25 June 2003
Delegates from 28 countries across the Middle East and Africa called Monday for governments worldwide to ban female circumcision, the practice considered barbaric to women.
"Governments, in consultation with civil society, should adopt specific legislation addressing female genital mutilation in order to affirm their commitment to stopping the practice and to ensure women's and girls' human rights," the delegates said at the close of their three-day conference in Cairo.
Their statement called for widespread dissemination of information to the general public on the effects of female circumcision.
But in a somewhat controversial clause, the delegates left it to nations themselves to define what entails female circumcision, also known as female genital mutilation, based on the World Health Organisation's set definition.
The conference organisers said female circumcision been carried out on between 120 and 130 million women, mainly in Africa and the Arab world, while two million girls annually undergo the procedure.
The painful practice, traditionally seen as controlling female sexuality and making a girl more "marriageable", typically involves cutting off the clitoris and other parts of the genitalia in girls and teenagers.
The practice is banned in many African countries but still carried out on a massive scale even though it often causes infection and sometimes death.
According to an Amnesty International report, female circumcision most commonly occurs between the ages of four and eight and is sometimes carried out as an initiation ritual into womanhood.
The person who performs the circumcision is generally either an older woman, a midwife or healer, a barber or doctor, Amnesty said.
"Mutilation may be carried out using broken glass, a tin lid, scissors, a razor blade or some other cutting instrument," Amnesty said, adding often the operation is performed without any anaesthetic.
The Cairo gathering, dubbed the Afro-Arab Expert Consultation for the Prevention of Female Genital Mutilation, attracted campaigners from Yemen as well as African countries like Senegal, Kenya, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad.
Egypt's most senior religious leaders, Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the head of al-Azhar, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, and the Patriarch of the Coptic church Pope Shenuda III, told the conference Saturday there was no basis for female circumcision in any Christian or Muslim holy book.
On Sunday, UN special rapporteur on traditional practices, Halima Warzazi, told the conference education was key to eradicating the practice.
"All efforts must try, before all else, to make women aware by getting them access to education, information, to knowledge of human rights and the means to be able to exercise those rights," she said.
"We must change mentalities. The women who go to school are not going to let themselves be circumcised. They are not going to do it."
Even though female circumcision has been banned in Egypt since 1997 and a campaign against it was launched here with 2003 named the "Year of the Girl," most Egyptian girls still undergo the painful practice.
The only Arab countries where female circumcision is known to be carried out is in Egypt, Sudan and Yemen, because of their links with Africa, which exported the practice deemed vital to protect the honor of girls.
The Egyptian health ministry issued a decree banning circumcision, which was upheld by the Council of State based on laws forbidding the "touching of the human body, except for medical necessity."
Circumcision is practised by both Muslims and Christians even though no texts recommend it in either religion. According to the latest government study, carried out in 2000, 97 percent of Egyptian women are circumcised.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2003 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
