In an unprecedented onslaught to outlaw female genital mutilation, FGM, in the country, female MPs on Thursday, June 8 told government that women have a fundamental right to fully enjoy sex. The ire of the MPs is contained in a private members bill tabled in the ongoing parliamentary session by the First Vice President of the National Assembly, Hon. Rose Abunaw Makia, and all the other female MPs.

In order to fully analyse the ills of the obnoxious practice, the Cameroon Young Jurists Legal Resource Centre in Buea, organised a one-day seminar at the National Assembly during which the MPs condemned FGM as a practice that deprives women of sexual pleasure.

"We have a right to enjoy sex just like men," the women said while condemning FGM as an unhealthy and chauvinistic practice.Opening the seminar, Hon. Abunaw defined female genital mutilation as a traditional practice in Cameroon that involves partial or total removal of the external genitalia.

She said Cameroon is amongst the 31 countries in Africa that practise FGM.

Quoting a UN report, the MP said an estimated 20 percent of women and girls undergo FGM in Cameroon. "These communities still undergo clitoridectomy or excision between two weeks of age and delivery of the first child, she stated.

She said FGM has been a long time cultural practice in the Ejagham and Boki tribes in Manyu Division of the Southwest Province, the Arab-Shua tribe in the Far North and some tribes in the East Province of Cameroon.

These communities, she said, believe that genital mutilation initiates the girls into womanhood, controls female sexuality, birth rate and protects the monogamous status of a woman.

According to the MP, many FGM victims not only go through excruciating pain, but also suffer from severe bleeding and infections, which at times cause sterility in young girls. Some of them have been infected with HIV/AIDS because most FGM practitioners use rusty knives on all their victims.

The MP cited the United Nation's Women Development Fund, UNIFEM, the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, and the World Health Organisation, WHO, as UN agencies that have widely appealed for the total abolition of FGM.

There is no plan of action and no law against FGM in Cameroon she observed, while calling on stakeholders to fight to eliminate this harmful and degrading practice by enacting a law that punishes its practitioners.

Deprived Of Sexual Pleasure

During the seminar, one FGM victim, Mrs. Delphine Arung, told the gory tale of how her clitoris was violently carved out with the blessings of her mother in 1984.Sobbing, Delphine provoked consternation among the female MPs. She said she resisted giving in to the practice, but her mother brought her mates who held her like a goat in a slaughterhouse.

"I was bleeding profusely and I was in pain for a long time," she said as tears ran down her cheeks. She regretted that since then, it has been difficult for her to enjoy sex.

She said if she has to have a bit of sensation while having sex with her husband, she needs to stay for quite a long time, take some stimulants before doing it.

Delphine, a mother of seven, who hails from Mbakem village in Eyumujock in Manyu Division, wondered how she could ever have her clitoris replaced.It was after this that many female MPs could be heard shouting angrily that, "all women have a right to fully enjoy sex just like the men."

Stating the precarious situation of FGM, the main resource person, Mrs. Esther Ayuk, who is the coordinator of the Cameroon Jurist Legal Resource Centre, said 130 million women are victims of the unhealthy practice in Africa.

Besides, passing prohibitive laws on the issue, she recommended that FGM practitioners could be lured to other income generating activities.Ayuk said article 18 and the CEDAW Convention, which Cameroon is a signatory, condemn vehemently FGM.

According to her, some European countries like Sweden, Norway and the UK have enacted laws against the practice of FGM in their countries. The private members bill tabled by the female MPs, seeks to amend and supplement the provisions of section 277 of the Cameroon penal code.

One of the proposed provisions of the bill reads: "whoever by any means carries out any female genital mutilation by removing the clitoris, prepuce or labia minora of any girl or woman, shall be punished."

According to the bill, punishment for this offence shall be life imprisonment. The bill equally states that prosecution shall commence by a complaint from any person with knowledge of the commission of the act of female genital mutilation.

The fate of the bill is not yet known as the Chairman's Conference of the National Assembly is yet to deliberate on it. It would be recalled that parliament threw out another private member's bill on FGM tabled by Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam two years ago.