Eliminating FGM

WHO is currently supporting studies that will increase knowledge on how best to contribute to the abolition of FGM.

The studies cover three major themes:

FGM and decision-making processes

Recent reviews suggest that one reason for the limited success in eliminating FGM is that there is insufficient understanding of the decision- making process. In most countries where FGM is prevalent, more women than men support the practice. Women's attitudes to FGM are complex: in countries where the practice is almost universal, many women say it should be stopped and a large proportion of the women who say it should be stopped still ensure that their own daughters undergo the procedure.

A study in areas on the Senegal–Gambia border is looking at how decisions on FGM are made. Preliminary results show that:

The main factors promoting abandonment of FGM were: fear of legal prosecution, fear of transmitting HIV/AIDS, and direct experiences of death or adverse health outcome.

Important factors in the continuation of the practice were: peer pressure, both for adults and children, and pressure from the older generation. Marriageability did not play a central role.

Decisions on FGM of daughters are generally taken by the extended family, in which grandmother and paternal aunts exercising considerable influence. Also some adult women are subjected to FGM when marrying into groups who practice FGM. In those cases, pressure from co-wives and the man's family is important.

Some information from the first phase of this study can be found in: Are there "stages of change" in the practice of female genital cutting?: qualitative research findings from Senegal and the Gambia - African Journal of Reproductive Health 2006; 10 [2]: 57-71

Community interventions to eradicate FGM

An operations research study has been designed to introduce a combination of community-based interventions that have been shown to contribute to the abandonment of FGM. An extensive review of interventions has shown that activities such as community awareness-raising, promotion of intergenerational dialogue, and other social mobilization activities can contribute to behaviour change. The study will start in Burkina Faso and Sudan in 2007.

FGM and sexuality

In the first half of 2006 the Programme issued a call for proposals for research on “the role of female sexuality in women’s continued support of FGM”. Specifically, the research should examine how sociocultural beliefs about, among other factors, female sexuality, sexual morality and femininity affect women’s support of FGM and also how interventions should best be designed to induce women to withdraw their support for the practice. HRP received 30 research proposals, of which two have been selected for funding. For reference see call for proposals (Call for proposals is closed)
Reference:
(1) WHO, http://www.who.int/reproductive-health/fgm/eliminating.htm

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