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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the October 2003 Issue of FrontLines [PDF,
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