Female circumcision

[Al-khiyal]

Eritrea has banned female circumcision, a life-threatening tradition that aid groups say afflicts 90 per cent of the country's women.

A government statement issued on Thursday said anyone who requested, took part in or promoted the practice faced a fine of several hundred dollars or up to 10 years in jail.

"Female circumcision is a procedure that seriously endangers the health of women, causes them considerable pain and suffering besides threatening their lives," the statement said.

"Whosoever requests, incites or promotes female circumcision ... shall be punishable with a fine and imprisonment."

The ban took effect on March 31, it said.

Female circumcision, also called female genital mutilation (FGM), is widespread in the Horn of Africa and involves cutting off the clitoris and other parts of the female genitalia.

There are degrees of severity and many practitioners are untrained and use crude instruments.

"FGM is a deep-rooted culture and it needs a persistent continuous effort [to halt it]," Luul Ghebreab, president of National Union of Eritrean Women, said.

"We do not believe [this ban] will automatically eradicate circumcision, but surely it will play a role."

Up to 140 million women and girls worldwide are estimated to have undergone female circumcision, and UN agencies estimate that another three million a year are subjected to it.

A health survey by Eritrea's government in 2002 found that 62 per cent of circumcised women in the Red Sea state had the procedure done before their first birthday. Less than one per cent had been performed by people with medical training.

Eritrea bans female circumcision

[Al-khiyal]

DIAMAKOUTA, Senegal, May 29, 2007 -- Female circumcision was renounced in 212 villages in Senegal and Gambia May 27, along with weddings featuring child brides.

Some 1,500 inhabitants from the 12 Gambian and 200 Senegalese villages gathered in Diamakouta in southern Senegal near the Gambian border for a ceremony led by Tostan, a local Senegalese nongovernmental organization working to eradicate female circumcision.

Following witness accounts, theater pieces, and dance performances aimed at showing the risks and misery caused by female circumcision and forcing children into wedlock, the ceremony ended with a young girl reading a joint declaration in English, French, and several local languages vowing to halt the practices.

Tostan, which means "breakthrough" in Wolof, the most widely spoken language in Senegal, has been working for a decade to eradicate female circumcision in the country through local actions and education.

Sunday marked the 26th declaration in Senegal vowing to halt female circumcision since 1997.

In all, 2,299 villages, or 45 percent of the 5,000 communities where the rite was still in practice 10 years ago, have vowed to renounce the tradition, according to Tostan.

"It was very difficult to begin with. The villagers were very attached to their traditions. We had to get the religious and traditional leaders as well as women involved to convince the communities to renounce child marriages and female circumcision," Tostan national coordination Kalidou Sy said.

Circumcision, which is already a health risk because many practitioners lack appropriate medical equipment, can range from the stitching up of young girls' vaginas to the excision of the clitoris.

Among the long-term complications are cysts, painful sexual intercourse, urinary incontinence, and difficulties with childbirth.

The practice was banned in Senegal in 1999 but persists in a number of the country's rural areas.

According to the United Nations children's agency UNICEF, around 130 million of the world's girls and women have been circumcised and 3 million face the risk of circumcision.

Senegal, Gambia villages give up female circumcision

[Al-khiyal]

July 1, 2007 -- Public outcry over the death of a 12-year-old girl at the hands of a doctor performing female circumcision has forced health authorities in Egypt to ban the practice.

Badour Shaker died this month while undergoing the procedure in an illegal clinic in the southern Egyptian town of Maghagh. Her mother, Zeniab Abdel Ghani, said she had paid 50 Egyptian pounds (£5) to a female physician to perform the procedure.

A post mortem showed Badour died from an anaesthetic overdose.

The case sparked widespread condemnation of female circumcision, or genital mutilation. Egyptian newspapers reported how Badour had given out sweets to pupils in her class earlier on the day of her death, celebrating her good exam results.

The Egyptian Health Ministry has issued a decree stating it is 'prohibited for any doctors, nurses, or any other person to carry out any cut of, flattening or modification of any natural part of the female reproductive system'. The ban is not as enforceable as a law.

A 2003 Unicef survey found 97 per cent of married women in Egypt had been circumcised and half of all Egyptian girls aged 10 to 18 had undergone the procedure. The country's supreme religious authorities last week stressed Islam is against female circumcision.

Egypt outlaws circumcision after 12-year-old girl dies

[Cheba_Mami]

It was about time to get that insight! but why did it costs the girls life, it is 2007, people should know by now what is wrong, people in egypt are not deprived from the media,scientific knowledge, healhtcare etc. these women know it is wrong to ruin a daughters bodypart. God or nature never created anything for no reason.

people should know what to do! learn a daugther to be respectful, clean and pure. and make sure do succeed in that task of being a good mother. Instead of hoping the daughter will never desire anything by removing/damaging her bodyparts. (and also killing her desires for life, even towards her husband. great, then she is a thing only, not a human being? ! and the men can have fun all over the country rediculous!

it is a shame people still have to explain this on and on!
women have the same right in life as men. they were created that way too.

[Al-khiyal]

Egypt outlaws circumcision after 12-year-old girl dies

CAIRO, July 4, 2007 -- Egypt's Muslim religious hierarchy issued a decree on the state MENA news agency Tuesday outlawing female circumcision as un-Islamic as the authorities prepared to submit a total ban to parliament.

"The traditional form of excision is a practice totally banned by Islam because of the compelling evidence of the extensive damage it causes to women's bodies and minds," said the decree issued by the office of the mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa.

