Help stop violence against children - Abolish FGM

“Violence against women is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation. It knows no boundaries of geography, culture or wealth. As long as it continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality, development, and peace.”
Kofi Annan,
United Nations Secretary-General

11-1-2006

By ERRIN HAINES Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — An Ethiopian immigrant was convicted Wednesday of the genital mutilation of his 2-year-old daughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in what was believed to be the first such criminal case in the United States.
Khalid Adem, 30, was found guilty of aggravated battery and cruelty to children. Prosecutors said he used scissors to remove his daughter’s clitoris in his family’s Atlanta-area apartment in 2001. The child’s mother, Fortunate Adem, said she did not discover it until more than a year later.

Adem, who had no criminal record, could have been sentenced to up to 40 years in prison. He held his face in his hands and wept loudly after the jury’s verdict was read.

During her father’s trial, the girl, now 7, clutched a teddy bear as she testified on videotape that her father “cut me on my private part.”

“This child has suffered, will suffer, the rest of her life,” Judge Richard Winegarden told Adem during sentencing.
Federal law specifically bans the practice of genital mutilation, but many states do not have a law addressing it. Georgia lawmakers, with the support of the girl’s mother, passed an anti-mutilation law last year. But Adem was not tried under that law since it did not exist when his daughter was cut.
During the trial, Adem testified he never circumcised his daughter or asked anyone else to do so. He said he grew up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and considers the practice more prevalent in rural areas.

Adem’s attorney acknowledged that the girl had been cut, but implied that the family of the girl’s mother, who immigrated from South Africa, may have been responsible. The Adems divorced three years ago, and attorney Mark Hill suggested that the couple’s daughter was coached to testify against her father by her mother, who has full custody of the child.
Adem, who cried throughout the trial and during his testimony, was asked what he thought of someone who believes in the practice. He replied: “The word I can say is ‘mind in the gutter.’ He is a moron.”

The practice crosses ethnic and cultural lines and is not tied to a particular religion. Activists say it is intended to deny women sexual pleasure. In its most extreme form, the clitoris and parts of the labia are removed and the labia that remain are stitched together.

Knives, razors or even sharp stones are usually used, according to a 2001 department report. The tools are frequently not sterilized, and often, many girls are circumcised at the same ceremony, leading to infection.

It is unknown how many girls have died from the procedure, either during the cutting or from infections, or years later in childbirth. Nightmares, depression, shock and feelings of betrayal are common psychological side effects, according to a 2001 federal report.

Since 2001, the State Department estimates that up to 130 million women worldwide have undergone circumcision.

June 2, 2006
Genital Cutting Raises by 50% Likelihood Mothers or Their Newborns Will Die, Study Finds
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

The first large medical study of female genital cutting has found that the procedure has deadly consequences when the women give birth, raising by more than 50 percent the likelihood that the woman or her baby will die.

Rates of serious medical complications surrounding childbirth, such as bleeding, also rose substantially in women who had undergone genital cutting, according to new research being published today in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

“Reliable evidence about its harmful effects, especially on reproduction, should contribute to the abandonment of the practice,” wrote the study’s authors, all members of the World Health Organization Study Group on Female Genital Mutilation and Obstetrical Outcome.

While women’s groups and human rights organizations have long campaigned against genital cutting as a rights issue, the study provides the first conclusive medical evidence of long-term physical harm, moving the debate further into the public health arena.

“Finally we have data to prove what health workers have long known: that female genital mutilation is a health issue, a killer of women and children, as well as a human rights issue,” said Adrienne Germain, president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, in New York.

“This should greatly help advocates overcome arguments that genital mutilation is an untouchable cultural practice.”

More than 100 million women worldwide have undergone genital cutting, mostly in childhood, often without anesthesia or sterile technique. Pain, bleeding and infection are immediate consequences. Doctors suspect that the procedure is also linked to a risk of urinary infection.

The procedure varies in severity, from a full excision of the clitoris and labia, to a lesser procedure in which only the former is removed. In a number of African cultures, genital mutilation is part of a coming-of-age ceremony, and defenders have contended that it is a cultural practice, like male circumcision among Jews, with few, if any, proven long-term health consequences.

In a commentary accompanying the study in The Lancet, Ndubuisi Eke and Kanu E. O. Nkanginieme, doctors at the University of Port Harcourt, in Nigeria, called the study group’s report “a landmark.” With new, concrete evidence of the procedure’s deadly aftereffects, they suggest that genital mutilation “should now be included among critical health indices for less developed countries.”

Many women in the African nations where genital cutting is practiced deliver their babies at home, where typically it is not possible to treat medical complications like severe bleeding or to resuscitate an ailing newborn.

Genital cutting results in severe scarring of the vagina and surrounding area, so it might make it more difficult for babies to emerge.

One area of violence against women in the world is the tradition of childhood Female Genital Mutilation that occurs in a number of countries. The UN and UNICEF have information and programs about this. I want to do SOMETHING, even with limited resources to address this. Posting this here is #1.

http://www.unicef.org/protection/index_genitalmutilation.html

Photo is from that website and is of Mayamuna Traor, president of the local women’s association who “played a pivotal role in banning FGM in her village” in Senegal.