Egyptian music on full volume," Mahmoud told Al Jazeera.

KENYA: Hiding From The Cruellest Cut

Photo: Justo Casal

Girls such as these are at great risk of FGM in several districts in the country

Hundreds of girls between seven and 17 are seeking refuge in church compounds in western Kenya to avoid the ritual removal of their clitorises, a practice that remains common despite its illegality.

"Local authorities must ensure that these girls are not ostracised by the community and that their education is not disrupted," Andrew Timpson, a senior protection officer for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Kenya, told IRIN on 16 December.

Timpson made a field visit to Kuria East and Kuria West districts in early December to examine the condition and protection needs of 340 girls who had fled their homes to avoid undergoing female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

SOMALIA: "One message" on FGM/C in Somaliland

HARGEISA, 3 November 2008 (IRIN) - Hawa* is determined her young daughter will not undergo female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), which is widespread in Somalia's self-declared republic of Somaliland.

An estimated 90 percent of girls still undergo the procedure.

"I have suffered kidney problems, infections and miscarriages," said Hawa. "I dread the days when my period is close because of the pain I go through; it gets to the point where the pain makes it impossible to do anything. I don't want my daughter subjected to this kind of life."

"Gudnin Fircooni", Pharaonic circumcision or infibulation, as practised in Somaliland, involves cutting off the external genitalia and sewing up the vagina, leaving a small hole for urine and menstrual blood.

The practice is not illegal but the government's gender policy was to discourage FGM/C, said Kinsi Hussein, an activist and deputy head of the Network of Anti-FGM in Somaliland (NAFIS).

Hussein told IRIN several organisations were involved in the campaign against FGM/C in Somaliland.

"We are now trying to speak with one voice and have one message," he said.

KENYA: Girls flee circumcision in Kenya

At least 300 girls in south-western Kenya have fled from home and sought refuge in churches in a bid to escape forced female genital mutilation (FGM).

The girls, some as young as nine, are at two rescue centres in rural Nyanza province, police told the BBC.

Female circumcision is banned in Kenya, but remains common in some areas where it is considered to be part of a girl's initiation into womanhood.

IRELAND: Ireland Should Criminalise FGM

Ireland needs to introduce legislation to criminalise the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) according to the National Steering Committee on FGM.

Measures also need to be put in place to address the needs of women and girls from new communities who are at risk of FGM. Ireland was one of the 15 EU member states to launch an action plan on FGM last week.

The Irish plan highlights the risks FGM poses to women and girls, both in Ireland and internationally, and sets out policy goals to address the detrimental effects of FGM. As previously reported by IMN, more than 2,500 women in Ireland have undergone FGM.

Figures also revealed that out of the 9,624 women now residing in Ireland who originally come from countries that practice FGM, 26.9 per cent have undergone a form of female genital cutting. Ms Salome Mbugua, Nat­ional Director of AkiDwa, the African and Migrant Women’s Network of Ireland, said prog­rammes and policies need to be put in place on a national level before the consequences of FGM become too difficult to deal with.

ETHIOPIA: UNFPA and UNICEF to Launch a Joint Programme on FGM/C in Afar

Ethiopia is poised to become one of the 17 countries in which UNFPA and UNICEF have launched a joint programme for the abandonment of FGM/C. The joint programme which has duration of three years will be launched in the Afar National Regional State at an official ceremony to be held in Semera on 24 November 2008. The joint programme has an overarching goal of accelerating the abandonment of FGM/C in all countries by expanding already existing efforts and declaring at least one country FGM/C free by 2012.

Female Genital Mutilation or Female Genital Cutting (FGM/C) refers to the removal of all or parts of the external female genitalia or to other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. Some 3 million women and girls around the world face FGM/C every year, while some 100 to 140 million have already undergone the practice. Female genital mutilation/cutting is nearly always carried out on minors and is therefore a violation of the rights of the child. The practice also violates the rights to health, security and physical integrity of the person, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to life when the procedure results in death.

DENMARK: Criminalizing Circumcision May Force Out Denmark's Jews

After Jews have lived in Denmark for hundreds of years, the 7000-strong community that resides there today may be forced to leave.

The country's legislators are studying a proposed law that would make the biblically-mandated Jewish rite of circumcising baby boys a crime.

Ynetnews reported in Israel Thursday that Denmark's National Council for Children (NCC) has recommended the legislation of a law banning circumcision of boys under the age of 15.

Circumcision - argued the NCC of the rite that has been practiced without protest for thousands of years by millions of circumcised men - "is the irreversible damage to a child's body before he is given the chance to object."

EUROPE: States Do Little to Prevent Female Genital Mutilation

The European Court is to rule on the case of an Irish-based African mother who fears her children will be subjected to female genital mutilation if she is forced back to Nigeria. Such treatment is classified by the UN as torture - but there's no agreement on how to counter it, writes CAROL COULTER.

THE CASE of Pamela Izevbekhai, which is now going to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, highlights the practice of female genital mutilation widely carried out in many African and some Asian countries, and the response of asylum decision-making bodies in Europe.

The practice of removing parts of a girl's genitals before she can be considered an adult pre-dates the advent of religions such as Islam and Christianity, and is deeply rooted in countries like Egypt, Sudan, Togo, Kenya and Nigeria. It can lead to death through severe bleeding, neurogenic shock as a result of pain and trauma, or infection and septicaemia. It also leads to ongoing medical, gynaecological and psychological problems for many of those who endure it.

Iraq's Kurdish Areas Prepare to Ban Female Circumcision

Parliament in Iraq's northern autonomous region of Kurdistan is preparing to outlaw female circumcision, according to a woman MP and doctor who has long battled to halt the widespread practice.

"A bill making circumcision illegal will be presented in parliament over the next few days," Dr Hala Suheil told AFP, saying it would impose jail terms and fines on offenders.

UNICEF, the UN children's fund, regards "female genital mutilation" as "one of the most persistent, pervasive and silently endured human rights violations."

Kurdistan health minister Zarian Abdel Rahman said that in the region "60 percent of girls aged four to fourteen undergo circumcision, despite warnings by ministers against this grievous practice committed in the name of religion and hygiene."

He was speaking on Friday at a three-day conference on violence towards women, held in Arbil, capital of the province of the same name, 350 kilometres (219 miles) north of Baghdad.

ETHIOPIA: More Ethiopian parents saying no to female circumcision

By UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)

“The knowledge [that FGM is harmful] is increasing,” said Abate Gudunfa, head of the Ethiopian National Committee on Traditional Practices (commonly referred to as EGLDAM - its name in Amharic]. “Children born more recently are safer.”

Still, FGM is carried out on girls as young as 80 days old, particularly in the predominately Christian highlands, and up to 14 years of age in the lowland Muslim regions. A network of 40 NGOs, including EGLDAM, the government and international organisations, are involved in anti-FGM campaigns in Ethiopia. Policies have also been reviewed to ensure participants are punished.

“Prevalence, especially among newly born children is decreasing - meaning that more families have sufficient awareness and do not support this practice anymore,” Abate added.

A 2007 survey conducted by EGLDAM found that prevalence across the country had dropped from 61 percent in 1997 to 46 percent.

SIERRA LEONE: Circumcision: A Girl's Tale

The genital mutilation of adolescent girls is still a common custom in Sierra Leone, where many see it as good preparation for marriage and motherhood. Yasmin had her turn when she was 14. After she was tied up and held down, her external genitals were ‘scraped’ off without anaesthetic. She was warned that if she told anyone she would die. Now 19 years old and living in the UK, she is furious at the violence perpetrated against her and other young girls in her home country. Girls as young as eight can be eligible for female circumcision in Sierra Leone.

US: Women Bishops Urge More Focus On Gender Issues

The 2008 Lambeth Conference is the second of the decennial meetings to include female bishops and several of them said the welcome is warmer, but that they wish more consideration were given to women's issues.

Out of the 670 bishops attending, 18 are female, compared to 11 in 1998. The communion's first female primate, Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, is attending her first Lambeth Conference, having been elected bishop of the Diocese of Nevada in 2001. She was elected presiding bishop in June 2006.

Nine days before the conference began on July 16 (it ends August 3), the Church of England's governing synod voted to bring forward legislation that would allow the consecration of women to the episcopate. The question of accommodating those who cannot accept women in that role was vigorously debated. A proposal that male "super bishops" be allowed to oversee dissenting parishes was defeated and a "code of practice" approved for dissenters but theological traditionalists said it was too weak.

UGANDA: Criminalise Female Genital Mutilation

The media recently reported a case of a woman from Sebei who developed a permanent disability resulting from female genital mutilation.

Genital mutilation among the Sabiny is a ritual that marks the transformation of a girl into a woman ready for marriage.

Fulfilling one’s cultural practices creates a sense of belonging. But every culture has positive and negative aspects. There are cultural practices that protect human rights and others that violate people’s rights.

Respect for culture is important but practices that are detrimental to the physical and mental well-being of its members should not be tolerated. The enjoyment of the right to practice culture should not result in negation of other rights.

EGYPT: Fenale Circumcision, A Centuries-old Custom Defying Religion - Feature

Twenty-two years ago, Fatma, a 34-year-old domestic servant living in Cairo, had her clitoris cut out according to a centuries-old custom. Seven years ago, she had the same operation performed on her daughter, Shaima, who was then 12. Now she is outraged to learn that the Egyptian government has banned the practice - and wonders how she will be able to have the same operation performed on her eight-year-old daughter Basma.

"How can they stop something that our ancestors have been practising for ages? Our mothers and grandmothers earned their respect and preserved their honour by undergoing tahara!" Fatma exclaimed.

The word "tahara" literally means "cleanliness," but is used to refer to circumcision in colloquial Egyptian.

USA: Woman Appealing Asylum Denial

A woman from Mali is fighting to stay in the United States even though her petition for asylum on the grounds of female mutilation has been rejected.

Alima Traore, who has been living in the Washington suburbs in Maryland for eight years, said she does not want to be forced into an arranged marriage with a cousin, the Baltimore Sun reports. Her fight for asylum began five years ago when her student visa expired.

The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled last fall that Traore does not have a valid asylum claim because she cannot show she would be persecuted if she returns to Mali. The board, which is part of the Department of Justice, found that she cannot use her opposition to female genital mutilation or female circumcision because she has already gone through the irreversible procedure -- in her case as an infant.

UGANDA: We Must Address Female Genital Mutilation Urgently

Last week, there were media debates on whether culture supercedes human rights which stemmed mainly from a case of a woman from Sebei who had acquired a permanent disability arising from female genital mutilation.

This analysis delves deep into one of the most common rites of passage - female genital mutilation - among girls and young women who hail from Bukwo, Kapchorwa and some parts of Nakapiripirit.

The day any Sabiny girl is circumcised is considered to be the most important day in her life. It is that long awaited day when a girl not only becomes a full member of the society but also a candidate for marriage.

It is the day when her prospective husband can be sure that she will be a faithful partner. That is why those who evade this rite are barred from participating in public life.

USA/AFRICA: African Women's Rights Discussed at Conference

The agenda for the recently held African Women in the Diaspora Conference included lectures on gender issues, human rights issues with regard to sex and labor human trafficking, and widowhood.  But perhaps the most often discussed topic was the practice of female genital cutting.

Melissa Nambangi, executive director of Minnesota African Women’s Association (MAWA) pulled together an informative, participatory conference held at the University of Minnesota’s School of Law in Minneapolis over June 11 and 12. This was the conference’s third year, but unfortunately, the lowest in attendance.

“Attendance down this year because of timing conflicts with World Refugee Day and Juneteenth,” Nambangi explained. “The same people interested in the MAWA conference were also interested in the other events.  Also, the timing of the conference, in June, took place when schools were finished for the summer.”

YEMEN: More Yemeni Women Favor Female Circumcision, Shows Study

SANA'A, July 04 (Saba)- A recent study has showed a quarter of Yemeni women have been subjected to circumcision and 71.4% of the Yemeni women favored female circumcision while 48% of the Yemeni men support continuing the process of the circumcision.

Among five provinces of the county, Hodeidah and Hadramout provinces were ranked first in the number of the circumcised women by 97.3%, while the prevalence of female genital mutilation in the provinces of Aden and Maharah reached 96.5% in each and in the capital Sana'a has hit 45.5%, according to the study.

GERMANY/TOGO: German NGO Backs Fight Against Female Genital Mutilation in Togo

A group of seven organisations working to promote women's we lfare in Togo is to receive assistance from "INTACT", a German NGO, in their efforts to stop female genital mutilation in the west African country.

An agreement to this effect will be signed next month between the group and INTACT.

According to INTACT's chairperson, Christa Muller, the NGO, originally working with three organisations, based in the Plateaux and Centre regions, has admitted four more organisations to strengthen its fight against female circumcision which has a prevalence rate of 6 to 7 per cent.

Under the new partnership, the parties will take their campaign to areas where the practice is still taking place -- 19 of the country's 31 prefectures.

UK: Ruth Rendell Speaks Out Against Female Genital Mutilation

When Chief Inspector Wexford, one of Britain's most beloved fictional policemen, is called to investigate his latest case - a body discovered in a trench - he finds his attention diverted by a crime yet to be committed, but one that he knows he is powerless to prevent. It creates a terrible dilemma for the old-fashioned, peaceable, claret-drinking detective.

On the case: Ruth Rendell addresses the issue of female circumcision in her latest novel

UGANDA: Genital Mutilation - Women Grapple With a Deadly Tradition

IN the scorching afternoon sunshine, Philis Yapchemusto stands in the compound of a tiny building that houses the headquarters of Reproductive, Educative and Community Health (REACH) programme.

The community-based programme was established in Kapchorwa to improve reproductive health conditions and stop female genital mutilation.

Yapchemusto is talking to students from different universities in Uganda about a subject very close to her heart - female genital mutilation. This refers to partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genitals for cultural or other non-medical reasons.

She points in different directions, waves her arms and even pats herself in a manner that suggests a passionate description of events. "I was a few days away from the knife," she tells the attentive group as I join in the conversation. "It was by God's grace that I survived..." she adds and then keeps quite.

YEMEN: Government Body Moves to Stem Female Genital Mutilation

The Supreme Council for Motherhood and Childhood (SCMC), a government body, has drawn up a national action plan to end the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) in Yemen.

UGANDA: MPs Want Female Circumcision Banned

THE parliamentary food forum has asked the Government to provide funds for the anti-female circumcision campaign. Addressing journalists at Parliament on Friday, Bukwo Woman MP Everline Chelangat urged the Government to establish vocational institutions for girls to fight the custom.

Female circumcision, commonly known as female genital mutilation, is practised in Bukwo and Kapchorwa districts.

Girls aged between 10-15 are circumcised to determine their maturity.

Chelangant noted a decline in the practice since the United Nations Population Fund launched a campaign against the custom.

She added that the individuals, who were still carrying out female circumcision, do it at night in bushes.

SWITZERLAND: Parents Convicted of Genital Mutilation

The sentences to the parents of the girl, now aged 14, were read out in a Zurich court on Thursday. The judge's ruling was in line with what prosecutors had requested and was the first time anyone has been convicted for carrying out genital mutilation in Switzerland.

The parents had claimed they were unaware that female genital mutilation – sometimes referred to as female circumcision – was illegal in Switzerland.

They had been charged with grievous bodily harm, a crime punishable by up to ten years in prison.

The court heard that imprisoning the parents would have broken up the family, which the parents say is now better integrated.

The family's two younger daughters have not been subjected to the practice, something the parents say was part of their Muslim religion.

FRANCE/WEST AFRICA: West Africans Fight Female Genital Mutilation in France

West African immigrant activists have taken their fight against female genital mutilation (FGM) to France where as many as 50,000 immigrant women a year undergo the procedure, according to the French Institute of Demographic Studies.

Female genital mutilation, a traditional initiation ceremony involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for cultural or religious reasons, is practiced in 28 African countries, many of them in West Africa, according to the World Health Organization.

While ongoing struggles against the practice are causing numbers of excisions to diminish across the region, including in Niger, Senegal , Burkina Faso and Guinea, some activists say West Africans living abroad are more likely to put their daughters through the procedure than they would be back home.

WORLD: Free Speech Dies at the UN

The war against free speech is advancing rapidly: Associated Press reported Thursday that “Muslim countries have won a battle to prevent Islam from being criticised during debates by the UN Human Rights Council.” Council President Doru-Romulus Costea explained that religious issues can be “very complex, very sensitive and very intense…This council is not prepared to discuss religious matters in depth, consequently we should not do it.” Henceforth only religious scholars would be permitted to broach them.

“While Costea’s ban applies to all religions,” AP explained, “it was prompted by Muslim countries complaining about references to Islam.” The ban came after a heated session on Monday, when the representative of the Association for World Education (AWE), in a joint statement with the International Humanist and Ethical Union, denounced female genital mutilation, the penalty of stoning for adultery and child marriage as sanctioned by Islamic law. Egypt, Pakistan and Iran angrily protested, interrupting the AWE speaker, David Littman, with no less than 16 points of order, and succeeding in getting the Council’s proceedings suspended for over half an hour. In the course of this contentious discussion, the representatives from the Islamic countries made numerous revealing statements – statements that are well worth examining as Islamic nations and organizations call with increasing insistence for restrictions on free speech in the West.

YEMEN: MPS Say: No To Genital Mutilation, 18 Is Minimum Marriage Age, Juveniles Cannot Be Punished As Adults

A two-day workshop in Parliament concluded that the minimum marriage age in Yemen should be 18, and the sponsors of both brides and grooms should be punished if they allow them to marry under this age.

