http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/25/middleeast/egypt-female-genital-mutilation/

Female genital mutilation: Why Egyptian girls fear the summer
By Nick Thompson, CNN
Updated 2:32 AM ET, Thu June 25, 2015

But the rate of female circumcision in Egypt is dropping -- and U.N. agencies have adopted a school-based model to try to educate girls about the procedure.

Egypt announced a plan to reduce FGM by 10-15% by targeting doctors and religious leaders in the next five years.

But the fight against FGM in Egypt is an uphill battle. Around six in 10 women think the practice should continue, according to the most recent government survey.

More women have undergone FGM in Egypt than any other country. Here, women wait to tell their stories about living with FGM at the Society of Islamic Center near Sohag in January 2015.

Cairo, Egypt (CNN)Summer days: They're what childhood memories are made of, glorious afternoons of unchecked freedom to frolic with friends in the sun, unshackled from the earthly obligations of a math class that never seemed further away.

But for millions of schoolgirls in Egypt, this time of year represents something much darker: the start of the female genital mutilation (FGM) season.

Mona Mohamed was 10 years old when she underwent what's also known as a female circumcision on a hot summer day in her village in Upper Egypt.

"I was terrified," she said. "They tied me down, my mother on one hand and my grandmother on the other."

As Mona thrashed around, pinned by her loved ones to the living room floor, a doctor injected her with anesthesia.

Mona remembers being given a piece of bubble gum to chew on before she finally passed out. It wasn't until she woke up that she realized she had been mutilated.


Egypt: The FGM capital of the world
Stories like Mona's are far from rare in Egypt, where "cutting" has been a brutal rite of passage for young girls since the time of the pharaohs.

Of the more than 125 million girls and women alive today who have undergone the procedure, one in four live in Egypt. That's more than any other country in the world, according to the U.N.

Ninety-two percent of married Egyptian women aged 15 to 49 have been subjected to FGM, according to a government report released in May. That figure is down from 97% in 2000, but the practice is still the norm here.

Most girls are cut between the ages of nine and 12, and the operations usually take place during the summer school break so the girls can recover at home.

U.N. officials say FGM has no medical benefits and can cause lifelong physical and emotional trauma for the women forced to undergo the procedure.

"This is a gross human rights violation," Jaime Nadal-Roig, the U.N. Population Fund representative in Cairo, told CNN. "It doesn't add anything to the life of the girl, and there are no medical or religious grounds whatsoever."

A celebrated tradition
The most common FGM procedure in Egypt is Type 1, the partial or full removal of the clitoris. It's what Mona Mohamed -- and her older sisters -- endured years ago.

Compared to her sisters, Mona was lucky, given that her procedure was performed by a doctor. Her sisters were circumcised with a razor blade by a traditional (non-medical) midwife who put dust on their wounds to stop the bleeding.

Mona, now 47, recalls asking her mother why getting circumcised was so important. "Usually girls at your age get 'excited,' and this operation takes care of that," her mother replied.

FGM has been illegal in Egypt since 2008, but the practice remains woven into the very fabric of Egyptian society, where many see cutting as a way to "purify" a girl and make her marriage material.

"People used to have a party after a girl was circumcised, they'd celebrate and exchange gifts," Nadal-Roig said. "So for them to turn from there and say, 'look this is a crime or this is a sin or this is not allowed by religion' means confronting a lot of beliefs and social norms."

Campaigners go on the offensive
But progress is being made. The percentage of girls aged 15 to 17 who have had the procedure has dropped from 74.4% in 2008 to 61% in 2014 -- a clear sign that the drive to end FGM is working, campaigners say.

Last week Egypt announced a plan to reduce FGM by 10-15% in the next five years. If it works, it will mean that for the first time in decades, "uncut" girls would outnumber those who have had the procedure.

"It's an ambitious plan, but now I think that the political atmosphere is supporting us and we can reach our goal," said Vivian Fouad, the National Population Council official leading the government's charge to eradicate FGM.

"For years we were on (the) defense, but now we're on the offensive."

The fight to eradicate FGM in Egypt is unfolding on a number of fronts, from the courts to the places of worship to the streets of the highest-risk towns.

