It is clear that Egypt needs to take greeter actions in ensuring FGM is completely banned. Rothna Begum is a women's rights researcher who focuses on the Middle East and Africa. The doctor claims to have done the procedure other medical purposes other than FGM.
minimum custodial sentence of three months and a maximum of two years, or an alternative minimum penalty of 1,000 Egyptian pounds (LE) and a maximum of 5,000 LE.
new Child Law included the formation of Child Protection Committees (CPC
ncluding girls at risk of circumcision
Egypt hosted in 2008 a regional meeting entitled 'Cairo Declaration+5'.
'The Cairo Declaration for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation'
international campaign aimed at rekindling world-wide attention on FGM/C.
Egyptian Ministry of Health (MoH) issued in 2007 a ministerial decree (271) closing a loophole in the previous 1996 decre
In 2007
FGM/C has no basis in the core Islamic Sharia or any of its partial provisions.
3 Survivors Reveal the Brutal Reality of Female Genital Mutilation
According to the AHA Foundation, up to 228,000 girls and women in the U.S. are vulnerable to what's called "vacation cutting," when parents send their daughters to stay with their families abroad and to endure female genital mutilation (FGM)
"Most women won't share their stories because they are afraid of what will happen to them, what will happen to their parents."
The shame runs so deep that girls are taught to never look at or touch their genitals, and most of them have never been to a gynecologist
don't even know they have been mutilated until they attempt to have sex, at which time they often need to be cut open again to consummate a marriage.
Dukureh has been the only U.S.-based survivor to speak up so publicly against FGM
I was 6 and my sister was 3 at the time.
We were there three months. We ate out of one shared bowl.
We went into a home, and immediately women grabbed and blindfolded us and tied us to some thick bushes.
There was loud drumming and older women were singing songs, which I was too young to understand.
. I saw an old woman holding a knife so sharp I could see the drops of blood sliding down the edge.
Three other women were holding down my arms and legs, and another was sitting right on my chest, covering my mouth
I can still feel the weight of her today
t. What the cutter does is hold on to your clitoris to make sure she gets that and scrapes everything else that comes along with it — all of the labia,
we were left to bleed into little dirt holes for hours.
it is common practice to circumcise infant
receive our "treatment
They took dried leaves and placed them on the wound and that would stay on for two to three days
We were also taught, every day, that if we ever talked about this, if we even mentioned it, they would kill us.
I learned two of them later died in childbirth, which was too difficult for them because of FGM. They bled to death.
h the rite of passage
This is who we are."
She cannot have kids as a result of her FGM.
I will never take them back. My family will never see them.
! This article shares 3 stories of women who have gone through the FGM procedure. They tend to consider FGM as the "Right of Passage" for young worn. Many women die in childbirth or have complications because of the results of FGM.
While doing research on women's rights in Egypt I came across the term "female genital mutilation" which is something we have all heard of, but I had not thought about this concept lately, nor in t...
Equality Now, a London-based women’s rights organizatio
Dorkenoo started organizations to battle genital cutting and co-ordinated the effort more broadly as acting director of women’s health at the World Health Organization in the late 1990s.
She wrote articles and an influential book – Cutting the Rose: Female Genital Mutilation (1996) –
“warrior in chief
“She inspired a generation of feminists across the world to take up the cause of banning the procedure,
Last year, the UN General Assembly voted unanimously to recognize female genital cutting as a human-rights violation.
British government prosecuted it as a crime for the first time,
African-led organization she helped found, The Girl Generation: Together to End FGM, began work this month.
practice is declining in many countries
teenage girls were less likely to have been cut than older women in half of the 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where the practice is concentrated.
In Egypt, where more women have been cut than in any other country, surveys showed that 81 per cent of 15- to 19-year-olds had undergone the practice, compared with 96 per cent of women in their late 40s.
Female genital cutting involves pricking, piercing or amputating some or all of the external genitalia
vulva is closed, leaving a small hole for the passage of urine and menstrual blood.
The practice is believed to have originated about 4,000 years ago in Egypt or the Horn of Africa.
27 countries in Africa
Adherents come from a spectrum of faiths, including Christianity, Islam and African religion
often ages 4 to 8
pathway to womanhood
The World Health Organization says female genital cutting has no health benefits and can cause severe bleeding, problems urinating and, later in life, cysts, infections and infertility.
intended to reduce women’s sexual pleasure
preserve a woman’s virginity until marriage.
125 million women living today in the countries where it is concentrated have experienced such cutting.
The mother was so badly scarred, she said, that she could not deliver her baby through natural childbirth.
Ms. Dorkenoo began campaigning against the practice in the early 1980s
Foundation for Women’s Health and Development to promote the health of African women and girls, with a focus on abolishing female genital cutting
co-ordinated national action plans against female genital cutting in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan.
In 1994, Queen Elizabeth II named Ms. Dorkenoo an honorary officer in the Order of the British Empire.
Efua Dorkenoo recently passed away. She was a women who fought for women's rights and the ban of FGM. She was an inspiration to feminists to take action.
still widely practiced throughout Egypt are Type I (commonly referred to as clitoridectomy) and Type II (commonly referred to as excision).
A recent clinical study indicated that 19 percent of the procedures involved only the excision (removal) of the prepuce (clitoral hood) with or without removal of a part or all of the clitoris (Type I)
Sixty-four percent involved the excision (removal) of the prepuce (clitoral hood) and clitoris together with part or all of the labia minora (inner vaginal lips)(Type II). In eight percent of the cases, only the labia minora were removed.
excision (removal) of part or all of the external genitalia (clitoris, labia minora and labia majora) and stitching or narrowing of the vaginal opening.
Type III, the most harmful and dangerous form, is rarely practiced except among a few groups in the southern part of the country.
diameter of a matchstic
Only one percent of the women
Among older women, the procedure generally was performed without any anesthetic
75 percent of their daughters who had the procedure received either a general or local anesthetic.
There are 3 types of FGM. Type 3 is the most harmful. Older women were not given nay type of pain medication. Recently, young girls were given medication to help with the pain.
The video is about individuals who are campaigning against female genital utilization (FGM). The women who does the procedure has no medical license or experience. She said the mother doesn't care of the girl dies. All she wants is for her to "cleansed".
harmful physical, psychological and human rights consequences has led to the use of the term “female genital mutilation
women who have undergone FGC do not consider themselves to be mutilated and have become offended by the term “FGM”
no definitive evidence documenting when or why this ritual began
practised in ancient Egypt as a sign of distinction, while others hypothesize its origin in ancient Greece, Rome, Pre-Islamic Arabia and the Tsarist Russian Federation.
97% of married women surveyed experienced FGC.3
94.6% of married women had been exposed to FGC and 69.1% of those women agreed to carry out FGC on their daughters
41% of female students in primary, preparatory and secondary schools had been exposed to FGC.
females interviewed was 38 816. The prevalence of FGC among schoolgirls was 50.3%. The prevalence of FGC was 46.2% in government urban schools, 9.2% in private urban schools and 61.7% in rural schools.
FGC has remained a common practice in the countries where it has traditionally been performed.4
Egypt are type I (commonly referred to as clitoridectomy) and type II (commonly referred to as excision).5 In Africa, the most common type of FGC is type II (excision of the clitoris and the labia minor) which accounts for up to 80% of all cases.6 I
In 1995, a ministerial decree forbade the practice and made it punishable by fine and imprisonment
The difference in the prevalence rates of FGC is mainly due to educational status in both rural and urban areas
There is an obvious negative correlation between the female’s parents’ education and the practice of FGC
Parents with low or no education are the most likely to have circumcised their daughters with prevalence rates ranging between 59.5% and 65.1%
higher degrees of education are the least likely to have their daughters circumcised and the prevalence rate ranged between 19.5% and 22.2%.
age at which FGC is performed on girls varies
4 and 12 years old
the procedure may be carried out shortly after birth to some time before the age of marriage.6
some girls mentioned that they were circumcised soon after birth, during the neonatal period.
. In Egypt, in the past, the majority of FGC procedures were performed by traditional midwives, called dayas. However, according to the Demographic and Health Survey (1995),16 the number of
An immediate effect of the procedure is pain because FGC is often carried out without anaesthesia.
Short-term complications, such as severe bleeding which can lead to shock or death
include infection because of unsanitary operating conditions, and significant psychological and psychosexual consequences of FGC
complications (early and late) such as severe pain, bleeding, incontinence, infections, mental health problems, sexual problems, primary infertility and difficult labour with high episiotomy rate. In addition, the repetitive use of the same instruments on several girls without sterilization can cause the spread of HIV and Hepatitis B and C.
Fathers played minor roles as decision-makers for the procedure (9.4%
mothers are the main decision-makers for the procedure of FGC (65.2%)
circumcision is an important religious tradition (33.4%)
religious tradition is still the most important reason for performing FGC in Egypt,
In these surveys, 72% of ever-married women reported that circumcision is an important part of religious tradition and about two-thirds of the women had the impression that the husband prefers his wife to be circumcised
one-third of ever-married women cited cleanliness as a reason while a small number saw it as a way to prevent promiscuity before marriage.
milies refuse to accept women who have not undergone FGC as marriage partners
Around 12% of girls believed that there is no religious support for circumcision.
. It is an issue that demands a collaborative approach involving health professionals, religious leaders, educationalists and nongovernmental organizations.
partial or total cutting away of the female external genitalia
Female genital cutting (FGC
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Prevalence of female genital cutting among Egyptian girls
100 and 130
cultural or other non-therapeutic reason
28 African countries and the Middle East have been subjected to FGC.2
This is such a controversial topic. I saw a reference to it recently (was it possibly something that was brought up in the Bill Maher/Ben Affleck dust-up?) that pointed out that the practice is almost unheard of outside of central and northeastern Africa, with a few small pockets in Iraq and the Gulf.
This article describes how 92% of married women in Egypt have suffered female genital mutilation. Earlier this year, an Egyptian doctor Raslan Fadl was convicted of manslaughter and performing female genital mutilation that led to the death of a 13-year-old Sohair el-Batea. He was only sentenced 2 years in prison.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women. Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths.