RIGHTS-EGYPT: Silence Cloaks Female Circumcision

By Cam McGrath Reprint | | Print |

Cam McGrath

CAIRO, Mar 10 2004 (IPS) - Samah still remembers the pain and bleeding that followed an operation her parents forced her to undergo when she was 10 years old. Now 20, she is determined she would never do the same to a daughter.

“I will not make my daughters undergo circumcision,” she says.

Her decision comes after she attended a lecture by Egyptian doctors at a local community centre. The physicians are among those battling to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM), an ancient practice also known as “female circumcision”.

An estimated 120 million African women have undergone the procedure, which involves the surgical removal of parts of a woman’s genitalia. It is especially prevalent in Nile basin countries like Egypt, where the last government survey in 1995 indicated that 97 percent of married women aged 15 to 49 had undergone the operation.

“Things are still much the same today,” says Dr. Afaf Marei from the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM). “There are a lot of efforts to battle FGM…and the attitude is changing, but there are still social constraints and pressures.”

The operation is commonly performed on Muslim and Christian girls between the age of seven and 15 in the belief that it is the only way to ensure a woman’s chastity or marital fidelity.

“In rural areas, men usually will not marry an uncircumcised girl,” Marei told IPS. “His mother will ask her mother if she is circumcised or not. If not, he may leave her or take her to be circumcised.”

In Egypt, the operation generally involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris, and not the more severe forms of FGM practised in other countries like Somalia. In southern Egypt communities the girl’s labia are also removed.

Video footage of a village barber slicing off the clitoris of a 14-year-old girl with her father’s consent caused a global outcry when it was aired during the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. The embarrassed Egyptian government passed a decree in 1996 banning FGM operations except in cases of “medical necessity,” a vague clause FGM opponents say leads to abuse.

Small private clinics continue to perform the operations illegally for about 15 dollars. The majority, however, are carried out by midwives and “health barbers” in unsanitary conditions using crude tools and no anaesthetic.

“I’ve seen many complications from operations performed (by untrained surgeons), mostly excessive bleeding,” gynaecologist Dr. Mohammed Wali told IPS. Women often suffer from labial fusion, cysts and pain during intercourse as a result of their operation. Egyptian society’s sensitivity about virginity means complications may go undiagnosed and untreated for years.

“Circumcision is performed on young girls and they don’t seek clinical advice until they are married, unless there is heavy bleeding,” said Wali. “Once they are married there is no stigma, so women come seeking treatment.”

Many Christian and Muslim religious leaders have repeatedly said that FGM is not required by religious doctrine. Christian leaders have condemned the practice outright. Islamic authorities have left room for interpretation.

Circumcision “is a matter Islam left for people to decide on,” says Sheikh Ali Omar el-Farouk, considered an authority on Islam. “Whoever wants to carry it out is free to do so, and whoever does not is also free because there is no verse in Islam that explicitly prohibits the practice.”

Egypt’s Higher State Council, which upheld the 1996 FGM ban after challenges by conservative Muslim clerics, found nothing in the Koran authorising the procedure, and no clear guidance in the Hadith (sayings attributed to Prophet Mohammed).

“Female circumcision is a practice that dignifies women,” el-Farouk told IPS. “Instead of banning the practice, we should raise awareness that the operation must be performed in a proper hospital by a skilled surgeon rather than a nurse or midwife.”

Proponents of the ban worry that such views will focus the debate on health concerns while ignoring the human rights issue. FGM is a kind of abuse against children, said Marei. “One of the main causes of its prevalence and continuity is the present cultural values in relation to the conservative Islamic trend.”

Wael Mohammed, a 30-year-old father of two baby girls says religious opinion outweighs any potential health risks.

“It is our tradition,” he told IPS. “Without it girls become promiscuous like we see in the West. I insisted on it for my wife and I will insist on it for my daughters.”

Yet health concerns made Hanem Samy, 21, decide against circumcising her young daughter. She now faces pressure from her husband and father. “They believe the practice is necessary to keep females chaste.” But chastity can only be determined by a girl’s own morals and upbringing, she says.

Rights groups campaigning to eradicate FGM hope tougher enforcement, public awareness and community support will bring effective change.

Much of the work is being conducted at the village level. One group, the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA), advocates a “positive deviancy” approach by which individuals who have rejected an undesirable tradition are identified as inputs for a tailored campaign against it.

“We identify individuals within the community who have deviated from the social norm and try to understand what made this person…negotiate a different choice in a system that doesn’t allow it,” technical advisor to the group Sarah Goltz told IPS. “Obviously, we can’t find uncircumcised positive deviants because the girls are circumcised at an age when they are too young to make decisions, so we look instead for people at the village level who are willing to speak out against the practice.”

CEDPA trains local social workers and finances community mobilisation, public awareness and family outreach programmes. “In some communities we didn’t find any positive deviants,” Goltz said. “Then one popped up and it was like a bush fire. Once the silence is broken change can follow.”