In January a doctor was sentenced on charges related to mutilating a girl -- the first conviction of its kind since the 2008 ban went into effect.

The verdict was a victory for the anti-FGM campaign, but Fouad says too many doctors are still willing to take the money from families and look the other way when it comes to the law.

"It's a good income for doctors," Fouad said. "And some doctors have social and cultural backgrounds where FGM is supported."

Fouad classifies the battle against female circumcision as a fight for the middle class: "If doctors, judges, prosecutors, and teachers are supporting FGM, how are we going to convince poorer women not to have it?"

Campaigners are also trying to persuade local religious leaders to stop preaching the alleged benefits of FGM to mothers. It's often a tough sell in a country where more than half of women still believe, falsely, that cutting is required by religion, according to the most recent survey.

"You need to make people not want to do it for their daughters," said UNFPA program officer Germain Haddad. "You need to work on people's convictions."

To that end, the UNFPA has hired a theater group to perform comedic skits in the streets of communities across the country to foster debate -- and doubt -- about the necessity of FGM.

"Many of these people are shy," said Haddad. "When we used to do seminars on FGM it was very difficult to get people to speak up and ask questions.

"These plays act as an icebreaker that opens up the subject like magic," she said. "And women get to see in a comedic way that FGM is ridiculous."

"I hate the man that did this to me"
But it remains an uphill struggle. Around six in 10 women think the practice should continue, according to the most recent government survey.

"It's tradition, and there's no escape," says Sarah Abulaziz Mohamed, who was circumcised at 12 in her village of Mansour.

"It hurt my dignity -- I was forced to do this act that I didn't want to do," she said. "I hate the man that did this to me."

Sarah is 40 now and has two young daughters of her own. She says FGM left her with lifelong psychological trauma, but at least it taught her a valuable lesson.

"I definitely wouldn't do it to my daughters by any means," she said. "To this day I still have pain, and what's gone is gone ... that part of me can never be given back again."
.

I can't believe anyone would actually admit they do this to their own daughters. These people are sick...any sympathy I have for cultural relativism stops here.

Though we have to admit that there have been a couple of Drs in the states convicted of mutilation but for a different purpose. Whatever the purpose, no one should need an explanation as to why it is wrong to perform unwanted or unneeded surgeries of ANY kind

-------------------------------------------------------
It happens in many countries. And it is actually GROWING in the United States.

http://www.newsweek.com/fgm-rates-have-doubled-us-2004-304773/

FILED UNDER: World, female genial mutilation, FGM, Egypt, women's rights
The number of women and girls at risk for female genital mutilation (FGM) in the United States has more than doubled in the past 10 years, according to new figures released on Friday.

The data, the first on FGM in the U.S. for a decade, is being published to coincide with the United Nations’ International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM.

More than half a million women and girls in the U.S. are at risk of undergoing FGM in the U.S. or abroad, or have already undergone the procedure, including 166,173 under the age of 18, according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). Immigration to the U.S. from African and Middle Eastern countries—where the practice of FGM is a deeply entrenched cultural tradition—is the sole factor for the rise in numbers, says Mark Mather, a demographer at PRB who led the data analysis. There has not been an increase in the practice happening in the U.S. itself, he says.

Of importance, says Mather, is that these are estimates of the number of women and girls who are at risk of having FGM sometime in their life, or have already had it: “Not all of these women and girls have undergone the procedure, we’re just trying to come up with our best estimate of potential risk,” says Mather. “Given that we’ve seen a lot of new immigrants, especially from Africa, it’s become a more important issue here in the U.S. and in Europe as well.”

African immigration to the U.S. has doubled every decade since 1970, with more than 1.8 million African-born people now living in the U.S., according to Census data. Immigrants from Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt, all countries that perform FGM (also known as female circumcision), accounted for 41 percent of total African immigrants. According to the latest numbers, nearly one in five girls at risk for FGM in the U.S. are from Egypt, which tops Somalia as the most at-risk country.