The workshop’s participants also concluded that juvenile delinquents between the ages of 15 and 18 are not equal to adult criminals. They further recommended laws banning female genital mutilation.

The workshop covered three main areas: the criminality of juveniles, female genital mutilation, and the minimum age of marriage. These three subjects were chosen because the existing laws concerning them are not specific enough and are often ignored.

This workshop was arranged by Parliament, the Higher Council for Motherhood and Childhood, and the Yemeni Network Combating Violence Against Women known as SHIMA, under the sponsorship of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), OXFAM International, and Save the Children, a worldwide children's rights organization. Attendees included members of the Sharia Committee, who matches the constitutional laws with Islamic sharia law, Parliament members (MPs), doctors and human rights activists.

UGANDA: Culture Killing Girls in Kapchorwa

In much of the world its sounds strange and even barbaric, but in Judith Natari's community, a girl whose genitals haven't been cut is considered impure, making her subject to ridicule and unlikely to find a husband. So when Natari was growing up, her parents could not wait for her turn to undergo the procedure.

Their pride would later turn to bitterness. Some 14 years after the 1990 procedure, their daughter became paralyzed from her waist down. Today, Natari is confined to a wheel chair. She cannot fetch water on her own, dig in the garden, or perform other household chores. And this appears likely to be her fate for the rest of her life.

Female circumcision -- or, as a growing number of critics call it, female genital mutiliation -- is still practiced in Uganda and many other parts of the world, even though women rights advocates decry it as cruel, and health experts say it is dangerous.

UGANDA: A Circumciser Drops The Brutal Knife

After 24 years as a circumciser, Rodanice Kokopbetty has abandoned the practice. Known far and wide in eastern Uganda and across in neighbouring Kenya for her expertise as a female genital cutter, Kokopbetty was one of the longest serving circumcisers in Kapchorwa, having started out in 1980 at the age of 30. She only abandoned it in 2004.

She started off as an apprentice, cleaning the tools used and holding the legs of the girls as the circumciser performed the ritual. With time, she was also involved in the actual cutting until she became an "expert".

She does not know the exact number of girls she has circumcised but she estimates them to be in their thousands. Just in one season alone, she would cut up to 800 girls, with an average of 50 girls per day. A mother of nine children, Kokopbetty who is circumcised herself lives in Kwoti Parish in Kaptanya Sub County. All her female children are also circumcised.

KENYA: Where Child Marriages Thrive Unabated

When Josephine Kulea mobilised police and rescued a 10-year-old girl on the eve of her marriage, she had a reason to sit back and celebrate the timely intervention.

The nurse at Kipsing dispensary in Isiolo District, and security officers had snatched away the minor a few hours before a 55-year-old man could take her away as a fourth wife.

She had travelled with the girl to Nanyuki Town, more than 200km away from Kipsing, and was in the process of seeking an alternative home for the Standard One dropout when she received news that left her dumbfounded.

The polygamist

In a bizarre turn of events, the father of the rescued girl had decided to give out his other daughter, aged only six years, to the same suitor in an effort to ensure that the planned marriage went on.

UK/AFRICA: Female Circumcision: A Tradition Steeped in Blood

Police are to stage high-profile checks on flights to a number of African states in an attempt to stop young girls being taken abroad to be forcibly mutilated with the consent of their parents.

Research commissioned by the Department of Health suggests that more than 20,000 British girls are at risk of being forced into the agonising procedure, where all or part of their external genitals are cut off and stitched up. Officers will question all adults taking girls on certain flights, believing it is their best chance of saving thousands of children from female genital mutilation at the hands of tribal "elders" called in by their own families.

Moves to tackle the culturally sensitive issue will come as ministers from several government departments struggle to stamp out the ancient tribal tradition amid evidence that thousands of British girls are at risk from a ritual that is supposed to mark their transition into womanhood.

USA/GUINEA: A Victory For Women

Three women from Guinea won a court victory in Manhattan this month in their struggle to win asylum as victims of the barbaric form of persecution known as female genital cutting. In doing so, they have shined a light on the urgent need for consistent humane policies that treat women’s rights as fundamental human rights.

The government isn’t there yet, judging from the withering opinion of a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Ruling unanimously, the judges said the Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest immigration tribunal in the country, had committed “significant errors” and ignored its own regulations in denying asylum to the women, Salimatou Bah, Mariama Diallo and Haby Diallo. It ordered the board to reconsider the cases.

EGYPT: Stemming the Bloody Tide

With attention focused on political events in the Middle East – the Hamas-Israel ceasefire, post-Doha developments in Lebanon, and the Saudis deciding whether or not to increase oil output – one important piece of news got drowned out: on June 7 the Egyptian parliament
outlawed female genital mutilation (FGM). The BBC didn't even mention it.

I first came across the issue of FGM over a decade ago when I lived in Cairo and heard about studies that claimed over 70% of Egyptian women were circumcised in some way or other. I remember afterwards walking along the street and counting the women I passed: cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, not, not, not, cut, cut … By now I know that these studies were incorrect and that is not true that over 70% of Egyptian women have undergone FGM. The actual number is around 90%.

AFRICA: Speak Africa Campaign For No Violence Against Children And Youth Launched

The Speak Africa Campaign for No Violence Against Children and Youth was launched by the African Union, UNICEF, NGO partners in the African Movement for Children and the Speak Africa Youth Communication Initiative as part of Day of the African Child celebrations in Addis Ababa, seat of the African Union Commission.

According to the 2007 UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence Against Children, the family setting, which should hold the greatest potential for protecting children, is one of the most common sites of violence with approximately 38 million children in Sub-Saharan Africa frequently witnessing violence in their homes.

Rising food prices and inflation are contributing to increased vulnerability and violence against children and youth across the African continent.

UGANDA: Sabini Women Shun Hospitals

Ms Rose Chemangei is a 41 year-old-mother with eight children. On June 11, she walked 15km from Kwosi village to Kaproron Sub-county headquarters in Kapchorwa District to attend a sensitisation meeting on reproductive health.

Among the issues discussed were the benefits of child spacing, the current health situation in the country including reproductive health issues within the community and how these can be addressed. Women were encouraged to seek maternity services at health facilities.

Although this kind of information, Ms Chemangei admits is crucial, she is more concerned about the attitude of health workers towards pregnant women who go to deliver in the health centres.

"We hear that when you are circumcised, the nurses and midwives will not attend to you and they will chase you away," she said.

GHANA: Inhumane Aspects of Cultural Practices

Nations differ from nations, origins from origins, beliefs from beliefs, as well as cultures from cultures. Though nations differ from nations, it must be noted that within a nation the people also differ. The reality of these differences is to distinguish people from people.

In nations where there are many different people, tribes are what they usually identify themselves with. These tribes also have different cultures. The Encarta Dictionary defines culture as the beliefs, customs, practices, and social behavior of a particular nation, or people. It is also a group of people, whose shared beliefs and practices, identify the particular place, class, or time to which they belong.

UGANDA: UN Agency in Anti-FGM Campaign

THE United Nations Population Fund and a charity, Reproductive Education and Community Health, have partnered in a campaign against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Kapchorwa district.

The UN agency, the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council and the charity last week organised seminars to sensitise the youth and women leaders of Kapron and Tegeres sub-counties against the practice, which is rampant in the district.

The charity’s chairman, George William Cheborwon, said their mission was to promote the rights of every woman, girl and boy to enjoy equal opportunities in education and health.

“We want to continue the anti-genital mutilation campaign to cover as many Sabiny communities as possible in Kapchorwa and Karamoja.”

UK: FORWARD Welcomes The House Of Lords' Renewed Interest

FORWARD welcomes the House of Lords' renewed interest in FGM. Baroness Rendell of Babergh's question today in the House of Lords regarding routine disclosure by health professionals when evidence of female genital mutilation (FGM) is discovered in patients, is a step in the right direction.

In 2007, Baroness Gould of Potternewton hosted the launch of the report "A Statistical Study to Estimate the Prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation in England and Wales" which estimated that over 20,000 girls under the age of 15 are potentially at risk of FGM in England and Wales. The report which was funded by the Department of Health recommends that a survey should be undertaken to provide more reliable data on the prevalence of FGM in England and Wales to support planning and implementation of a comprehensive national strategy for the prevention and elimination of FGM in the UK.

EGYPT: The West Blamed Again as Egypt Moves to Ban Female Circumcision

The Egyptian Parliament has passed a new legislation that bans female circumcision and changes the legal minimum age for marriage to 18 years for both male and female.

Previously, Egyptian girls were allowed to legally marry at the age of 16.

[AD]The legislation, which was passed on Sunday, prescribes a jail time of two years or a fine of US$200 to US$1,000 for those who breach the ban on female circumcision.

Under the new law, which comes to effect immediately, female circumcision can only be carried out in cases of "medical necessity."

EGYPT: Egypt's Child Law Is Greeted With Stiff Opposition

Cairo: Mustafa, a father of three girls, is proud of having his children circumcised, and vows to do the same if he gets a new baby girl.

