Female circumcision is a practice common to many parts of Africa. It's seen as an important tradition which marks a girl's progress into adulthood, but just reading descriptions of what it actually entails were enough to make my skin crawl and want to look away from the screen. I warn you now, don't read this article while eating, or if you're feeling queasy. Female circumcision has been more accurately referred to as 'female genital mutilation'.
Female genital mutilation can range from removing the clitoris to removing all the external genitalia including the labia and then stitching a narrow opening about the size of a matchstick. The second type is common in Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan and in parts of many other African nations. The vagina often has to be reopened to allow for easier childbirth, and it is then re-stitched after birth, leaving it as small as before. Often someone has to be called on a girl's wedding night to open her up so that she is able to consummate the marriage.
The reasons for the procedure include keeping the girl 'pure', and supposedly increasing sexual pleasure for men, but over the past few decades better education has led to a reduction in the practice, and there are now few communities in which 100% of girls and women are circumcised. However, recent reports from Kenya suggest that the practice is having a resurgence there because it is being promoted as a good way of protecting yourself from HIV. This is a tragic irony, because the truth is that poor sanitary conditions and reused, un-sterilised instruments mean that girls are often exposed to the risk of infection, not protected from it.
Women like Dorothy Onyancha have told reporters that her 12 year old daughter contracted HIV when her father took her to a traditional circumciser: "She is now HIV-positive and I know she got it from the practice because she confided to me that the woman who cut them used one knife to circumcise 15 of them," Onyancha said. "Now I take care of her alone, yet the father does not even care, he cares more about his pride of having a circumcised daughter." One of the girls her daughter was circumcised with later died from excessive bleeding.
Grace Kemunto, who is a traditional circumciser, has argued that "When you are cut as a woman, you do not become promiscuous and it means you cannot get infected by HIV; even our men want circumcised girls who will not turn out to be prostitutes." But doctors have poured scorn on their arguments. Female genital mutilation has shown no link to reduced sexual desire, and Dr Erick Abunga, the Kisii District medical officer of health, has asked: "How can one claim to be reducing HIV by practicing female genital mutilation when we know one knife can be used to circumcise up to 10 girls or even more?" The truth is that circumcisers have been forced into a corner – faced with a society which is moving away from this horrific tradition and a government which has outlawed the procedure for under 18s, they have latched on to fear of HIV as a way of protecting their livelihood. However, the area where female genital mutilation is common now has the highest level of HIV in the country, 15.3 percent, compared to a national average of 7.4 percent.
This is sadly yet another example of women being on the receiving end of oppressive traditions which throw their human rights to the wind. Governments and NGOs (non-government organisations) have already started to turn the tide against it, but unfortunately it will take longer before communities stamp out this abhorrent practice for good.