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Indonesia: Fighting Female Genital Mutilation

CNN, 6.2.2014. Many Indonesian Muslims carry out the procedure of FGM as part of their religion without questioning. Yet, there are some Muslims who take a stand against FGM in Indonesia. CNN made a short documentary about FGM in Indonesia. Watch here

The Deepest Cut

Y-Magazin, Oman, 5.2.2014. It’s a practice that is banned in Oman’s hospitals, yet female circumcision is being carried out on babies and young girls across the Sultanate. Y investigates. Report by Kate Ginn

The painful memories are buried deep but not forgotten. Muna remembers the voice of her mother calling her.

“She was saying ‘I’ll buy you an ice cream and a yoghurt-filled chocolate’. I joyfully ran behind her in my green trousers and dress,” she recalls. “We walked into dark roads further than the shop. God, I will never forget how sickening and awful that place was.”

Muna was not going to the store for sweets. Her mother was taking her to be circumcised, as she herself had been at the same age.

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Eminent Saudi Cleric: Female Genital Mutilation a ‘Noble Act’

4.2.2014. Sheikh Mohamad Alarefe recently tweeted his sentiments favoring mutilating women to close to 8 million of his followers on Twitter.

Sheikh Mohamad Alarefe is a popular Saudi Arabian Islamic theologian and a professor at the King Saud University. A recent “tweet” to his almost 8 million followers on his Twitter account stated: “Circumcision [FGM] is a noble act to do to women. There’s nothing wrong with doing it. Some religious scholars have issued fatwas that it’s not allowed because many that perform the circumcision cut too much and they cause damage to the woman.” Read full article

Australian girl circumcised in Indonesia

ninemsn, 28.1.2014. An Australian father charged with organising to have his baby daughter circumcised allegedly travelled to Indonesia for the procedure.

The man from New South Wales, who cannot be named, took his then nine-month-old girl overseas, where she was circumcised sometime between February and March of 2012, police allege.

But it wasn’t until the girl’s mother took her to a doctor six months later that authorities were alerted to what had allegedly happened. Following an investigation, the father was arrested on December 31 last year by officers attached to the Sex Crimes Squad. He was later charged with aiding, abetting or procuring female genital mutilation. Read more

Study in Yemen shows decline in FGM rates

A recent study about female genital mutilation (FGM) in Yemen based on the UN and government implemented Domestic Health Surveys shows a small, yet relevant drop in FGM. This decrease can be connected to campaigns and government measures taken against FGM.
The authors evalutated the answers of 10,345 (in 1997) and 11,252 (in 2003) ever married women. They found that the percentage among most-recently-born daughters who received FGM declined from 29.3% in 1997 and 22.4% in 2003 according to the mothers. The rate among daughers of women who had undergone FGM declined from 61.9% in 1997 to 56.5% in 2003. The percentages of women who had undergone FGM and who supported the continuation of FGM and of husbands who also supported its continuation decreased from 78.2% and 60.1% in 1997 to 70.9% and 49.5% in 2003, respectively. At the same time precentage of women who had heard about FGM increased from 50.5% to 56%.
Th results seem to underline the effectiveness of awareness raising even if measures are minor. In Yemen, a ministerial decree prohibiting health providers from performing FGM was passed in 2001. No larger campaigns were undertaken.
Non-surprisingly, the study also found that daughters whose parents opposed the practice were less likely to undergo FGM. Important was the finding that not only the mothers but also the husbands opinion plays a role here.
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Al-Khulaidi GA, Nakamura K, Seino K, Kizuki M (2013) Decline of Supportive Attitudes among Husbands toward Female Genital Mutilation and Its Association to Those Practices in Yemen. Dezember 2013, PLoS ONE 8(12): e83140. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083140

Anti-FGM Campaigners Mark Progress in Egypt

We News, 23.12.2013. By Jessica Gray

After the death of 13-year-old Suhair al Bata’a this summer, an intensive awareness campaign about the hazards of FGM/C reached into 11 governorates across Egypt. But advocates say the battle against a practice dating back to the age of the Pharaohs will take time and persistence.

CAIRO, Egypt (WOMENSENEWS)– Egyptian gynecologist Dr. Randa Fakhr Eldeen still remembers the horror she felt 20 years ago at seeing a victim of female genital mutilation, or cutting, for the first time.