Under a new law passed by the Egyptian Parliament this week, female circumcision, also known as female genital mutilation (FGM) is criminalised.

"This is nonsense," said Mustafa, a native of the south Egyptian city of Sohag who has been living in Cairo for around 20 years. "Circumcision for girls is a must as it protects their chastity," added the 48-year-old Muslim father. "Islam also encourages circumcision for girls as well."

Egypt's Mufti Ali Juma, the country's top Muslim cleric, has, however, branded the centuries-old tradition as sinful and un-Islamic. Egypt has intensified its fight against female circumcision after the death of two local girls last year due to complications from FGM procedure.

EGYPT: New Protections for Children's Rights in Egypt

OneWorld.net note: The Egyptian Parliament passed a new children's rights bill last week that makes female genital cutting a crime punishable by fine or jail time and raises the legal age of marriage to 18.
• The move comes after protests over the deaths of two girls who experienced complications related to the procedure.
• A high-ranking Egyptian Muslim cleric, Mufti Ali Juma, supports the new laws despite opposition by many conservative Muslims.
• The bill also allows children born out of wedlock the right to health care and schooling.

Young Egyptian girls. © Centre for Development and Population Activities

USA/GHANA: One Woman's Crusade

Female genital mutilation still happens in much of the world and one woman has made it her mission to put an end to the brutal practice.

Florence Ali has gone from being a midwife in Ghana to an international activist and she was in Connecticut to bring awareness to the horrific tradition.

Draped in her country's flag and surrounded by native artists, Ali spoke of a tradition she is not proud of.

"I realized the harm that was being done to women," Ali said.

Ali became an outspoken critic of female genital mutilation after seeing its devastating effects. A young girl is held down by family members and her genitalia is cut off, all without any anesthesia.

USA: FGM Reason to Get Asylum in US

A decision by a federal appeals court in New York has come as a saviour for many asylum seeking African women in the United States. The court ruled that three Guinean women, claiming to be victims of female genital mutilation (FGM), should not be sent back to their home country, saying there were obvious errors in denying them asylum.

The three had argued earlier that being sent back to their home country, this could further perpetuate their victimisation. However a lower court had a different view, saying since they had already been mutilated, they had nothing else to loose.

The three Guinean women - Salimatou Bah, Mariama Diallo and Haby Diallo - are to remain in the US pending the review of their court hearings. The US Department of Justice was yet to review the appeals court decision and look into options to follow from.

DENMARK: Danish Couple Held For Mutilation

Danish police have arrested a couple of Sudanese origin suspected of taking their two young daughters to Sudan to be circumcised.

Female circumcision usually involves the partial removal of the woman's genitals.

It is outlawed in Denmark but remains a widespread practice in Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia.

Police said the girls, now aged nine and 11, were circumcised in 2003 during a trip to the east African nation.

The 49-year-old husband and his 40-year-old wife were arrested after Danish social services alerted police to the fact that medical examinations showed the two girls had been circumcised.

USA: Court Rejects Decisions of Immigration Board

In a scathing opinion, a federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday that immigration judges and the appellate system established as a check on their decisions committed “obvious errors” by denying asylum to three Guinean women who claimed that they were victims of genital cutting back in Africa.

The three women — Salimatou Bah, Mariama Diallo and Haby Diallo — had all appealed their asylum cases from lower courts to the Board of Immigration Appeals last year. While they had told the board that they feared for their own safety (and, in two of the women’s cases, for that of their daughters) if they were sent back to Guinea, the board, in separate decisions, ruled that because their genitals had already been cut, they had nothing more to worry about.

UGANDA: Resisting the Cut

Changing the life style of the people living in Kapchorwa and Bukwo districts at the slopes of Mt Elgon in order to end the traditional female genital mutilation (FGM) is proving to be a headache for the local leadership in the region.

Mrs Musa Sauya speaks at the 12th annual Sabiny cultural celebrations at Boma Grounds in Kapchorwa District orgainised by Reach, an NGO established to improve reproductive health conditions. Sauya says that whereas she is willing to drop FGM as a surgeon, it earns her a living and she would find it hard to educate her children if she stopped it.

Although like United Nations health experts, the district leadership is calling for stronger commitments from the local people to end the FGM in a bid to restore the dignity of the girl-child, many a traditionalist are not ready to drop the practice.

IRELAND: Ireland Must Act on Mutilation

Ireland needs to ensure that female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM) does not become established among migrant ethnic communities, according to a new report.

The report has been published as the Government considers introducing specific legislation to ban female genital mutilation (FGM).

The report by the Women’s Health Council found that while FGM is not a widespread cultural practice in Ireland, it still affects a small proportion of women living in the country and has a huge negative health impact on those women.

FGM includes procedures that intentionally alter or injure female genital organs for non-medical reasons.

NORWAY: Norway Arrest in Gambia Mutilation Case Raises Concerns

Norwegian authorities are calling for three Norwegian-born girls subjected to female genital mutilation in the Gambia to return to Europe. The father of the girls has been arrested in Norway following an investigation by local human rights workers. But activists in Africa say that rather than criminalizing the problem, it should be resolved at the community level.  For VOA, Ricci Shryock has more from Dakar.

A spokeswoman for Oslo-based Human Rights Service Hege Storhaug says finding out about the girl's circumcision was part of an investigation to end the practice.

She says this led to her group finding out girls were being sent back to the Gambia to undergo what she calls a mutilation.

SWITZERLAND: Court Rules in Case of Genital Cutting

The defendant was accused of allowing the circumcision of her 13-year-old half-sister in Somalia.

The judge found that the 50-year-old woman, who came to Switzerland in 1993 as a refugee, failed in her duty to look after the girl by sending her back to Somalia despite knowing that she was likely to be circumcised there.

Another case, involving a case of genital cutting carried out in Switzerland, is pending.

USA/KENYA: Massai Women Reach Milestone

The women of the semi-nomadic Maasai community in Kenya rarely finish grammar school and are often married with children before age 20.

On Thursday, three young Maasai bucked the trend: They donned caps and gowns to receive diplomas from Chicago State University. They are among just a few Maasai women to earn college degrees.

"I never thought that I would see this day," Eunice Sitatian Kaelo, 21, told the audience during the commencement ceremony. She is the sole recipient of the university's prestigious President's Cup, awarded for academic and leadership excellence. "I stand here representing a new legacy for the Maasai community."

KENYA: Caro's Strong Spirit Gives Hope

Steamboat Springs — Editor’s note: Clark resident Mary Walker works at the Tasaru Girls Rescue Centre in Narok, Kenya. The center was built in 2002 with funding from the United Nations, and it provides a safehouse for Maasai girls who have run away from their families to escape or been rescued from female genital mutilation and forced childhood marriage.

Having returned once again from my work at the Tasaru Girls Rescue Centre in Narok, Kenya, I want to take this opportunity to thank the Steamboat Pilot & Today for its interest in my firsthand perspective on the current political and social situation in Kenya.

In my last update, I briefly described the internally displaced persons camps that exist throughout Kenya following the post-election violence. The IDP camp in Eldoret, Kenya, houses 14,000 people. Imagine the entire population of Routt County living in tents (if you were lucky enough to be given one by the Red Cross) in an area the size of the Howelsen Hill base area. There is no sanitation or clean water, and food deliveries from the Red Cross are irregular. You do not know when your family will get its next ration of food.

BURKINA FASO: Two From Sembene: Moolaade and Xala

Reviewer: Dylan de Thomas

Moolaade
Rating (out of 5): *****

Xala
Rating (out of 5): ***½

I'll admit it: I felt a little dread at the prospects of watching Moolaade – the last film by the "Father of African cinema," Ousmane Sembene. It sat on top of my DVD player, looking every bit like the "vitamin movie" that litters many a GreenCine queue – movies that you know are good for you, but which you also feel disinclined to watch. There are even studies (beware: PDF) on the avoidance of watching movies that you should watch.

US: Should You Nip/Tuck Your Private Parts?

First it was our noses, then our breasts, then our butts, and now our — our WHAT?

That’s right — our private parts. Thanks to the proliferation of porn and crafty marketing, we’ve seen a rise in female genital cosmetic surgery. Models and celebrities are just some of the women of all ages who are seeking to improve their bedroom appearance.

But, despite its increasing popularity, many in the medical community are taking issue with this "designer genitals" rage. With costs far exceeding the benefits, these sexual surgeries have yet to be supported by solid scientific studies.

So should you — or your significant other — go under the knife?

SWITZERLAND/ANGOLA: Angola at 61st World Health Assembly

Geneva, 05/18 - Angola will participate in the 61st World Health Assembly set for May 19 to 24, in Geneva (Switzerland), under the motto "Millennium Heath Development Goals", ANGOP learnt.

