February 6, 2003
African Women Gather to Denounce Genital Cutting
New York Times

Some of the activists who gathered here in the Ethiopian capital today to combat the traditional practice of genital cutting had had the procedure performed on them when they were girls.

By MARC LACEY

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Feb. 5 — Some of the activists who gathered here in the Ethiopian capital today to combat the traditional practice of genital cutting had had the procedure performed on them when they were girls. Others, before learning of the serious health risks, had allowed their daughters to undergo the painful rite, which is steeped in tradition and myth.

But whether they knew the practice personally or not, the women from across Africa who attended an international conference on genital cutting said that far more had to be done to end what they consider female genital mutilation.

To lend urgency to the campaign, the first ladies of Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Mali and Guinea all condemned the cutting of young girls, which is practiced in 28 countries in Africa and the Middle East. Chantal Campaoré, married to Burkina Faso's president, called female genital cutting "the most widespread and deadly of all violence victimizing women and girls in Africa."

Participants urged governments in Africa, as well as those throughout the rest of the world, to put in place bans on the practice. Still, they acknowledged that ending the cutting will only come by educating communities — young girls and boys, their parents and the local leaders who endorse the practice and carry it out.

"From the screams you hear you know it's painful," said Roselyn A. Odera, a Kenyan who is the African program director for Equality Now, a New York-based advocacy group that is fighting the cutting. "There's no anesthesia. The instruments are rudimentary. It's beyond imagination how anyone could do this to another human being — especially little girls."

But the practice goes on, often surreptitiously these days because about half of Africa's 53 nations already have prohibitions in place. The World Health Organization estimates that 130 million girls and women have undergone some form of cutting of the clitoris. In its most extreme form, still practiced widely in Somalia and Ethiopia, the outer labia are sliced and the remaining issue is sewn shut.

Slowly, opponents say, this deeply rooted tradition is being abandoned among the younger generation, although thousands of girls are still thought to undergo the cutting every day, most of them forcibly.

Recently, some young girls in Kenya, where the practice is officially banned, resorted to lawsuits to prevent their parents from compelling them to undergo the cuts, which are seen as a way of ensuring chastity by reducing the sex drive of girls.

In Ghana, the parents of a young girl who was forcibly cut sought to prosecute the woman who cut her as well as the ones who held her down and danced around her to usher her into womanhood. The prosecutor dropped the case, but activists intend to pursue a civil claim.

The many education campaigns being pushed across the continent have even reached rural Ethiopia, where as many as 90 percent of girls still undergo genital cutting.

Last fall, a 20-year-old woman from southern Ethiopia raised a stir when she refused to be cut. Genet Girma, who was thrown out of her home as a result, wore a placard at her wedding saying: "I am not circumcised, learn from me."

Addisie Abosie, her longtime boyfriend, wore a similar sign declaring, "I am very happy to be marrying an uncircumcised woman."

The protest shocked elders, but it has already prompted other girls to forgo cutting ceremonies as a prelude to marriage.

"The silence has been broken," said Bogaletch Gebre, an Ethiopian activist who herself underwent so-called female circumcision when she was 6. "Although it is hard to get rid of long-entrenched cultural practices, I hope we will succeed to eradicate this scourge."

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