The last large-scale study of FGM in the U.S. was released by the African Women’s Health Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2004 and found more than 227,000 American women were at risk of or had undergone FGM. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is set to publish long overdue federal data in the coming months; the last federal survey on the FGM in the U.S. was done by the Department of Health and Human Services in 1997 and found roughly 168,000 women had undergone or were at risk from FGM, based on census data from 1990.

An unpublished draft of the impending CDC report seen by Newsweek more or less matches the PRB study, counting 513,000 women and girls living with FGM in the U.S. today.

According to the PRB, California is the state with the largest number of at-risk women and girls, with 56,872, followed by New York, with 48,418, and Minnesota, with 44,293. In terms of cities in the U.S., New York, Washington and Minneapolis-St. Paul are the metropolitan areas with the largest numbers of at-risk women and girls. Hawaii is the only state with zero women and girls at risk, according to the data. However, Mather points that while there may be some at risk in the state, the number is so small that it didn’t show up in the sample data.

Included in the data are girls at risk of being sent back to their family’s origin country to undergo FGM—a practice widely known as “vacation cutting”—or having a traditional midwife or cutter sent to perform FGM in the U.S.

Globally, around 130 million women and girls are living with the effects from FGM and around 3 million undergo the procedure annually, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The practice, known to be performed in 29 countries and usually at the hands of midwives or physicians, involves cutting the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. Depending on local customs, it could also include additional modifications ranging from cutting away part of the clitoris to removing the inner and outer vaginal lips before sewing the remaining skin together, leaving a small hole for urination and menstrual blood.


The practice predates religion and has no religious significance in either Islam nor Christianity. However, communities of both faiths continue to circumcise their daughters, believing it will cleanse or purify the girl, ensure she remains sexually chaste, prevent cheating on her future husband and keep her behaving well.

In the past year, FGM has come under greater scrutiny in the international community. In Egypt, where female circumcision is illegal, a doctor named Raslan Fadl was sentenced to two years in prison for manslaughter in January for performing an FGM operation that killed 13-year-old Sohair al-Batea in 2013. This was the country’s first FGM conviction. The U.K. also had its first-ever FGM trial this year, but Dr. Dhanuson Dharmasena, who was accused of illegally performing FGM on a woman in London days after she gave birth, was acquitted on Wednesday.

Immigration to Western countries where FGM is not traditionally practiced means health care providers have had to adapt to the harmful medical consequences of FGM. Greater awareness, along with better data—last month, Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham, U.K., reported treating 1,500 cases of FGM in the past five years—has led to acknowledgement of the specialized health care needs of women have had FGM, like psychological trauma and greater attention during childbirth due to pain, possible genital tears and the danger posed to the unborn child.

The case of Dharmasena only came about because the midwife noticed what he was doing—restitching the patient after she had given birth—and warned him it could be constituted as FGM.

FGM has been illegal in the U.S. since 1996, but an amendment to the law banning vacation cutting wasn’t passed until 2012. In 2006, Khalid Adem, an Ethiopian immigrant, was the first person convicted of performing FGM in the U.S. after prosecutors alleged he cut his daughter’s clitoris with a pair of scissors.

On Thursday Rep. Joe Crowley, D-New York, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, introduced new legislation, supported by international human rights group Equality Now, that aims to create a national strategy to protect girls in the U.S. from FGM. Crowley, who has a 14-year-old daughter, passed a law in 2012 that helped close a loophole that allowed parents to take their children abroad for vacation cutting. He says the new bill will take further action, like establishing a hotline for at-risk girls and better education for teachers and health care workers. FGM is a sensitive subject, he says, but one that needs to be talked about, especially because it robs girls of a chance at a normal life.

“I want my daughter to experience fulfilled life at its whole. I want it not only for my daughter but for all girls to have that opportunity,” says Crowley. “For millions of girls that’s been taken away from them, often by their own family.”

The introduction of the law was timed to coincide with the U.N.’s Zero Tolerance Day, held annually to celebrate the progress that’s been made toward FGM elimination—like the passing of legislation banning it in countries like Kenya, Guinea-Bissau and Uganda—but also recognize what still needs to be done.

“It’s an important moment for everybody to reflect on the harms of this practice, on the commitments that have been done at the international level,” says Nafissatou Diop, the coordinator of the UNFPA-UNICEF joint program on FGM. “We have girls fighting for their rights, we have communities, religious leaders, women, men, who are saying no to the practice of FGM.”

The focus of this year’s Zero Tolerance Day is the medicalization of FGM, which is on the rise in several countries. Around 20 percent of those who undergo FGM will endure it at the hands of a medical practitioner, says Diop. While many parents know it’s harmful, they think there’s a reduced risk if their daughters are cut by a health professional who is trained in saving lives and knows how to stop bleeding.

According to Diop, many health providers are pressured into providing FGM services by their communities. But, she adds, FGM performed by a doctor “is not safer. FGM cannot be safe.”

In some parts of the world, medicalized FGM is even more common. For example, in Egypt around 77 percent of girls who undergo FGM are cut by health personnel. Prevalence there is so widespread that in many rural areas and villages, doctors, for whom FGM is a source of income, earning them between 100 and 200 Egyptian pounds per case, have never seen an uncut woman.

Medical schools in the country—where cutting off part of the clitoris is the main form of FGM—do not cover it in any curriculum, but groups like UNFPA and the Egyptian Ministry of Health are training doctors on what to do when a family brings them a girl and ask for her to be circumcised.

"The challenge is that you need to work on many levels. You need to work on people's convictions, that this practice does not do what they think it does," says Germaine Haddad, program officer at the UNFPA Egypt office.

Changing deep-seated cultural customs and behaviors will be tough where pressure from society and family members to continue tradition is intense. Without being circumcised, many parents believe their daughter won’t be a good wife and, more importantly, a good person.

“[A girl] has to go through this because [if she doesn’t] she’s going to face more consequences,” says Diop, “because what is worse than being rejected by your community?”

Thanks Sassy for bringing such topics to the public with positive sense.
Many people don't know such CRIMES exist on this planet.

When I started one such thread on 'marital rape' (which is also a blot on humanity), Many so called modern women of this forum shouted ****..****.

And ultimately my thread was blocked.

I feel Minglians are mature enough to know and educate among themselves about these dark aspects of our society at large.

Thank you, Istay.
Martial rape , was legal in the United States, until approx.. 1975 !!
Date rape - did not become illegal in the United States, until approximately mid to late 1980's. !!
Disgusting !!

Your post reminds me of the biography of a famous African female model, I read in Readers Digest magazine long back.

She also went through FGM, a ritual in their area (part of Somalia if I am correct) along with other heneious social behaviors. She fled to Europe and through so many circles destined to be a siccessful model.

Later on she helped other females.

Agreed & Appreciated. A recent 'Indian' film (Bollywood) titled, Akash Vaani, was made, focusing upon Marital Rape & the consequent (& relentless) fight-back of the woman, who eventually emerges victorious. It 'does' portray an important message to the 'society' (any society, for that matter).


Keep 'smiling'!

Kaustuv1 - qoted
Agreed & Appreciated. A recent 'Indian' film (Bollywood) titled, Akash Vaani, was made, focusing upon Marital Rape & the consequent (& relentless) fight-back of the woman, who eventually emerges victorious. It 'does' portray an important message to the 'society' (any society, for that matter).
------------------------------------------------------
Yes, I read about the film & read English version of India newspapers.
(Among others).
Believe me, the film was almost a thread here . But timing is everything. * So is controlling the cries of the planet... that turns me so angry... until I find a constructive way to show people *

This is an outrage! I have spoken out against this practice many times in the forums. How do you like Sharia law? Muslims have spread out into every country like the plague and have a global Muslim campaign to impose their azz backwards barbaric practices under Sharia law into every nation on the planet and into non-Muslim countries, actually usurping the civil laws of each nation!! WHAT GIVES THEM THE RIGHT? THIS PARTICULAR PRACTICE IS NOT EVEN IN THEIR RELIGION!!! I am saddened and heartbroken for these poor Muslim women, many of whom are shamefully brainwashed into accepting this disgusting, barbaric practice. These women are being butchered! This is done so that they feel no pleasure during sex and it will guarantee their marital fidelity. They are in pain for the rest of their lives!!! Never mind that the men are allowed to run around on them and cheat and have multiple wives!

