Creative Education and Zero Tolerance Curtail Female Genital Cutting

IBADAN, Nigeria - In a dingy, cement building, an olola - or native healer - uses a razor blade to slice off the clitoris of a baby girl not three weeks old while her mother and grandmother look on approvingly. The infant cries until she is given her mother's breast and taken away.

Within minutes, another mother brings in the next baby girl.

New efforts in Africa supported by USAID aim to persuade mothers not to allow the traditional cutting of their babies - a practice that they believe will prevent their daughters from being unfaithful to their future husbands.

To help convince villagers that female genital cutting (FGC) must cease, several African countries are combining an official "zero tolerance" stance with theater and poetry.

Education programs using performance arts and supported by U.S. aid are persuading community members to spare their daughters, granddaughters, nieces, and other girls from the painful rites that involve the cutting or removal of external female genitalia.

Female circumcision may cause massive and fatal bleeding. It can also lead later to chronic infections, sterility, and serious complications in childbirth.

The practice, mainly found in Africa, is performed without anesthetic on infants and girls by medically unqualified per-sons.

One of the most encouraging developments is that the Senegalese Parliament recently passed a resolution declaring "Zero Tolerance to FGC." It states that Senegalese should not tolerate or be indifferent to the practice, regardless of its type, justification, or location.

More than 1,200 villages in five Senegalese regions recently declared an end to FGC and to marriages for very young girls.

An informally structured education program for women is growing rapidly, with support from USAID, through the efforts of an international NGO called Tostan, which means "breakthrough" in the Wolof language of West Africa.

Basic education programs targeting religious and traditional leaders and young adults are helping to discourage female circumcision. One role-playing exercise simulates an incident in which a young girl bleeds profusely, is taken to a hospital, and dies.

The programs address such issues as literacy skills, problem solving, women's health and hygiene, management skills, leadership skills, negotiating skills, and human rights. They are given in four languages: Wolof, Senere, Mandinka, and Pulaar.

The programs are also being implemented in Sudan, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

"I have friends in Kenya whose young girl bled to death in their car as they rushed her to a faraway hospital," said Dr. Anne Peterson, Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Global Health. "She was only 13 years old and had been circumcised against her will."

"Millions of girls suffer danger, pain, and long-term consequences in child-birth - because of the custom," she said. "Zero tolerance is leading to powerful, yet peaceful social transformation that impacts health, democracy, and human rights."

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