The Monitor (Kampala)

Sudan: Three Million Girls Await Knife

By Reem Abbas, 9 February 2012

Juba — UNICEF has stated that an estimated three million girls will be subjected to female circumcision in Sudan.

The treasurer of the National Council for Child Welfare, Mr Gamar Habbani, called it a "massacre promoted by traditions" in a workshop led by UNICEF and the National Council on Tuesday.

It is estimated that 90 per cent of Sudanese women faced one of the four types of female circumcision until the late 1990s, with pharaonic circumcision, the most severe type, being very widespread. UNICEF estimates that about 140 million girls in the world, almost all in Africa and some parts of the Middle East had to undergo the procedure.

Reducing sexual desire?

Female circumcision is when a part of the female genitalia is excised. It is mostly practiced in North and East Africa in countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia.

The Sudanese society believes that FC reduces the sexual desire of a girl and makes her pure and a virgin until marriage. However, it has many serious health problems and causes complications during pregnancy.

The first movement against FC was in the 18th century by a religious Sheikh named Hassan Wad Hossona. In 1946, Sudan, still under British administration, banned circumcision, however, the law has never been implemented.

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  • Human Rights Abuse
    Feb 13 2012, 08:04
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    Just as female circumcision is a despicable atrocity intended to permanently reduce the sexual sensation of women, so too, male circumcision is nothing but penile-sexual reduction surgery intended to permanently reduce the sexual sensation/function of men.

    See: Flawed African studies into Male Circumcision and Sexual Transmission of HIV

    Ref: Boyle GJ, Hill G. Sub-Saharan African randomised clinical trials into male circumcision and HIV transmission: Methodological, ethical and legal concerns. J Law Med 2011;19:316-334.

    The Journal of Law and Medicine, has published a new critique of those three randomized clinical trials from Africa that have purported to find that male circumcision reduces female-to-male sexual transmission of HIV by 60 percent.

    This critique finds numerous flaws in the execution of these studies and finds that the actual reduction in HIV transmission is about 1.3 percent, not the claimed 60 percent. The 1.3 percent is not considered to be clinically significant.

    This is offset by a 61 percent relative increase in male to female HIV transmission when the male partner is circumcised.

    Given this, the three RCTs should not be used in the formulation of public health policy.

    See attached PDF file:

    http://www.salem-news.com/articles/december112011/circumcision-hiv-rg.php