Angola`s deputy Health Minister, Ruben Sicato is in Geneva leading the country`s delegation that comprises of the Permanent Representative to the United Nations and to International Organisations, Ambassador Arcanjo Nascimento, and high ranking official of that ministry.

The Angola`s Health Minister will address the assembly on May 21.

The meeting will debate issues such as the "Preparation for a pandemic, change of influence related virus and access to vaccinations and others benefits", "Implementation of International Health Regulations (2005)", "Fights Against Non transmissible Illnesses: Application of a World Strategy".

USA/KENYA: Kennewick Woman to Speak on Mutilation

Rachael Tengbom of Kennewick is fighting a centuries-old African tradition one girl at a time.

Tengbom is a native of the Maasai tribe who started an organization called Voices of Hope that rescues girls in her home of Kajiado, Kenya, from the practices of female genital mutilation and arranged marriages.

Voices of Hope is based in Kennewick, where Tengbom now lives with her husband and two daughters, and provides Maasai girls with a college education and a safe place to live until they're ready to embark upon careers of their own.

She'll give a presentation about the Maasai culture and need for intervention as part of a fundraising event at Columbia Basin College in Pasco starting at 2 p.m. Sunday. Tengbom's presentation starts at 3 p.m.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: "Our Daughters Have No Future"

Photo: Justine Dede/OCHA

Members of a women’s association in the northern town of Ndele

BANGUI, 15 May 2008 (IRIN) - Women in Ndele, a remote town in northern Central African Republic, are making a stand for their rights. The local chapter of the national women’s organisation, OFCA, has launched a campaign to alert women to their rights on issues such as female genital mutilation/cutting, early marriages and polygamy.

More than 15 percent of women in conflict-ravaged northern CAR are estimated to have experienced some form of gender-based violence, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

KENYA: This NGO's Doing a Commendable Job

Marakwet Girls’ and Women’s Project, an NGO, is doing a commendable job in the fight against female circumcision.

The organisation has intensified the campaign against the practice, which has for many decades hindered the education of local girls.

The organisation which was started about seven years ago, is working in collaboration with World Vision and the provincial administration.

It is particularly encouraging that the officials have launched serious programmes in especially Kapyego, Embobut, Tot, Maron and Chesoi aimed at educating the people on the importance of discarding the outdated practice.

GAMBIA: Nineteen Ex-Circumcisers Received Benefits

The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices affecting the health of women and childrenGAMCOTRAP, with support from the Inter African Committee on Traditional Practices based in Addis Ababa has provided over one hundred thousand Dalasi to nineteen Circumcisers from the Upper and Central River Regions to engage in Alternative Employment Opportunities Project.

The Chief of Kantora, Alhajie Bachu Ceesay of Garawol, Alkalo Lasana Manneh of Basse Manneh Kunda amongst others reminded the circumcisers that they voluntarily stopped the practice of FGM after getting the facts about the effects it has on sexual and reproductive health and called on them to make best use of the opportunity provided to them to enhance their economic status. The Alkalo of Kaba Kama, Aja Fatou Danso who was part of the delegation that witnessed the presentations, commended GAMCOTRAP for the approach it takes to present facts on FGM with respect and dignity in the communities. She noted that the support given to the Circumcisers will go a long way towards addressing poverty in their families while protecting girls from harm.

SOMALIA: Somali Women's Rights Activist Wins Roger Baldwin Award

NEW YORK - May 9 - Hawa Aden Mohamed will receive the 2008 Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty Award presented by Human Rights First in honor of her work to improve conditions for Somali women and girls at a reception at 6:30 pm Tuesday, May 13^th, held in a private home on the Upper East Side of New York City.

Mohamed has dedicated her life to advancing the health and education of Somali women and girls, to providing both emergency and long-term assistance to internally-displaced Somali families, and to abolishing the practice of female genital mutilation. Ms. Mohamed began her work over three decades ago by founding the Refugee Women’s Relief and Development Center.

DJIBOUTI: First Country To Launch The Joint UNFPA/UNICEF Global Programe To Accelerate The Abandonment of FGM/C

DJIBOUTI, 8 May 2008 – Djibouti First Lady Ms Kadra Mahamoud Haïd launched the UNFPA/UNICEF Joint Programme and Trust Fund to accelerate the abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C). Djibouti is one of the 17 countries that have been selected in Africa to implement the UNFPA/UNICEF joint program.
 
For every 10 women and girls, nine have undergone FGM/C in Djibouti. The practice of FGM/C transcends cultural, racial, and socio-economic dimensions.

A WHO study (2006) on link of FGM/C and obstetric outcome in six African countries confirmed that deliveries by women who have undergone FGM/C are significantly more likely to have caesarean section, risks for extensive bleeding, prolonged labour, and death. The risk increases with the extent of cutting, with greatest risk experienced by women who have undergone type III of FGM/C (infibulation) as it is frequently the case in Djibouti. At global level, UNICEF estimates that every year approximately 3 millions girls are being at risk of FGM/C.

ISLAND: Nurse Calls For Island To Help African Victims

A nurse who has devoted her working life to helping women in Bermuda is now aiming to assist females in Africa — and she wants you to join her.

Mother-of-two Gaynell Hayward, the Island's programme manager for maternal health and family planning, is fundraising for victims of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Ethiopia.

She is asking people to make a donation of $25 — enough to ensure that a pregnant victim of the barbaric practice can safely deliver her child.

Mrs. Hayward was inspired to help after she was told by Islander Howard Crockwell about the Tropical Health Alliance Foundation.

MALI: Woman From Mali Who Underwent Circumcision Fights For Asylum

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — Alima Traore doesn't remember when part of her genitals was removed as a young child in her native Mali. But even at 29, she still lives with the consequences.

There's the pain, the fear of future medical problems, and a persistent feeling that she has been robbed of an important element of being a woman.

"It is like some part of you is taken away. I don't feel complete at all," she said of the practice, meant to suppress sexual desires and maintain the honor of young girls. "A woman is complete when you have all parts of your body."

Traore, whose student visa expired, now faces deportation and the unsavory prospect of submitting to an arranged marriage with her first cousin if she returns home to Mali in West Africa.

USA: Court to Hear Genital Mutilation Asylum Case

Though a long-time custom in West African countries, a federal appeals court in NYC will rule whether genital mutilation is grounds for granting women asylum in the United States. According to the NY Sun, three women will be serving as a test case regarding whether the cultural custom--and their opposition to such a practice--is sufficient grounds for asylum in front of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.

Mutilation is a loaded term: Proponents of what is known as the clitorectomy claim that it promotes virtue in females by removing the possibility of sexual satisfaction. The procedure itself is rather brutal and often done without anesthetics. However, one of the woman fighting deportation, Salimatou Bah, says after undergoing the procedure at age 11, she suffered "medical and sexual complications."

USA: Amnesty International Lobby Day on Capitol Hill Focused on Global Violence Against Women

WASHINGTON, April 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Some 200 Amnesty International activists -- from across the United States and from Nepal, Tunisia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe -- will hold discussions with members of Congress and their staff on Monday, April 28, urging support for the International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA). The bipartisan bill is a historic opportunity for the United States to raise the worldwide issue of violence against women in its diplomatic work and have an impact on the suffering of millions of women and girls.

    Amnesty International USA's Executive Director Larry Cox will join activists on Capitol Hill for discussions planned with members of the House and Senate and their staffs throughout the day (more than 100 meetings are scheduled).

GHANA: African Government Urged to Promote African Values

African governments have been urged to commit themselves to enacting legislation and establishing cultural institutions and programmes which will promote African values.  They should also generate additional impetus towards the conservation of the continent’s cultural heritage and the promotion of cultural industries in Africa. 

The South African High Commissioner to Ghana, Rapulane Molekane made the call in an address read for him at the International Conference on Culture and Governance at Fumesua near Kumasi.  He said there is the need for advocacy work on the preservation of Africa’s cultural heritage, the restoration of threatened cultural sites and retrieval of cultural properties that were taken away during the period of colonialism.

NIGERIA: NGO Restates Commitment to Reproductive Health

The International Centre for the Advancement of Reproductive Health (CIFARH) has restated its commitment to the promotion of reproductive and sexual health rights in Nigeria.

Prof. Innocent Ujah, the Executive Director of the NGO, made this known Tuesday in Abuja. He said that promoting health in Nigeria would be achieved through selfless services, training, advocacy,and research.

Ujah said they were concerned about elimination of harmful traditional practices (HTPS) including Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

He said that FGM was a traditional practice that violated the rights of children and women.

CANADA: Activist MD Says Women Need to Support Each Other

Women around the world share the pain of abuse, and need to support each other, the founder of War Child Canada said in Winnipeg at the annual fund-raising breakfast for a charity that helps women who've suffered abuse.

Dr. Samantha Nutt was the keynote speaker for the breakfast to benefit the Laurel Centre, a non-profit organization that offers counselling and guidance to women who have experienced childhood or adolescent abuse.