The Egyptian government announced plans June 28 to impose a total ban on female circumcision, the widely-practiced removal of the clitoris, but the draft law still faces a tough debate in parliament before it is passed.

Officially the practice, which affects both Muslim and Christian women in Egypt and goes back to the time of the Pharaohs, was banned in 1997 but doctors were allowed to operate "in exceptional cases."

Health minister Hatem Al Gabali has now decided to ban every doctor and member of the medical profession, in public or private establishments, from carrying out a clitoridectomy, a ministry spokesman said June 28.

Any circumcision "will be viewed as a violation of the law and all contraventions will be punished," said the official, adding that it was a "permanent ban."

A government survey in 2000 said that the practice was carried out on 97 percent of the country's women aged between 15 and 45 years of age.

In the latest fatality, 12-year-old Bedur Ahmed Shaker was taken by her mother to a private clinic in Minya, a town on the Nile south of Cairo, for the operation. She died before she could be transferred to hospital.

Egyptian clerics say female circumcision un-Islamic

[Al-khiyal]

Mauritania confronts tradition of female genital mutilation

March 2, 2008 -- Ten United Nations agencies launched a joint campaign Wednesday (February 27th) to reduce the practice of female genital mutilation by 2015, and eradicate it entirely "within a generation".

UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro, who announced the initiative, said that while "communities that practice female genital mutilation report a variety of social and religious reasons for continuing with it, [when] seen from a human rights perspective, the practice reflects deep-rooted inequality between the sexes, and constitutes an extreme form of discrimination against women."

The UN action plan unveiled last week said an estimated 71.3 % of girls and women between the ages of 15 and 49 in Mauritania had undergone female genital mutilation, also called female circumcision or "cutting".

In Mauritania, most people performing the operations are traditional attendants who don't have medical experience or knowledge of sanitation. This reality threatens the lives of many young girls. Bleeding and shock are among the immediate consequences, but long-term health effects can include chronic pain, infections and trauma.

"I remember well the day when I was circumcised. I was seven years old at that time," Fatema told Magharebia. "One of our female neighbours did the operation. I was in great pain. My hands were tied. I was bleeding, and it was dealt with using traditional methods. Later, I noticed a weakness in my sexual abilities, something that stayed with me for a while."

Fatema added, "The strange thing is that my family was very convinced of that shameful tradition. Therefore, all my sisters were subjected to the same experience. After this bitter experience, I hope to make my daughters avoid this ordeal which sound human nature rejects."

Mauritanian civil society has not yet launched awareness campaigns to curb the phenomenon socially or religiously, nor has the government enacted a law banning female genital mutilation.

However, social worker Mohamed El Salek Ould Mohamed Lamine noted, "We have recently seen important medical and religious symposiums on state media channels. We hope they are the start of a serious examination of the phenomenon of female genital mutilation, which results in many social and health problems. Figures and statistics in this field are frightening, and require urgent efforts aimed at changing mentalities."

Some Mauritanian families who engage in the practice use religion as a pretext to justify what they consider part of their cultural heritage. This is despite the fact that clerics in the country have announced that female genital mutilation has no basis in religion.

One middle-aged woman told Magharebia in an angry voice, "It's a necessity and a religious duty at the same time: it is a necessity because it preserves the dignity of the women as well as that of her family and it is a religious duty because Islam preached it. For these two reasons, our ancestors were interested in cutting their daughters. We are quite sure that our ancestors were not doing something in vain."

But according to Imam and jurisprudent Saaden Ould Bouh, "The phenomenon of female genital mutilation doesn't have any roots in the Qur'an or sunnah. Rather, it is a social tradition that has merely been practiced by certain societies for some time."

He continued, "Islamic sharia, whose principle is based on the saying 'no excess or negligence,' can only endorse things that serve humanity in this world and the afterlife. Therefore, this practice, which is harmful to society and women alike, must disappear. Leaders, such as media people and others, have to enlighten public opinion on this matter."

Mauritanian women may see changes soon. According to a source close to the Mauritanian government, a group of MPs is currently preparing a draft law to ban the practice.

[Al-khiyal]

Egypt's parliament bans female circumcision, marriage under 18

Cairo, June 8, 2008 -- The Egyptian parliament has passed new laws banning female circumcision and setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage for both genders, local media said on Sunday.

The new legislation, passed on Saturday, imposes a jail penalty of three months to two years or a fine of 190 to 940 dollars on any one practicing female circumcision, the official al-Ahram newspaper said.

Being a part of the child's rights bill, the law prohibits the circumcision unless in cases of 'medical necessity.'

The legislation will be immediately enforced.

Members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, who are independents in parliament, were furious about the new legislation, with MPs charging that it 'contradicts with the Islamic jurisprudence and is brought from the West.'

Female circumcision is a widely-spread habit in villages of Upper Egypt, which can cause death, infection and psychological traumas. Several government campaigns have been launched against the practice, but it wasn't legally prohibited before the new legislation.

Meanwhile, parliament also approved a law banning marriage of both females and males under the age of 18.

Previously Egyptian girls were allowed to legally marry at the age of 16.

Pre-marital medical tests have become a requirement for legal marriage under the new ruling. Couples are now obliged to undergo medical tests to legally register their marriage.

Parliamentary members consider this new requirement a solution to lessen the rates of infants born with genetic deficits.

In other news, the assembly approved the right for unmarried mothers to register their children under their names, a breakthrough in Egyptian legislation that have been requested by many social and child rights experts for many years.

The move was strongly opposed by many parliamentary members who argued that the law would open the door for many females to commit adultery.