The girl, only about 10 years old, had been rushed to Manshiet el Bakry Hospital’s emergency room in the capital, suffering massive blood loss. Eldeen, still in training, said she was confused by the girl’s life-threatening injuries.

“I didn’t know what had happened because we don’t practice FGM/C in my family . . . It’s not taught in medical school . . . She was unconscious and we had to give her [several] blood transfusions. I think she was given six bags of blood. She was going to die and her mother [kept] crying about her hymen,” recalls Eldeen. “I couldn’t stay in the emergency room. I had to leave. I was crying.”

FGM/C, also known as female circumcision, has a long history in Egypt. She says the practice came from Ethiopia during the Pharaonic era. In 2007 the practice was outlawed after the death of a 12-year-old in Minya. Nonetheless, the vast majority of women between 15 and 49 have endured the procedure. A 2008 Egyptian Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) of women married at least once puts the estimate at 91 percent. Read More

Sexual mutilations outside Africa : new report and new denial except the Iraqi case

Sisyphe, 19.12.2013. Interview with Oliver M. Piecha, researcher at Stop FGM in the Middle East

by Mirielle Vallette

The new summary report of UNICEF still does not dare to address the issue of female genital mutilation in the Middle East and South East Asia. Wadi, an German-Iraqi NGO lobbies to make things change.

UNICEF have compiled data collected during 20 years in 28 countries in Africa and Yemen. For the first time, they include Irak. They summarize their findings in a report released in July 2013 (1). In most countries, a great part of girls and women who have undergone mutilations do not see the benefit of them and believe that this practice should stop. The practice continues mainly because mothers who get their daughter mutilated think that other mothers expect them do it as well. As they never talk together about the topic, they do not know that many women are not favorable. A lot of men are also opposed to them. (more…)

The Lancet: FGM in the Middle East

13.12.2013. The renown science magazine “The Lancet” acknowledges on its editor’s page that FGM exists beyond Africa. Under the title “Female genital mutilation in the Middle East” Farrokh Habibzadeh affirms:

“FGM is mainly practised in Africa but is also done in other regions. For example, the prevalence of this procedure is very high in Iraqi Kurdistan. Saleem and colleagues reported that 23% of more than 1500 girls with a mean age of almost 14 years from Iraqi Kurdistan had had FGM, at a mean age of 5 years. FGM is also common in Iranian Kurdistan and Egypt where the procedure is prohibited by law.”
This is a good step ahead even if there are still many countries missing in the list.

Female genital mutilation on the rise among Southeast Asian Muslims

Global Post, 10.12.2013. More than 90 percent of women surveyed in Malaysia have been circumcised, and experts say increasing regional Islamic conservatism may be the reason why.

Though World Health Organization reporting in 2011 indicated a decline in the practice of female genital mutilation — also known as female circumcision — experts say it is actually being practiced at much higher rates among Southeast Asian Muslims than previously thought.

The rise, they suggest, correlates directly to increasing conservative attitudes throughout the region.

On December 20, 2012, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously accepted a resolution on the elimination of female genital mutilation, saying that the practice affects between 100 and 140 million women and girls worldwide. But nearly a full year later, it appears the ban has had little to no effect in the southernmost tip of Southeast Asia.

A 2012 study conducted by Dr. Maznah Dahlui, an associate professor in Malaysia’s University of Malaya’s Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, found that 93.9 percent of Muslim women surveyed had been circumcised. In Indonesia, a 2010 Population Council study of six provinces indicated that between 86 and 100 percent of teenage girls had undergone the procedure. In both studies, 90 percent of Muslim women surveyed expressed support for the practice, claiming that it fulfills a religious obligation and fosters purity in women by controlling their sexual desire.

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Iraqi Kurdistan fights female circumcision

Deutsche Welle. 9.12.2013. Female circumcision is slowly declining in Iraqi Kurdistan. Years of campaigning and a law against the practise have borne fruit. Some villages went from 100 percent of all young girls being circumcised to none.

“Circumcision brought us problems. It is much better for husband and wife when it is not happening.” The mokhtar of Twtakal, a small village in Iraqi Kurdistan is very clear about it. The practice of FGM, or female genital mutilation, should be eradicated.

The village chief is proud that his village has stopped circumcising its women, where only two years ago still every mother had it done to her daughters. It was a bad habit, Kak Sarhad told DW. “For men, who have all these layers, it is cleaner. But women don’t have that and don’t need it.”

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