Enlarge Image 

Dr. Samantha Nutt was the keynote speaker for a breakfast to benefit the Laurel Centre. (Ken Gigliotti / Winnipeg Free Press )

"The universality of the feminine experience transcends language and culture," said Nutt, who has worked in war-torn countries around the world. "I've seen it over and over again."

SIERRA LEONE: Paramount Chief Supports FGM

Paramount Chief of Nongowa chiefdom, Kenema district has declared his support for the controversial female genital mutilation (FGM) locally referred to as 'Bondo' society practiced by women in Sierra Leone.

PC Amara Bonya Vagahun who was reacting to an April 17 publication of Premier News newspaper which quoted him as saying "Bondo is against the law', said he has never made such pronouncement and that the author of the article did not confirm his report before publishing the story.

According to the publication the chief was speaking on the problems of quack doctors in their communities during a stakeholders' meeting on blood transfusion and obstetric practices outside the hospital complex at his court's barry on April 1 this year.

FRANCE: Alps-Riviera Province in France Seeks to Eradicate Female Circumcision

(PARIS, France) - According to the Ministries of Education and Health, nearly 60,000 women and girls are circumcised or threatened to be in France. Among those listed are about 3,000 in the Provence-Alpes - Côte d'Azur regions, according to estimates by the National Institute of Demographic Studies, based on populations of migrants.

In the Alpes-Maritimes, where the number of females excised or threatened to be is estimated to nearly 500, maternity hospitals have received their form and the investigation has already begun.

"The problem is that these women do not talk about their mutilation, they are discovered through medical examination." Dr. Nathalie Jugnet, a gynecologist in France, says that when the discovery is made at the time of delivery, it is a disaster.

USA: Speaker to Address African Health Struggles

The keynote speaker for today’s African Health Summit was once the foreign minister to the United Nations, the first lady of Somalia and the first medically trained midwife and nurse in her country.

But for Edna Adan Ismail, 70, her greatest accomplishment was the creation of the Edna Adan Maternity Hospital in an enclave of Somalia known as Somaliland. She donated her U.N. pension and other personal assets to build the hospital, where more than 7,000 babies have been born since it opened six years ago.

The health summit will “shine a light” on the contributions Ohio University students and faculty have made to health problems in Africa and will consist of two panel discussions. The summit will also present graduate programs, travel opportunities and job possibilities for graduates, said Steve Howard, director of African studies.

YEMEN: Parliament Upholds Female Circumcision

Yemen's conservatives are still in control.

After a heated debate in parliament this month, Yemeni women's rights advocates lost their battle to ban female circumcision, according to a report in the Yemen Times.

The parliament in recent days voted against a bill that would have outlawed female genital mutilation, a practice that is believed to affect almost 25% of Yemeni women.

Opponents claimed that the issue remains too sensitive among Yemeni and that no legal measure could be taken as long as there was no consensus among religious scholars against the practice.

Female circumcision is a widespread practice in the Middle East and Africa. Many Muslims believe that removing a girl's clitoris to tame her libido is a religious obligation.

UK: Midwife Offers £500 for Return of Her Laptop

MIDWIFE has offered a £500 reward for the return of a stolen laptop which stored 10 years of medical research.

US/KENYA: Mother's Misery Inspired Award Winner in US

It was her mother’s life of hardship and abuse that inspired her to seek empowerment for Kenyan girls, says a young woman honoured by Senator Hillary Clinton.

“I saw my mother’s life, working the farm so that she could provide food for us, collecting firewood, fetching water, and rearing cows that my father often sold and spent the money on himself,” Kakenya Ntaiya told the audience at an awards gala in Washington on Monday. 

“At the end of the day, my father would beat her in the name of discipline and to remind her that as a woman she does not have any rights.”

USA: V to the Tenth: Thousands of Women Gather in New Orleans for 10the Anniversary of Global Movement to Combat Violence Against Women

Democracy Now! broadcasts from New Orleans, where thousands of women are gathering to celebrate the tenth anniversary of V-Day, the global movement to combat sexual violence against women and children. V-Day began a decade ago when playwright and activist Eve Ensler held the first benefit performance of her award-winning play, The Vagina Monologues. This weekend, Ensler is organizing a two-day celebration at the Superdome called “V to the Tenth.” Its focus is on helping the women of New Orleans and the Gulf South. We speak with activists from New Orleans, Kenya and Iraq. [includes rush transcript]

USA: The Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards Winners Announced

Yesterday saw the annual Global Leadership Awards, Vital Voices event. Hosted by First Lady Laura Bush with special appearances from Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. The awards honour "women who not only have extraordinary achievements as individuals, but whose work has contributed immeasurably to the betterment of their societies."

KENYA: Kenyan Honoured for Raising Funds

Pupils at Bamba Primary School in Ganze, Kilifi District, queue for food on Monday. Schools in Ganze constituency, the poorest in Kenya, depend on the school feeding programme to keep pupils in School.  Photo/ GEORGE KIKAMI

A Kenyan woman who is raising $1 million (Sh62 million) to build a girls’ boarding school in her village was honoured by US First Lady Laura Bush at a Washington gala. 

Vital Voices Global Partnership, an NGO dedicated to empowering women around the world, bestowed its Rising Voices Award on Kakenya Ntaiya from Enoosaen in Trans Mara District. 

The prize is given to “women to look out for in the future,” Ms Ntaiya explained.

“I feel very humbled, excited and blessed to be recognised in this way,” she said in an interview.

Senator Hillary Clinton and actress Angelina Jolie also attended the ceremony at the Kennedy Centre on Monday night.

Email problems

Because of technical difficulties, email reponses were not getting delivered. This problem is being addressed and fixed. If you have tried contacting us, and did not receive a response, please send another email.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank you.

SOMALIA: Raising Awareness Against FGM In Puntland

Halima [not her real name], a mother of five girls, shudders whenever she remembers how she suffered after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM/Cutting), a practice still widespread in Somalia.

"I will not put my daughters through it," Halima told IRIN in Bosasso, the commercial capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, where an estimated 98 percent of girls still undergo the cut.

Her daughters are aged two to 15 years. "I do not want them to go through that in life," she said. "Every time I get my periods I suffer incredible pain to the point where I cannot work. I have had infections that led to miscarriage and bleedings."

The practice in Somalia involves the cutting of the external genitalia and sewing up the genitalia, leaving a small hole for urine and blood to pass, known as pharaonic circumcision.

TANZANIA: Bravo, TAMWA, For Searching For Women Activists

Tanzania Media Women Association`s 20th anniversary has clearly reflected how the association is determined in advocacy regarding African women`s activism as narrated by Special Correspondent Salma Mlindi:

On March 29, 2008 the Tanzania Media Women`s Association (TAMWA) began a week long commemoration of 20 years of advocacy for women`s human rights.

Among activities earmarked to mark the occasion include the opening of a self-sponsored office building; the launch of a Fundraising Campaign for a Women`s Media and Documentation Centre; and a book launch of TAMWA`s story in pioneering social transformation in Tanzania as experienced by members, supporters and friends.

US: Conference Addresses Africa's Policy Problem

It was the first time that the UNC chapter of the Roosevelt Institution's biannual policy conference left the borders of the United States.

At the Africa Policy Conference on Friday and Saturday, each policy center at the institution had the task of answering the prompt: "What are the most pressing issues we will face in relation to Africa in the next decade?"

"We chose Africa because it is often an overlooked policy area," said junior Meaghan Jennison, the institution's policy coordinator.

"But we were very careful in how we framed the conference because we didn't want it to be a paternalistic approach to policy with us dictating what we thought the issues would be."

The separate policy groups gave one-hour presentations on issues and their solutions Saturday, with topics ranging from female circumcision to brain drain to South Africa's regressive tax policies.

SIERRA LEONE: To Cut Or Not To Cut - Should That Be A National Issue?

Several Sierra Leonean organizations – Civil Society, Human Rights, Women’s Advocacy, Media and other groups including individuals have all sharpened their knives and cutlasses in readiness of "to cut or not to cut." Soweis and bondo girls’ fate now lie in the results of workshops, symposia and statements made by those whose responsibility it is to defend, protect and modernize Sierra Leone’s rich cultural heritage and the rights of the individuals including the right to choice.

US: Flying with Jennifer Fox

It took filmmaker Jennifer Fox four years, seventeen countries, and 1,600 hours of footage (which she whittled down to 6 hours of film) to fully cover the cross-cultural confusion of modern womanhood. The project didn't start out that high-minded; Jennifer was dating two men and not entirely happy with either, which led to an identity crisis that inspired her travels exploring what it means to be a woman today. The result is her sweeping, compelling tour de force Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman. Along her journey, there’s a lot of girl-talk over food and drinks, and in that way, Flying is a slow-moving and much smarter version of Sex and the City, where Carrie Bradshaw eschews the contrivance of writing a newspaper column and just addresses the camera directly. But at the same time, it’s a state of the union on the current female experience, covering everything from physical and sexual abuse, orgasm, sex trafficking, honor killing, female genital mutilation, in vitro fertilization, abortion, and marriage.