This ties in with the Chinese barbaric practice of binding women's feet to make them look smaller and daintier for the enjoyment of the men, which took forever to outlaw, for over a thousand years, from 937 - 1949!!! It was supposed to bring about a good marriage. Ridiculous. Binding feet involved, according to the Wūzhèn Museum, "starting when the child was five, the girl’s feet were broken at the arch, their toes fractured and folded over toes to heels. The broken feet were bound tightly so the feet would remain in a tight small shape. It usually took three years to remold the feet into a shape and size that many males of the time admired." This also guaranteed that the girls and women wouldn't run away and could be controlled. 2 billion Chinese girls as young as 2 years old suffered this practice. Their feet were literally broken without anesthesia (you can hear their agonized screams!) and reshaped so that they would have the semblance of being able to fit into 3 inch shoes!!! Their unbound feet, which the men never got to see because it would be too shocking and infested and stench-ridden, looked like horses' hooves!! But on the outside, it gave the appearance of pretty, dainty, pleasantly scented feet! And the women lived with pain for the rest of their lives. Why are women always treated like cattle and BUTCHERED by these societies for the men's pleasure and control?

"An even more graphic description of the practice comes from Alan Bellow’s Bound by Tradition, “[T]he earliest known written records of the practice [foot binding] date back to the Southern Tang dynasty around 937 AD. Some historians believe that the tradition arose when women started imitating the imperial concubine “Fragrant Girl” who was known for her diminutive wrapped feet; others attribute the tradition to a troupe of court dancers who pioneered the process around the same time. Regardless of its origins, these re-engineered feet became fashionable among upper-class Chinese families around a thousand years ago, and it was in practice until the Chinese Communists had enough power to stop it in 1949].
Generations of trial and error led practitioners of foot binding to master the craft of twisting and reshaping a young girl’s sole. Foot binding was usually conducted in winter months so that the cold could be used to help numb the injuries and prevent infection. Sometime after a daughter of the well-to-do turned 2 years old, and generally before they turned 5, the young girl and her malleable skeleton were taken aside by an elder female family member or a professional foot binder to initiate the foot-altering process. Though there was an old saying that a mother couldn’t love her daughter and her daughter’s feet at the same time, the procedure was seldom carried out by the mother personally because she would likely find it difficult to ignore the child’s considerable distress.

To begin the foot binding process, the foot binder would gently soak the child’s feet in a solution of animal blood and herbs. Her toenails were trimmed and groomed, and her feet were thoroughly massaged. Once the skin was softened and the muscles were relaxed, the foot binder would curl the child’s toes down towards the sole of the foot as far as the bones would allow. The binder would then curl the toes farther than the bones would allow, snapping the toddler’s phalanges and forming a kind of twisted foot-fist. No manner of pain relief was employed during this process, so the binder was required to disregard any agonized screams. Next, the arch was broken.

The girl’s foot–now a suitably sculptable sack of bones–was wrapped in long bandages, which had been soaked in the secret recipe of herbs and bloods. With each winding the bindings were pulled as tightly as possible, drawing the ball and the heel of the foot increasingly closer and tapering the end of the foot into a point. The wrappings were then thoroughly stitched and allowed to tighten as they dried. Then on to the other foot.

Afterwards, the girl’s feet were periodically unwrapped to clean the crevasses, trim the oddly oblique toenails, and remove any dead flesh. The foot maintainer might opt to peel the toenails off altogether if they were becoming sites for infection. Sometimes a toe or two would fall off during this process, leaving even more room for reshaping. The girl’s feet were then re-wrapped even tighter than before, causing her footprint to shrink further as the bones slowly fused into their new configuration. Occasionally girls’ feet would fester, and blood poisoning from gangrene could be a cause for concern, but an estimated 90% survived the process.

