The U.S. and U.K. are taking steps to align themselves with global efforts to combat female genital mutilation, a practice that is quickly spreading throughout the world.
While female genital mutilation, or FGM, has been outlawed in the United Kingdom since 1985, the country is now recognizing the crime as one that fits into the category of child abuse, prompting the nation to set up a hotline to protect and provide assistance to girls at risk of FGM.
This week, the hotline was launched by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to address the prevalent form of cruelty, a procedure in which female genital organs are removed.
In the last two years, roughly 1,700 victims were treated in the U.K. for female genital mutilation, according to the National Society.
The movement toward recognition, prevention and treatment in the United Kingdom follows the release of a report by the advocacy group Sanctuary for Families highlighting the growing cases of FGM in the United States. Of the 30 million girls at risk of FGM worldwide, as many as 200,000 girls under the age of 15 reside in the U.S., according to the report.
“Although FGM is most prevalent in twenty-eight countries in Africa and the Middle East, it is no longer confined to distant shores,” the report states. “Every year, women in the United States discover that they, their daughters,and their loved ones face a very real imminent danger of FGM in the U.S.”
FGM wasn’t banned in the U.S. until 1996, but enforcement has been lacking even in the years since. There still remain avenues for the procedure to take place on U.S. soil.
According to the Sanctuary for Families report, ignorance has a lot to do with the continued prevalence of the crime. Even law enforcement officials and social service providers are to blame for failing to identify the crime.
There also still exists a split in immigrant communities, including among Somalis, who continue to fight for their rights to carry out a mild form of FGM on their female children. They were even backed at one time by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which put forth an argument that genital “nicking” isn’t technically damaging if done in a U.S.-style medical setting.
It wasn’t until this year until the U.S. addressed the practice of families sending daughters overseas for FGM procedures, what has callously become known as “vacation cutting.”
In 2012, the United Nations passed the Intensifying Global Efforts for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation resolution, which called for a global effort to end the procedure. When President Barack Obama signed the Transport for Female Genital Mutilation Act this year, it put the U.S. on target to do just that.
The efforts in the U.K. also take the world one step closer to working independently to achieve a collective goal against a now-global issue.
“Until we can protect the girls and women within our borders as well as we protect those who are fleeing harm from distant shores, we have not adequately fulfilled our international obligation to help women and their families build lives free from the threat of violence,” Sanctuary for Families states in its report.
What … and why?
The World Health Organization defines FGM as any “procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”
“FGM has no health benefits, and it harms girls and women in many ways. It involves removing and damaging healthy and normal female genital tissue, and interferes with the natural functions of girls’ and women’s bodies,” the WHO states on its website.
The health implications of this procedure are vast, as it’s been associated with complications during childbirth, an increase in newborn deaths and consistent pain throughout a woman’s life, according to Equality Now.
The justifications for carrying on FGM procedures are mixed — social, cultural and religious factors play into the equation. At the heart of the matter is a belief in inequality among sexes, subjecting women to an unnecessary procedure that ensures oppression.
“In my village, FGM is seen as a way to ‘clean’ a girl of whatever she might have done before, to make her pure for her husband,” a woman identified as Madeleine said in the Sanctuary for Families report.
Madeleine’s story highlights those living in areas where FGM remains legal and part of a societal framework. Now, the U.S. and UK are working to create awareness regarding the issue and provide avenues for a crackdown on the illegal activity.
But Americans are still ignorant of the issue — and that’s still part of the problem.
A fight for saving culture or completely unacceptable?
The ban on FGM in the U.S. isn’t embraced by everyone, including immigrant populations that bemoan the wide-reaching definition of the law.
Amina Ahmed, a Somali native who in 2010 lived in Minneapolis, Minn., is among those opposed the broad stroke of the law. In a 2010 interview with the Minnesota Daily, Ahmed spoke of her experience undergoing what is considered a “mild form of circumcision,” also known as a “genital nick,” a process by which a woman’s clitoris is poked with a needle, allowing blood to flow out. Culturally speaking, this is believed to purify a young girl.
Technically, this is FGM, yet Ahmed claims it’s a cultural tradition — one she hoped to pass down to her daughter.
Ahmed’s views were backed at one time by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Douglas Diekema, a University of Washington doctor and member of the board of directors of the academy’s Bioethics Committee, has become a spokesperson for immigrant parents’ right to carry on cultural traditions in the U.S. under a legal framework.
Diekema is a supporter of performing the clitorial nick in the U.S. based on the argument that, if they don’t do it here, they’ll go elsewhere.
“I think allowing pediatricians to perform the nick under the right circumstances would be better for some girls,” Diekema told the Minnesota Daily. “There’s no question, based on conversations I’ve had with people who take care of women from these communities, that in the absence of offering something that would not be psychologically or physically harmful, some will have a procedure done that will result in great harm.”
He also framed his argument as one that actually seeks to end harsher forms of FGM, as it supposedly appeases cultural obligations.
“It’s very easy to take the high road in cases like this,” he told ABC News. “But when you’re dealing with religious or cultural beliefs, saying no sometimes is not sufficient for people and it will not necessarily eliminate the practice.”
Not everyone is buying that argument.
“Political correctness is one thing. But endorsing a barbaric custom that has disfigured over a hundred million women around the world — and telling medical professionals in the U.S. to mollify certain immigrant populations with just a little nick — is unacceptable,” wrote Linda Lowen, a journalist who regularly writes on women’s issues. “We won’t remain the land of the free and the home of the brave if we don’t possess the moral strength to stick to our convictions and insist, ‘Female circumcision has to end … and the cut stops here’ as a bold first step to end the practice worldwide.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics eventually pulled the plug on its endorsement, encouraging doctors to resist FGM procedures of any kind.
“We’re saying don’t do it,” Judish S. Palfrey, president of the Academy, told The New York Times. “Do everything that you can to support that family in this tough time, but don’t be pulled into the procedure.”