TANZANIA: Genital Mutilators Lay Down Tools in Monduli

As rain pounded the dark brown soil, former female circumcisers of Monduli District waded into the mud soaked Nanja section of Lepurko village, to surrender their work tools to the Arusha Regional Administrators.

They were 20 of them, all elderly women who had turned up at the open air ceremony to mark the 'White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood' an event which was observed at Regional level in Sepeko ward of Monduli District.

"We have discovered that practicing female genital mutilation not only risked our daughters' lives through excessive bleeding, but also exposed them to other infectious diseases such as HIV-Aids because a single razor normally used to operate up to ten girls at a time," said the Maasai ladies who apparently couldn't speak in Swahili, so their speech had to be translated by one Margaret Konga.

EGYPT: A Battle Over Female Circumcision

Islamists and conservative clerics are fighting proposed legislation in the Egyptian parliament that would criminalize female circumcision and raise the minimum age of when a girl can marry. The Islamists view the bill as an affront to Sharia law. 

The legislation drafted by the government-backed National Council for Motherhood and Childhood would impose a prison sentence of as long as two years and a maximum fine of 5,000 Egyptian pounds, or about $1,000. The proposal would raise the minimum age of marriage from 16 to 18. The bill has been met with a storm of anger by a number of delegates from both the majority and the Islamist opposition led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

AUSTRALIA: Aussie Girls Face Cruel Ritual of Genital Mutilation

FEARS that Australian-born girls as young as three months are being flown to Africa to undergo barbaric circumcision operations have been reported to the Department of Child Safety.

The Sunday Mail has learned that Family Planning Queensland has approached the State Government asking that a process be established to protect the children.

The organisation fears that female genital mutilation is on the rise in Queensland with the increased number of African refugees arriving in the state in recent years.

African girls face genital mutilation under the cultural traditions of countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Mali and Liberia.

The practice was made illegal in Queensland in 1994.

UK: Commission Finds UK Asylum System Falls Bellow Civilised Standards

The UK asylum system is not “fit for purpose” and falls “seriously below” the standards of a civilised and humane society, the Independent Asylum Commission said yesterday.

In its interim report, it identified a “culture of disbelief”, among decision makers where a ‘cat and mouse’ game is played to remove failed asylum seekers from the country.

The commissioners found that Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) staff often arranged enforced removals at times when refused asylum seekers could not contact lawyers or support workers and used procedures that were “inhumane and degrading”.

ERITREA: Regional Conference Against Female Genital Mutilation Conducted in Asmara

A regional conference against female genital mutilation in the Horn of Africa was conducted from March 27 to 28 at the Hager Media Hall within the premises of the Ministry of Information here in Asmara. In The conference organized by the National Union of Eritrean Women (NUEW), representatives from Djibouti, Rwanda and Uganda, as well as different international and regional organizations and invited guests took part.

Speaking at the conference, the Chairperson of NUEW, Ms. Leul Gebreab, stressed the significance of such a conference as it is being held at a time when Eritrea is striving to avoid backward and harmful practices through adopting proclamations prohibiting harmful traditional practice. She underlined that despite the fact that Eritrea has issued proclamation against female circumcision and is working diligently to control and prevent the harmful practice, a lot still remains to be done to fully uproot FGM.

UGANDA: The Fight Against Female Circumcision

FEMALE circumcision or Female Genital Mutilation is not a subject often heard in the corridors of Uganda's Parliament even if there are at least two circumcised female legislators, and scores of MP's who oppose the practice.

For women like Ms Susan Chebet of Bukwo District, a law banning the practice will come too late- but is badly needed. Ms Chebet, 32, is unable to have a natural birth because of a serious condition she got as a result of being circumcised when she was a young girl.

Her three children have all been born by caesarean section. Doctors have told her that she should not bear more children.

"I will never forget the woman who circumcised me. I was told I cannot be operated for more than three times and therefore I cannot have more than three children, yet my plan was to have five," Ms Chebet laments.

IRELAND: Nigerian Family Win Last-Minute Fight to Halt Deportation

The High Court blocked the deportation of Nigerian woman Pamela Izevbekhai and her two daughters yesterday.

Mr Justice John Edwards granted Ms Izevbekhai an injunction on the grounds that her lawyers are seeking to challenge a Department of Justice decision that she did not have grounds to seek a subsidiary protection order to allow her to remain in this country.

The injunction was granted pending the outcome of the proceedings.

She had sought the ruling to prevent the deportation, which was due to take place early next week, of herself and her two daughters, Naomi (7) and Jemima (5), on grounds of fear of female genital mutilation in Nigeria.

Last week, the family lost a lengthy legal battle when the High Court upheld the deportation orders.

GAMBIA: 75 Percent of Women Are Subject to FGM - Says Gamcotrap Coordinator

The Coordinator of GAMCOTRAP, Dr. Isatou Touray, has said that 75% of Gambian women are subjected to FGM. Dr. Touray made these remarks recently when a group of journalists, who were undergoing an eight days training program on human rights, visited her office in Bakau.

Dr. Touray said that there is no recent statistics at the moment to show the trend but they believe it is on the decline.

"It is obviously on the decline," says Dr. Touray. She explained that they have covered 63 communities in the country and that people have dropped down their knives against FGM, after being sensitized on its effects and implications, meaning that people who were practicing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) have stopped it.

A Compromise on Female "Circumcision"

Since I invited researchers to debate female initiation rites in Africa, we’ve heard from social scientists based in Chicago, Italy, England, Nigeria and Sweden. I’ve saved the last word in this round of essays for the anthropologist with the most direct knowledge of this topic: Fuambai Ahmadu, a native of Sierra Leone, who grew up in America and then went back to her homeland as an adult to undergo the rite along with fellow members of the Kono ethnic group.

Dr. Ahmadu, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, has previously published essays on the practice she calls female circumcision. In this essay, she reviews the debate here on the Lab and suggests a compromise that would protect girls and women from undergoing procedures without their consent, but she is critical of those who advocate “zero tolerance” and who refer to these surgeries as female genital mutilation:

IRELAND: Nigerian Woman Lobbies Against Deportation

Pamela Izevbekhai has been campaigning to stay in Ireland with her two daughters. She says Naomi, 7, and Jemima, 5, face female genital mutilation if they are forced back to Nigeria.

Ms Izevbekhai's oldest daughter, Elizabeth, bled to death after undergoing female genital mutilation when she was 18 months old.

SUDAN: Sudanese Bachelors Share Questions About FGM

On a recent trip to Khartoum, Meghan Sapp found herself in the middle of a frank discussion about female genital mutilation with a group of male bachelors. A couple of them knew little about the practice and were often afraid to ask.

KHARTOUM, Sudan (WOMENSENEWS)--For the past few years, I've been traveling to Sudan to either work as a journalist or as a business consultant helping develop sugar cane production or briquettes for refugees in Darfur. That's how I recently found myself sitting on a makeshift couch at the family home of a friend whom I'd met through work contacts during one of my trips. He's my age and we hit it off from the start. We kept in touch when I was at home in Belgium. My friend was raised in Virginia for much of his life. In his early 30s, he decided to leave his family and go back to Khartoum, where his family was from, and to make a life. He and his brother now live full-time in the house his parents still keep there.

KENYA:Women's Resilience Is Laudable

Kenyan women are a unique breed of species. The paradoxical way in which they lead their lives has earned them international applause. One minute, they succumb to violence and other sorts of intimidation and the next minute, they are at the forefront of advocating for their rights. Despite the myriad of challenges that they face on a daily basis, often are the times they tend to defy the odds and emerge victorious.

Violence against women remains the biggest challenge in Kenya but the same vice has brought a number of them together to fight for their rights. Their very resilience nature in handling mind-boggling issues is their number one survival mechanism. While the government of Kenya continues to make progress in combating violence against women, numerous challenges remain. Violence against women is still pervasive: domestic violence, female genital mutilation, rape, attacks and intimidation against women political candidates.

GHANA: Need to Uproot FHM from Ghana

There is no doubt that Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is one of the major negative cultural practices that affect the dignity and violate the fundamental human rights of women.

It must be emphasized that the practice does not only affect the dignity and pride of women but it also has serious health implications for them.

FGM is the practice that involves the complete removal or partial removal or alteration of the gentile for non-medical reasons.

SOUTH AFRICA: 'Designer Vagina' Trend Comes to SA

South African women following international cosmetic genital surgery trends in search of “designer vaginas” have sparked off debate among sexual health professionals and doctors about the ethics of reinventing themselves.

Women in the US are dabbling with “re-virginisation” to create nights of fun for their lovers, while others go in search of genitals that match the ideals shown in porn movies.

Clinical sexologist Marlene Wasserman, known as Dr Eve, recently attended an International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health congress in the US, where the topic of labial reduction (labia- plasty) was discussed.

