Monthly Archives: June 2012
Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting and female circumcision, is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”
FGM is typically carried out on girls from a few days old to puberty. It may take place in a hospital, but is usually performed, without anaesthesia, by a traditional circumciser using a knife, razor, or scissors. According to the WHO, it is practiced in 28 countries in western, eastern, and north-eastern Africa, in parts of the Middle East, and within some immigrant communities in Europe, North America, and Australasia.The WHO estimates that 100–140 million women and girls around the world have experienced the procedure, including 92 million in Africa. The practise is carried out by some communities who believe it reduces a woman’s libido.
The WHO has offered four classifications of FGM. The main three are Type I, removal of the clitoral hood, almost invariably accompanied by removal of the clitoris itself (clitoridectomy); Type II, removal of the clitoris and inner labia; and Type III (infibulation), removal of all or part of the inner and outer labia, and usually the clitoris, and the fusion of the wound, leaving a small hole for the passage of urine and menstrual blood—the fused wound is opened for intercourse and childbirth. Around 85 percent of women who undergo FGM experience Types I and II, and 15 percent Type III, though Type III is the most common procedure in several countries, including Sudan, Somalia, and Djibouti.
Several miscellaneous acts are categorized as Type IV. These range from a symbolic pricking or piercing of the clitoris or labia, to cauterization of the clitoris, cutting into the vagina to widen it (gishiri cutting), and introducing corrosive substances to tighten it.
Opposition to FGM focuses on human rights violations, lack of informed consent, and health risks, which include fatal hemorrhaging, epidermoid cysts, recurrent urinary and vaginal infections, chronic pain, and obstetrical complications. Since 1979, there have been concerted efforts by international bodies to end the practice, including sponsorship by the United Nations of an International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, held each February 6 since 2003.
Sylvia Tamale, a Ugandan legal scholar, writes that there is a large body of research and activism in Africa itself that strongly opposes FGM, but she cautions that some African feminists object to what she calls the imperialist infantilization of African women, and they reject the idea that FGM is nothing but a barbaric rejection of modernity. Tamale suggests that there are cultural and political aspects to the practice’s continuation that make opposition to it a complex issue
In Sudan Female genital mutilation
Is still usually the practice of female genital mutilation are high rates in Sudan more than 65%, despite the efforts that have been made by official bodies and relevant organizations, as warns specialists from the growing complications of this practice, at a time of much religious controversy and jurisprudence in the Sudan on the legality of the practice .
And revealed the director of the national project to combat female genital mutilation in Sudan Princess Azhari’s “Arab. Net” that the rate of circumcision on the national level amounted to 65.5%, indicating that the highest rates of this ratio are found in the states of the Nile River by 83.3% and the northern state by 83.4%, and ranging These ratios in the decline in other states, confirming the occurrence and many deaths as a result of this practice, and attributed the expert continued this habit Pharaonic to rooted in society for centuries long, indicating that it is difficult to get rid of them, because the education in such societies must be more smooth, and awareness messages in the past was always negative, which is used to scenes of blood and the tools used in the process of circumcision.
She explained that they are in the National Council for the fight against harmful traditional practices, Aptdroa a campaign to fight Princess (campaign sound), a campaign that respects the culture of society and its customs and traditions, and take the slogan that every girl born healthy leaves which grow properly, and that what distinguishes this campaign, it sends positive messages as opposed to what was in the the past, and showed that the Princess expert strategic vision is to be free of Sudan female circumcision from 2008 to 2018 m, and predicted a significant decline in the practice of circumcision.
On the health complications for the exercise of female circumcision in Sudan’s chief specialist of gynecology and obstetrics in Sudan Dr. Saad Muhammad Fadil in an exclusive interview with “Arab. Net” They have done three studies in this regard, although the first study found that during the 17 years the majority of women Mxtonat Fronaa circumcision, and the complications of circumcision in the short term is the heavy bleeding and inflammation with secretion and urinary fistula and lack of control in the urine are symptoms of a serious and difficult to treat.
In the long term, complications of circumcision is in the formation of fatty sacks, and the difficulty in the practice of marital and sexual intercourse is saturated and infections and infertility.
And Dr Fadil all day conduct of the study in six countries, including Sudan (Nigeria, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Kenya and Ivory Coast) in 18 hospitals, indicating that they were monitoring the effect of circumcision on the complications associated with the birth and after the end of the study and found that the rate of cesarean delivery than in circumcised compared with uncircumcised, and that the circumcised are subjected to bleeding after childbirth, which constitutes a threat to the life of the mother, as well as the presence of viruses in babies, as well as a degree of fibrosis in the region (director of the vagina), regardless of the wound is small and fibrosis leads to loss of elastic region (director of the vagina), leading to delayed birth .
On the view of religion in the habit – The member of the Islamic Fiqh Academy Sudanese Sheikh Abdul Jalil prognostic Alkaruri in a working paper entitled “The Book of the Year circumcised boys and amnesty girls” obtained “Arab. Net” a copy of which, he explained that the year calls for circumcised boys and amnesty girls, and said This result was reached after a study of circumcision on the basis of the assets of religion and science of medicine and public meeting.
Adding, “worked hard in assets, we said that the Koran did not remain silent regarding female genital mutilation, because it is explicit in the adoption of instinct and therefore call for no change of creation.”
In spite of the acknowledged representative of UNICEF in Sudan Karel De Roy, the existence of progress in the Sudan in the fight against female genital mutilation, where indicators showed low practice by survey 2006, which amounted to 69%, and said when he addressed a workshop on female genital mutilation in the capital Khartoum that the decline in practice was the result of the efforts efforts of government and civil society organizations. The UNICEF continued to provide support to raise awareness through programs of sound and the criminalization of the practice in coordination with relevant agencies to implement the strategy and the organization of international efforts to combat the practice.