What will it take to stop FGM?

As long as women have no property or ownership rights, they cannot control their bodies and lives. It is obvious that it is in the economic interest of every African man to continue FGM. And because there is a global mutual support system among men (though it is never discussed), most men in all societies do not speak against practices to control women, let alone work effectively to stop them. Evidence of this complicity is seen in the failure of the vast number of international organizations such as WHO, UNICEF, and UNDP to do anything effective to stop this butchery. It is absolutely certain that if similar tortures were inflicted on boy children the whole world would rise up to stop it by any and all means.

Although FGM has been classified as a human rights violation by the U.N. Office of Human Rights in Geneva and at the 1993 U.N. Human Rights Conference in Vienna, and medicalization of FGM is a criminal offense and against the statutes of most national and international medical associations in much of the world, the means to globally carry out a ban on FGM in any form is lacking.

In spite of the historic 1948 document the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which set the standards for the achievement of human rights and which has had a powerful influence on the development of contemporary international law; in spite of the U.N.'s 1952 Convention on the Political Rights of Women; in spite of the U.N.'s 1962 Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages; in spite of the U.N.'s 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (see Dianne Tangel-Cate's article on page 5 and David Gallup's article on page 7); and in spite of the U.N.'s 1967 Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, women and girl children are the victims of continuing and flagrant violations of their human rights. The incomprehensible part of all this is that most of the the countries that allow FGM have ratified these conventions.

As is continually pointed out, the U.N. has no enforcement powers nor will the nation-states willingly "give up" male control of women and children. Only with a World Court of Law will there be protection for the oppressed of the world.

Reference:
(1) By Marcia L. Mason, http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.worldservice.org/issues/junjul96/fgm.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.worldservice.org/issues/junjul96/fgm.html&h=774&w=544&sz=102&hl=en&start=31&um=1&tbnid=DWNNio99kLZeIM:&tbnh=142&tbnw=100&prev=/images%3Fq%3DFGM%26start%3D20%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN