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Posts Tagged ‘FGM’

Why does FGM happen and where is it legal?

EastEnders has tackled many controversial topics in its history, and now it is bravely addressing the practice of FGM – female genital mutilation.

Mila Marwa has opened up on the show as she worries that her younger sister is to receive the same treatment she got as a child.

This is a very real issue many women face: UNICEF estimated in 2016 that 200 million women living in 30 countries—27 African countries, Indonesia, Iraqi Kurdistan and Yemen—have undergone the procedures.

What are the reasons for FGM?

The NHS explain that there are no health benefits to FGM and it can cause serious harm, including:

  • constant pain
  • pain and difficulty having sex
  • repeated infections, which can lead to infertility
  • bleeding, cysts and abscesses
  • problems peeing or holding pee in (incontinence)
  • depression, flashbacks and self-harm
  • problems during labour and childbirth, which can be life threatening for mother and baby

The reasons why some cultures or communities practice FGM is more to do with societal norms, attitudes and beliefs.

The practice is rooted in controlling women’s sexuality and attempts to ‘preserve’ a woman’s purity.  

What is FGM? What are the different types?

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a procedure where the female genitals are deliberately cut, injured or changed. It’s also known as female circumcision or cutting, and by other terms, such as sunna, gudniin, halalays, tahur, megrez and khitan.

There are four main examples of FGM:

  • type 1 (clitoridectomy) – removing part or all of the clitoris
  • type 2 (excision) – removing part or all of the clitoris and the inner labia (with or without removal of the labia majora)
  • type 3 (infibulation) – narrowing the vaginal opening by creating a seal, formed by cutting and repositioning the labia
  • other harmful procedures to the female genitals, including pricking, cutting, scraping or burning the area

Illegal immigrant exploited FGM laws to stay in Britain

An illegal immigrant from Nigeria was granted leave to remain in Britain after falsely alleging that her daughters would be subjected to female genital mutilation if they were sent back.

A high court judge ruled that the three girls, aged 13, 10 and seven, needed protection from their father after hearing claims he was making arrangements for them to be “cut”.

In a landmark case the girls became the first subjects of a female genital mutilation (FGM) protection order, by the British courts. But that decision has now been overturned after a different judge dismissed the claim, describing it as part of an “immigration scam”.

Read More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/08/illegal-immigrant-exploited-fgm-laws-to-stay-in-britain/

What It’s Like to Experience Female Genital Cutting

When she was 7 years old, Mariya Karimjee sat on a tarp in a neighbor woman’s living room and had an operation that would affect her life forever. As part of a family tradition in her small Dawoodi Bohra sect of Islam, Karimjee had part of her clitoris removed in a procedure that was meant to make it impossible for her to feel desire or “get turned on.”

Karimjee shared her story of slowly learning about what happened to her that day in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1995 on the radio program This American Life this week, and has written about her experience previously for The Big Roundtable. As she said in the recording, her mom referred to her budding sexuality and anatomy as a “bug” that needed to be taken out.

 “According to my mother, a bug was growing in an egg down there — her language not mine — and that it would hatch and eventually crawl to my brain, unless we removed it,” Karimjee said. So her mother took her to the neighbor woman’s house, and she received a gold necklace with a teardrop pearl pendant as a gift afterward.

“For two days [after the operation], I wore what I can only describe as a big-girl diaper wet with blood,” Karimjee said. “Peeing was so painful that I tried to last for hours without going until my mother explained that I could give myself an infection. For the next year, I’d break out into a cold sweat whenever I saw the kind-faced woman who, on a tarp on her living room floor, had spoken to me softly as she took a knife and cut me.”

Read M0re: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a58222/what-its-like-to-experience-female-genital-mutiliation/

Time 100: FGM campaigner Jaha Dukureh makes prestigious list

Anti-FGM campaigner Jaha Dukureh has been named one of the world’s most influential leaders by Time magazine alongside John Kerry, Angela Merkel, Aung San Suu Kyi, Bernie Sanders and Christine Lagarde.

Dukureh, the lead campaigner in the Guardian’s global media campaign to end female genital mutilation, was honoured in particular for her work in the US and the Gambia but is now campaigning to end the practice worldwide in a generation, using her experiences as a survivor to build public support.

She first came to prominence with the success of her change.org petition, which received more than 220,000 signatures, asking the Obama administration to conduct a new prevalence study into the current scope of FGM in the United States.

Now based in Atlanta, Dukureh has become the leading campaigner against FGM in the Gambia. She is of a new generation of young women in the country who are working through the media to make sure that the mutilation they have suffered is not repeated on their daughters.

