/CORRECTED REPEAT//RIGHTS-EGYPT: Cairo Meet Prompted Shift on Genital Mutilations Study Says

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

THE HAGUE, Feb 8 1999 (IPS) - A new study asserts that, since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was held in Cairo, awareness has grown throughout Egypt of the dangers of female genital mutilation – and the practise has declined as a result.

The Population Council, a US-based group, and three Egypt-based universities assert in a study released here this week that the prevalence of female genital mutilation among Egyptian girls from the ages of 10 to 19 has fallen in recent years to 84 percent.

This represents a drop of some 11 percent compared to the findings of a 1995 demographic survey among married women.

Since the ICPD first put the spotlight on female circumcision in Egypt and other northern African states five years ago, girls approaching the age for mutilation have faced less risk of actually undergoing the procedure than girls who reached adolescence before the Cairo conference, the report adds.

“What has happened as a result of the ICPD is a new awareness,” argues Barbara Ibrahim, director of the Population Council regional office for West Asia and North Africa.

Ibrahim attributes the sudden decline in female mutilation rates in part to a new understanding of how prevalent the practise is outside the circle of the educated urban elite.

Even as late as the middle of 1994, she argues, “we were not even aware of the practise”, with most health experts underestimating its widespread nature in much of rural Egypt.

That changed when women’s groups present at the ICPD pushed for the elimination of the tradition of female mutilation saying that the practise –which some also call female circumsicion and which normally involves the partial or total removal of female genitalia — violates women’s rights and endangers their lives.

As Egypt’s educated women came to realise in the post-ICPD period how many Egyptian girls are still circumcised, they pushed for change, lobbying against a 1994 decree by the Ministry of Health that allowed doctors to perform female mutilations in public hospitals and clinics.

That edict was reversed two years later, and the Egyptian Supreme Court upheld new laws banning female mutilation in 1997.

The effect of such changes has been dramatic. “We’ve gone into some villages where circumcision (mutilation) has been virtually eliminated,” Ibrahim says.

The nature of the problem has also been redefined, adds Dr. Magdy Helmy Kedees of the non-governmental group Caritas-Egypt. “Before, Egyptians called the practise ‘tahara’, which means ‘purity’,” he notes.

Now, he argues, using terms like genital mutilation “sharpens the nature of the practise” and makes clear what kind of threat it represents to women and girls.

Nor is Egypt the only country where the ICPD debate on female circumcision has led to pressure to eliminate the practise. The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that female genital mutilation declined among eastern Ugandan girls by 36 percent between 1994 and 1996 as the result of a community-based campaign for its elimination.

Countries ranging from Ghana to Burkina Faso and Senegal have recently pushed initiatives to eradicate the practise, says Wariara Mbugua, manager of UNFPA’s gender theme.

Yet much work remains to be done. UNFPA asserts that between 85 million and 114 million women alive today have undergone some form of female genital mutilation.

And the practise remains risky, Mbugua says: A study in Sierra Leone estimated that some 83 percent of the women who are mutilated in that country require medical attention.

The health risks of the procedure are many, including severe bleeding, shock, urine retention and infections; it is frequently fatal.

Yet Ibrahim cautions that any effective strategy to eradicate genital mutilation should not focus only on the health risks: In Egypt, she argues, families who were alerted to the dangers of the practise simply chose to use professional doctors and sanitary locations. “We must address the gender issues,” she argues.

She notes that the Population Council surveys suggest that many Egyptian families continue to allow genital mutilations in order to “maintain femininity, maintain chastity and make their daughters behave better”.

That in turn fits into what Mbugua calls a “culture of silence”, in which deeply-rooted traditions that violate women’s rights are barely discussed, so that the extent of the problem remains murky.

But with the focus on female circumcision since the Cairo conference, that culture of silence has been broken in part, and consciousness has been raised on the issue, says Kedees.

Future years will show just how pronounced the effect of the conference has been in protecting Egyptian girls from mutilations.