YOUNG AFRICANS REJECT
FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION
INTERNATIONAL
By Mona Eltahawy
- WEnews staff
NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--When
Genet Girma and Addisie Abosie
got married in Kembatta, Ethiopia,
they did the unthinkable in
their community. Genet wore
a placard saying "I am
not circumcised, learn from
me" and her groom wore
a matching one that said "I
am very happy to be marrying
an uncircumcised woman."
During a recent
visit here, Genet talked about
being the first known woman
in Kembatta to marry in public
who had refused the mutilation
to her genitals that is considered
a rite of passage for all
girls and young women in that
part of Ethiopia. Between
the ages of 16 and 18, young
women in that region are subjected
to what is known as step-two
female genital mutilation:
the clitoris, as well as the
inner and outer labia, is
removed. This type of mutilation
is also known as excision.
Before her wedding
last year, Genet explained,
she ran away from home rather
than undergo the ordeal. Both
her family and that of Addisie
rejected the young couple
and would not attend their
wedding. Because of Genet
and Addisie's courage in so
openly confronting the practice,
some 2,000 other people did
attend the ceremony however,
which was also televised and
covered extensively in Ethiopia's
main newspaper. Their families
have only recently accepted
the couple, who are expecting
their first child.
Genet and Addisie
were in the United States
recently as part of a tour
organized by Equality Now
to raise funds and highlight
the work of Africa's young
people who have rejected female
circumcision and who are working
to end it in their communities.
"They are
incredibly brave," said
Bogaletch Gebre, founder and
director of the Kembatta Women's
Self-Help Center, who accompanied
the couple on their speaking
tour. "What they have
done is hard to describe;
it's really ground-breaking,
a lightning bolt.
"A girl
who is not circumcised is
not marriageable in Kembatta,"
Gebre added. "First of
all, nobody even questions
if you are not; it's a given
that you are. But neighbors
know if you are not cut because
everybody knows everybody's
business in rural areas. Genet
was the eighth daughter in
her family but the first to
refuse FGM."
Since their
wedding and public stand against
female genital mutilation,
ten other couples have followed
suit.
Gebre, who herself
was mutilated when she was
6 years old, was emphatic
on the need for women's groups
across the world to speak
out against the practice and
not mince words in deference
to cultural relativism.
"When culture
affects one's human integrity,
when it violates it be it
in terms of gender or in terms
of ethnic group, I think that
culture should be condemned
because whenever one individual
is affected, denied that right
of whole being, denied of
their integrity and human
right, we're diminished as
people wherever we are,"
Gebre said.
Sisters'
Activism Leads to Criminalization
of Female Circumcision in
Kenya
Accompanying
the Ethiopian couple on the
tour were Edna and Beatrice
Kandie, two sisters from Kenya
who defied their father and
refused to be mutilated. Their
stance led to groundbreaking
legislation in their country
that criminalizes female circumcision.
With the help
of Kenya-based human rights
activist Ken Wafula, who also
took part in the U.S. speaking
tour, they won a court order
that forbade their father
from forcing them to undergo
the ritual.
"Our father
was very hostile at first
and we had to run away from
home," Beatrice Kandie
said. "Most of our friends
and the whole community abandoned
us because they didn't like
what we were doing but they've
accepted us now. Since our
case, nobody in our village
has been circumcised. I'm
happy."
None of the
Kandie sisters' four younger
siblings have been mutilated.
In addition, since working
on their case, Wafula said
he has been able to protect
17 other girls from mutilation
and none of the younger girls
in the Kandies' village have
been subjected to the ritual.
The World Health
Organization estimates that
6,000 girls a day are genitally
mutilated. The least extreme
form is known as clitoridectomy,
which is the partial or total
removal of the clitoris. The
most extreme form is infibulation,
which is the removal of all
external genitalia and the
stitching together of the
two sides of the vulva, leaving
only a very small vaginal
opening.
Doctors say
genital mutilation causes
lasting psychological trauma,
extreme pain, chronic infections,
bleeding, abscesses, tumors,
urinary tract infections and
infertility.
Difficult
Birthing by Couple's Moms
Influences Decision to Speak
Out
The Kandie sisters
said they began to question
the ritual when a pastor speaking
at their church alerted them
to the fact that circumcision
was prescribed in the Bible
for boys only. Female genital
mutilation is practiced in
communities of different faiths.
The process
took a little longer for Ethopia's
Genet and Addisie. Speaking
through an interpreter, Genet
said that whenever her mother
insisted that she succumb
to the ritual, she put her
off by saying she would do
so after she finished her
education. Both she and Addisie
learned of the harmful effects
of female circumcision through
the educational and advocacy
work of the Kembatta Women's
Center at their school.
They said they
were able to use the information
the center gave them to make
the link between female circumcision
and their respective mothers'
difficulty in giving birth.
Several years before he got
married, Addisie decided that,
unlike all the men in his
community who took it for
granted that their brides
were cut, he would not expect
his wife to have undergone
the procedure. The turning
point for him came when he
attended the birth of his
mother's sixth child. (She
would eventually give birth
14 times, but only 11 of the
children survived.)
At the time,
Addisie was a teen-ager, sitting
outside the room waiting for
the arrival of his latest
sibling. His mother's labor
lasted for four days and Addisie
left before the actual birth,
because, he said, he could
not bear to stay when he heard
the traditional birth attendant
ask for a blade.
A few years
later he went to the same
birth attendant, also a bone
setter, to treat a soccer
injury. He asked her why she
had requested the blade all
those years ago. The birth
attendant told him that as
a result of circumcision,
his mother's genitals were
scarred so badly they had
lost their elasticity and
the only way to help the baby
out was to cut through the
scar tissue.
Africa's young
are beginning to have access
to the type of information
that permits them to question
and resist the routine mutilations,
said Kembatta's Gebre, despite
the cultural pressures.
"We are
each other's keepers"
Gebre said. "We must
be each other's supporters
for whenever one of us is
hurt or violated, all of us
are violated."
Mona Eltahawy
is a staff writer for Women's
Enews. Her opinion pieces
and commentaries have appeared
in the Washington Post and
The New York Times.
For more
information:
Equality Now:
-
http://www.equalitynow.org
World Health
Organization-- - Gender and
Women's Health Department
- "Female Genital Mutilation":
- http://www.who.int/frh-whd/FGM/
Spanish
Government Addresses Mutilation
of African Immigrants
MADRID, Spain
(WOMENSENEWS)
--A Spanish region with a
large immigrant population
has launched a pioneering
project to protect African
girls from genital mutilation,
the tradition that some sub-Saharan
families bring with them as
they seek a new life in Europe.
The semi-autonomous
Catalonia region, an economic
and industrial powerhouse
in northeastern Spain, has
begun distributing a manual
designed to help teachers,
doctors, social workers and
police look for telltale signs
from girls who are at risk
of or have suffered from genital
mutilation, also known as
female circumcision.
The program
was launched last summer after
more than a year of research
by the immigration department
of the Catalonia regional
government, which plans to
hand out 100,000 copies of
the manual. Special emphasis
was placed on northernmost
Gerona province, where the
immigrant community is composed
largely of people from sub-Saharan
countries in which female
genital mutilation is common.
Salvador Obiols,
head of the immigration department,
said the goal of the program
is not to alarm Spaniards
or make them think horrible
things of immigrants.
"This document
aims only, and I mean only,
to dissuade immigrants from
the practice," Obiols
said. "The point is to
make people aware that this
should not be done because
it is illegal and it is a
barbarity."
-- Daniel
Wools is a journalist in Madrid.