Read More: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/21/time-100-fgm-campaigner-jaha-dukureh-makes-prestigious-list

Revealed: The number of court orders to protect people from forced marriages on Teesside

The Gazette asked the Ministry of Justice under Freedom of Information laws how many times this had happened at Teesside County Court .

Their response was that there were 20 applications for these orders between January 2010 and September 2015 at the court on Russell Street in Middlesbrough.

A total of six were granted.

The exclusive data we have obtained doesn’t go into any more details about the individual cases, or exactly what the terms of the orders were.

However, in general, Forced Marriage Protection Orders (FMPOs) can do things like stopping people getting married against their will, stopping being taken abroad to marry and compelling people to hand in passports.

Read More: http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/revealed-number-court-orders-protect-11135424

Professionals ‘Still Concerned About Tackling Honour-Based Violence’

Professionals are still concerned about tackling so-called honour-based violence because of “cultural sensitivities”, a Home Office Minister has admitted.

Karen Bradley said “certain professionals” still do not have the confidence to question harmful child abuse happening in the UK.

She raised the concerns during a House of Commons debate on breast ironing, a practice which originated in Cameroon but is now believed to have affected up to 1,000 girls in Britain.

Breast ironing uses hot objects heated on a stove to pound and massage girls’ breasts during puberty to retard their growth, in the belief it will make the girls less sexually attractive.

Questioned on the role of schools in tackling harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and breast ironing, the Minister (pictured) said: “I know there are certain professionals who may feel reticent about this.

Read More: http://www.careappointments.co.uk/care-news/england/item/39318-professionals-still-concerned-about-tackling-honour-based-violence

‘I thought this is how a virgin is meant to look’: Female genital mutilation victim whose vagina was stitched up – and the ‘blade woman’ who cuts 30 girls a day

Mariam Doumbia didn’t realise there was anything wrong until she was 22.

She just thought it was how unmarried girls who had never had sex ‘looked’. Then she saw a picture of a woman who had been circumcised – her clitoris cut out, her labia cut off and her vagina sewn up – and knew, in that moment, she had been mutilated. ‘Up until that point, I thought I was normal,’ the 23-year-old said. ‘I thought it was how virgins looked.’

In another part of Mali, a woman sits grabs her granddaughter to better explain her point, taking a fold in the young girl’s underwear between two fingers.

‘I spread their legs and hold the clitoris between my two fingers and cut the tip of it, and it’s all over in a jiffy,’ she says, proudly.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3449674/I-thought-virgin-meant-look-Muslim-FGM-victim-vagina-stitched-blade-woman-cuts-30-girls-day.html#ixzz40VnVuRlh

British Museum accused of ‘celebrating’ FGM by displaying cutter’s mask

Campaigners against female genital mutilation have accused the British Museum of “celebrating” the practice by holding an exhibition about a mask used by cutters in Sierra Leone.

The museum displayed a Sowei mask, which is worn by members of the Sande society — a women’s association in Sierra Leone which prepares girls for adult life. This has traditionally included FGM.

To mark the launch of the exhibition the museum also hosted an event where the dance performed during FGM ceremonies was recreated.

Survivors of FGM living in London said they still suffer flashbacks to the mask, which they said is used at the end of cutting ceremonies in Sierra Leone to terrorise young girls into keeping quiet about their ordeal.

Read More: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/british-museum-accused-of-celebrating-fgm-by-displaying-cutter-s-mask-a3179071.html

Bristol police successfully apply for FGM protection orders

Avon and Somerset Police have this week become the latest force in the country to aid the prevention and ending of female genital mutilation (FGM) by seizing the passports of three girls who were travelling abroad from Bristol as soon-to-be victims of the practice.

Bristol police confiscated the documents and applied for female genital mutilation protection orders (FGMPOs) for the girls under legislation implemented in July 2015. The action follows on from this year’s International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM (which falls annually on 6 February), and comes just a fortnight before Bristol-based charity Integrate holds its annual conference which will focus on a wide range of issues including radicalisation and the importance of ending FGM. It also comes three weeks before FORWARD, a charity which focuses on the ideology of communities working together to help achieve their vision of a safe world in which women can live with dignity and equality, will hold a conference in Bristol marking the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM and addressing the significance of ending FGM both within the city and further afield.

Read More: http://www.familylaw.co.uk/news_and_comment/Bristol-police-successfully-apply-for-FGM-protection-orders#.VrtjNPmLTIU

 

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