“Sex has become a medical issue,” Wasserman said. “Is it a right of patients to request these operations as a form of healthcare, just because they have now become fashionable items?”

IRELAND: Mum Faces Deportation Despite Child Mutilation Claim

Pamela Izevbekhai (right), who faces deportation, leaving the High Court with her two children Naomi (7) and Jemima (5).

A lengthy legal battle by a woman to prevent the deportation of herself and two daughters, for fear of female genital mutilation in Nigeria, ended in failure at the High Court yesterday.

The court's decision to uphold deportation orders means Pamela Izevbekhai, who was arrested for deportation in Sligo more than two years ago, after she came out of hiding to see her daughters, faces imminent deportation.

GERMANY: A Change of Perspective in Favour of the Victims

Although the genital mutilation of women and girls is condemned as grievous bodily harm in countries all over the world, it is still practised even in countries like Germany, where an estimated 30,000 women are affected. Renate Bernhard reports on an alarming case in Hamburg

The Hamburg paediatrician was vigilant. She broached the topic with the parents of her two-year-old patient. The little girl was a German citizen, but her parents were from the Gambia, a country in which almost 90% of women are genitally mutilated and where the state not only does not prohibit the practice, it actually endorses it.

The child’s mother told the doctor that she had herself undergone this ritual as a child and considered it an Islamic requirement to carry out the same practice on her daughter. She was completely unaware of the fact that female genital mutilation is not called for anywhere in Islam.

KENYA: In Kenya, a Refuge From Female Circumcision

Changing culture: Masai women in Kenya's Kajiado district take part in a play about AIDS and female circumcision in December. Sadra Gaetke/NEWSCOM

Narok, Kenya - Five years ago, when Millicent was 13 years old, her father told her it was time to leave school and get married. But first, he said, the Masai adolescent must be circumcised.

Millicent had her own ideas; she had learned at a recent village workshop about the dangers of female circumcision and early marriage. But her family was unsympathetic. "I was circumcised, your mother was circumcised," her grandmother told Millicent. Fighting back tears, she explains, "In my community, it is difficult for a girl who is not circumcised to get married."

KENYA: Women Call For Concerted Effort to Fight Genital Mutilation

Female genital mutilation has come under fire from women. They say men are to blame for the spread of the vice.

Women leaders in Sericho division of the new Garbatulla District attending an Action Aid-organised forum expressed fear that the cultural practice may take long to be eradicated in the area. The practice is common in Garbatulla and Isiolo districts

Women from Modogashe, Sericho, Badana and Eresaboru locations said the local community still valued the practice. They complained that men were not helping fight the vice.

They added that wife battering was also common in the area.

USA: 'Asylum' Screening Sparks Debate

A documentary film screening sparked a discussion of female circumcision at the Women’s Center last night, with some students condemning the practice as promoting gender inequality while others argued that its cultural importance needs to be considered.

Although female circumcision is internationally condemned as a human rights violation, some argue that it has positive implications as a cultural rite of passage.

The film “Asylum,” released in 2003, follows the experiences of a Ghanaian woman, Baaba Andoh, who resisted her father’s attempts to force her to marry an older man and undergo female circumcision. Andoh fled her home country and was detained in the United States for a year before receiving asylum.

BELGIUM: Supermodel Sorry for Disappearance

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Somali-born supermodel and former James Bond girl, Waris Dirie has apologized for her surprise three-day disappearance, which led to a nationwide police search for her.

Waris Dirie had been due to speak to two conferences on women's rights.

Jean-Marc Meilleur, spokesman for the Brussels prosecutor's office said they have closed the file on her dramatic disappearance on Saturday after questioning Dirie.

She was found by police near the city's Grand' Place central square late Friday after she was reported missing on Wednesday. The supermodel has left the country but told Belgian television before she left that she is "OK."

BELGIUM: Ex-Model Waris Dirie Found in Brussels

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — Police on Friday found Waris Dirie, three days after the Somali-born model who launched a worldwide campaign against female genital mutilation had vanished.

Dirie, 43, appeared to be in good health and was being questioned by police about the disappearance, said Estelle Arpigny, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office.

She declined to give further details, saying it was unclear what had happened since Dirie vanished early Wednesday. Belgian media reports said police found her Friday afternoon walking the Brussels' Grand Place square.

Hours earlier, police had announced they were launching a nationwide search for the former model, who had last been seen getting into a cab after a mix-up over a hotel.

AUSTRALIA: Our Cause Matters to Women Everywhere

International Women's Day, observed around the world on March 8, is a great opportunity to both celebrate the achievements of those working against sexism and highlight the continued gender based inequities and injustices suffered by women throughout the world.

What inequities and injustices? Well, for starters, 70 per cent of those living in poverty are female, as are two-thirds of all uneducated children and two-thirds of the world's illiterate adults. Eighty per cent of the approximately 700,000 people trafficked into slavery (including sex slavery) each year are female, and around 130 million women and girls are victims of female genital mutilation. Every year, 500 000 women die during pregnancy and childbirth and 68,000 die as a result of unsafe abortion.

Women's Commission Hears Introduction of Texts on Women and Child Hostages, HIV/AIDS, Female Genital Mutilation, Palestinian Women

Economic and Social Council President Also Addresses Commission, Highlights Synergies between Current Session's Debate, New Development Cooperation Forum

The Commission on the Status of Women this morning heard the introduction of draft resolutions dealing with key women's empowerment issues, including health care, violence against women and women in conflict situations, ahead of informal consultations to consider the outcome of its fifty-second session, which wraps up Friday.

Also today, Leo Merores, President of the Economic and Social Council, addressed the Commission, describing the increased synergies with the Council machinery provided by the new processes of the annual Ministerial Review and the Development Cooperation Forum. He said the Commission's contribution to the Council was pertinent and he stressed the importance of the role of women in assisting people suffering from HIV/AIDS and public health issues worldwide. This year, the Economic and Social Council would focus on poverty eradication and he supported the Commission's contribution in that regard.

AFRICA: Tradition at the Heart of Violence Against Women and Girls

INTRODUCTION

The Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices IAC is an international network NGO and works in 28 African countries through its National Committees (NCs). It has 16 Group Sections in Europe, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and USA.

The Vision of IAC is to see a society in which African women and girls fully enjoy their human rights to live free from harmful traditional practices (HTPs).

The Mission is to contribute to the improvement of the health status, Human Rights and quality of life of the African women and children through elimination of harmful traditional practices and promotion of beneficial ones.

SOMALILAND: Female Genital Mutilation Still Common in Somaliland

Female genital mutilation, or FGM, is a traditional practice that is performed throughout the Horn of Africa and other parts of the continent. The procedure is often called female circumcision, and it is illegal but still common in the self-declared republic of Somaliland, where health care workers, activists and others are working to end it. Cathy Majtenyi has more for VOA.

As many as 97 percent of girls and women in Somaliland are believed to have undergone the FGM procedure

As many as 97 percent of girls and women in Somaliland are believed to have undergone the procedure.

It involves cutting some or all of the external genitalia and commonly sewing up the genitalia, leaving a small hole for blood and urine to pass.

It is an ancient practice in Somaliland and throughout the Horn of Africa.

US: Alum Asks Mother to Rethink Dangerous Custom

Nawal Nour '88 treats the repercussions of a practice not often seen here - female circumcision. An obstetrician and gynecologist at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital, she helps women who have been circumcised and tries in a culturally sensitive manner to dissuade them from doing the same to their daughters.

Nour lived in the Sudan, Egypt and England before moving to the United States at the age of 14. She knew many women and girls who faced the challenges of female genital cutting. After graduating from Brown with an undergraduate degree in development studies and international relations, she studied at Harvard Medical School. There, Nour did her own research on female genital cutting, since it was not a part of the Harvard curriculum in gynecology.

TANZANIA: A Tall Tribe Caught Short by Change

ARUSHA, Tanzania - One night when Neema Laizer was 14, her father announced that she had to go live with her new husband and his two wives the next day. Nobody asked the seventh-grader how she felt; it did not matter.

But Neema, sensing her life was about to end, refused to submit. With help from her courageous mother and an uncle who was a priest, she fled her family's rural compound that night. Driven over bad roads to this city near Mount Kilimanjaro, she ended up at a center that places girls in schools and keeps them safe from forced marriage.

"I wanted to study, maybe go to university and be a doctor," she said recently, days after graduating from a high school she never would have seen had she been married off four years ago.

SIERRA LEONE: Cultural Practices Buttress S. Leone Poverty - UN

Harmful cultural practices such as female genital mutilation are hampering efforts to reduce poverty in Sierra Leone, which has the world's worst child and maternal mortality rates, a top U.N. official said.

Discrimination against women is also partly responsible for the social problems that have persisted since the 1991-2002 civil war, said Ann Veneman, executive director of child agency UNICEF, after a