Once the feet reached their target petiteness of 7.5 centimeters (about 3 inches), the unsightly bindings were adorned with embroidered silk slippers. When a perfectly lotus-footed lady was inserted into society she became a sought-after mate. Her reconfigured feet were made obvious by her distinct manner of walking: a swaying shuffle which came to be known as the Lotus Gait. Bound feet were considered to be sexually exciting to men, and girls who had them were much more likely to land a prestigious marriage. Sex manuals described numerous erotic acts married couples could perform involving lotus feet, but men were warned never to look upon the feet without their shoes and bindings, lest the aesthetic be destroyed forever. Moreover, unwrapped lotus feet were said to have a powerful and disagreeable odor owing to the accumulation of bacteria among the unnatural folds of the deformed feet. Dainty is dandy, but necrotic is not erotic,” says Alan Bellows.

If you go to the Wūzhèn Museum, look for a pair of shoes that has a drawer built into each heel. Fragrant powder was put into the drawer so that each time the woman stepped on her heel, a puff of powder was released (likely to mask the odor of decay—ugh!).

In Bound by Tradition, Alan Bellows continues, “Although the practice was initially limited to upper-crust families, people of lesser prestige soon began to conform with the tradition. A lotus-footed wife was not only coveted for her signature locomotion, but her injuries also tended to keep her from wandering far from home” [From: www.damninteresting.com/bound-by-tradition/]

From the late 10th century until the practice was effectively banned by the Chinese Communists in 1949, an estimated 2,000,000,000 (two billion) Chinese women had their feet bound (we now say broken and mutilated) to create tiny “Golden Lotus” feet, some only three inches long!"


Read more here:

https://reneeriley.wordpress.com/2011/06/27/chinese-foot-binding-the-wuzhen-foot-binding-museum

Yes,

I saw it many times that people here generalize things in the name of religion, country, races...

Not good.

There exist good, very good Muslims too.

More over,

I don't think FGM is only linked to Muslims Also, not muslims in every part of the world observe this practice.

In my opinion this is practiced in parts of Africa.

2OLD2MESSAROUND. Quote...

History has been made..

Female Genital Mutilation Banned In Nigeria
Kimberley Richards - Jun 03, 2015
"More than 130 million girls and women have experienced female genital mutilation or cutting ..."

Nigeria made history by outlawing female genital mutilation. The ban falls under the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act 2015 that was passed in Senate on May 5 and recently enacted into law.

This was one of the last acts by the outgoing president, Goodluck Jonathan. His successor, Muhammadu Buhari, was sworn into office this past Friday, May 29.
Female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C) is the act of either partially or totally removing the external female genitalia or causing injury to the female genital organs for non-medical purposes.

According to UNICEF:

"More than 130 million girls and women have experienced FGM/C in 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where the practice is most common."

With the help of community activism, campaigns and numbers of organizational efforts to end this practice, UNICEF reported that teenage girls were now one-third less likely to undergo FGM/C today than 30 years ago.

Now with the new law criminalizing this procedure, the hope is the ban will fully eliminate this practice and be strongly enforced to combat any existing societal pressures.

The World Health Organization cites immediate harmful effects of FCM/C that include hemorrhage (bleeding), bacterial infection, open sores, and long-term consequences that include infertility, childbirth complications and recurring bladder infections.

In another UNICEF report, communities who practice FGM often do so to reduce sexual desire in women and to initiate girls to womanhood, among other purposes.

According to "The Guardian's" analysis of 2014 UN data, a quarter of the women in Nigeria have undergone FGM.

Stella Mukasa, director of Gender, Violence and Rights at the International Center for Research on Women, explains the complexity of the implementation of the new law banning FGM/C.

"It is crucial that we scale up efforts to change traditional cultural views that underpin violence against women," she wrote in an article for "The Guardian." "Only then will this harmful practice be eliminated.”

The Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act serves to protect women and violence in multiple aspects. BuzzFeed News cited a 2013 version of the bill that highlights its purpose to eliminate violence both in private and public, and end physical, sexual, domestic and psychological violence.


http://nigeria.aplus.com/a/nigeria-bans-genital-mutilation?so=4PJLnoNN3WTe2o8m2gTyXm&ref=ns/