Musicman
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Female Genital Mutilation Knows No Borders
Laws against female genital mutilation are driving the
practice underground and across borders, says UNIFEM.
A study released in 2008 looked at the flow of girls
traveling to be excised between Burkina Faso and its neighbours Mali, Niger,
Ghana and Cote d’ Ivoire. Except Mali, all four countries in the study have
laws against female genital mutilation (FGM), although enforcement varies
widely.
Outlawing the practice has "deeply biased the
discourse on female excision", says the study. In surveys, interviews and
informal conversations, people deny that the practice continues. Group excisions
are no longer announced in the market. But it still happens, and it travels
wherever people think it will not be punished or noted.
"We think it is getting worse," said Francis
Bogie Boogere, a specialist in sexual violence with UNIFEM in Burkina Faso.
The study notes that in addition to anti-FGM legislation,
ethnic ties across frontiers underpin social and cultural networks that help
cross-border excision. The Peul move between the borders of Burkina Faso and
Niger, the Gourmantche between Burkina and Niger, the Dagara and Lobi between
Burkina and Ghana, while Burkinabe workers in Cote d’ Ivoire go home to excise
the girls and return. When northern Cote d’ Ivoire turned lawless during the
civil war, female cutting flourished there.
Mossi and Yagse communities from Burkina Faso find in Mali
"the ideal situation to excise their daughters in plain view" says the
study. Between July and November, when thousands of young Burkinabe cross on
foot, by ox cart, bicycle or minibus to pick cotton in Mali, and during school
holidays, girls melt into the flux.
Boogere has picked up anecdotal evidence of trafficking in
cut clitorides for witchcraft in Cote d’ Ivoire. "Excisers in Benin and
Togo know traditional doctors who know rich men in Cote d’ Ivoire who believe
these fetishes will make them richer," he told IPS. This trade could sap
efforts to end the harmful practice inflicted on thousands of girls in West
Africa every year, he worries.
Since West African nationals don’t need passports and
visas to travel in the region, the families can easily take the girls across the
border. Some excisers run rudimentary guesthouses for their visitors. Or the
exciser travels to do a mass circumcision, or families and exciser meet across
the border.
Excisers of the Mossi ethnic group are reputed to be the
best. The study describes how Mossi migrant communities secretly organize the
travel of famous excisers into Ghana and, through a complex system of coded
information and alerts, hide them and get them out if they risk arrest.
Boomerang effect
Anti-FGM laws help make people aware of the harm of
excision but also cause "a negative mutation into a clandestine
phenomenon", says the study. Secrecy makes estimates harder, but it seems
girls are getting cut at a younger age, according to Boogere.
In Burkina Faso, which banned genital cutting in 1996,
"clandestinity is an unpredicted consequence of the law," said Alice
Tiendrebeogo, a Burkinabe historian, teacher, and a former minister of
education.
This is one reason why Mali, where some 80 per cent of
girls are excised, is taking "la voie douce" (the soft way) of
convincing people to abandon the practice through community campaigns, explained
Diarra Affusatou Thiero, a Supreme Court judge and former minister for the
promotion of women, children and the family between 1997-2002.
"We don’t want to pass a law just to say we have one
if it will not be respected and applied," she told IPS.
"Our mothers-in-law, our grandmothers and mothers take
our children to be excised while we are at work or traveling. How can I take my
mother-in-law to court? I’d lose my husband, my family. I’d be disgraced.
It’s complicated. It is better to sensitize to bring change", she added.
Yet precisely because Mali "does not have repressive
mechanisms around excision it remains an El Dorado for Burkinabe
practitioners," says the study.
The region has no mechanisms to deal with cross-border FGM.
Only Ghana’s law allows prosecution if the cutting is performed outside the
country. Elsewhere, lawmakers did not foresee the cross-border strategy of
people resisting change.
In November, at a meeting with First Ladies of seven West
African countries, Unifem and governments launched a regional action plan in the
border regions involving governors, police and NGOs.
"The key issue is that both sides of the border must
be vigilant", said Tiendrebeogo. Nevertheless, says the study, the solution
does not lie in repression, but in convincing people to abandon the practice.
Community radio stations are key to this approach, as they reach people in their
own language and broadcast across borders.
Also essential is greater public commitment from political,
religious and traditional leaders, WHICH the study deems "feeble". So
far, campaigns remain sporadic, non-participatory and poorly adapted to their
target. "Cross border excision is an unexpected and perverse consequence...
and proof of the inefficacy of approaches and strategies used," concludes
the study.
Mercedes Sayagues