Convictions for female genital mutilation: France - 100; Britain 0

Posted: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 10:58

Back in 1999, a group of MPs criticised the author Germaine Greer. They were astonished by her claim in a book that criminalising female genital mutilation (FGM) amounted to "an attack on cultural identity". The MPs described Greer's view as "simplistic and offensive" but the fact that she could write in those terms less than 15 years ago, when FGM was already illegal in this country, is sobering.

It's also an indication of how the debate has moved on, to the point where FGM is widely regarded as a form of child abuse. But it remains a hidden practice, carried out in secrecy, and not a single person has been convicted of mutilating a girl's or woman's genitals in this country.

Unsurprisingly, this fact has caused trenchant criticism of the police and the prosecuting authorities; the UK is often contrasted unfavourably with France, where more than 100 people have been convicted. Some of the French convictions arose from two incidents where something went wrong and the families reported the practitioner to the police, but one recent case came to light when a child was treated for appendicitis and the hospital reported it to a prosecutor.

The reporting system in this country is nothing like as robust, as The Independent on Sunday revealed in January; a survey of 500 hospitals and local education authorities found that less than 50 kept records of women and girls who had undergone FGM or were believed to be at risk.

This lack of intelligence, say the police, goes to the heart of why there haven't been prosecutions in this country. It's also the reason why they've changed tack in London, appealing for information from the public about people who are doing the cutting.

"We've been waiting for victims to come forward," Detective Chief Inspector Iqbal Singh told me last week. "It hasn't worked, so now we're targeting cutters. FGM is child abuse and we're trying to get intelligence flowing into the police about cutters in the community."

In retrospect, the 1985 law outlawing what was euphemistically described as "female circumcision" created unrealistic expectations about children giving evidence against their parents. So the Metropolitan Police has adopted a new strategy, which it describes as "intelligence, prevention and enforcement". A key element is the NSPCC helpline set up last month for the public to report their suspicions about FGM, which was a police initiative.

"People don't want to talk to the police about this," Detective Chief Superintendent Keith Niven says frankly. "I understand that. Now there's another route."

Niven is head of Scotland Yard's Sexual Offences, Exploitation and Child Abuse Command. He's also in charge of Operation Yewtree, the inquiry into the late Jimmy Savile, and he's worked closely with the NSPCC during that investigation.

"You don't have to carry the weight of this information alone," is his message to families where FGM is carried out. "Please just tell us who's doing it. You can remain anonymous if you like. We need a starting point." His officers admit they don't even have as much information as they'd like on who is doing the cutting: "It could be a matriarchal figure or it could be a GP who's doing it as a sideline," says Singh.

If this sounds a rather candid admission of helplessness, the frustration of senior officers is palpable. Thousands of girls are believed to be at risk — the figures are estimates and vary widely — but what is known is that more than 1,700 victims of FGM have been referred to specialist health clinics in the UK in the past two years.

In London, a women's organisation, Imkaan, has carried out research suggesting that 7,000 women affected by FGM give birth in the city each year, which is a clear risk indicator for their daughters. So here's a startling figure: the police have received only 167 referrals about FGM since 2009. "Other state organisations are dealing with victims on a daily basis," Singh points out. "Why isn't that information coming in to the police?"

In a heartening sign, the NSPCC helpline received 39 calls in the first two weeks of operation. During the first week, five of the calls related to the area covered by the Met. So far they've been what Singh calls "snippets" — a teacher reporting anxiety about a girl being taken to an FGM-practising country for six weeks, for example. He sounds a word of caution: "It may be to do with FGM but it doesn't always turn out to be an allegation of crime. We need evidence — are these grounds to examine the children?"

Girls are routinely checked for FGM in France, but there's little appetite for compulsory examination in this country. The practice is unlike other forms of child abuse in one crucial respect. Most intelligence that a child is being abused comes to the police via relatives, teachers and organisations such as youth clubs — for example a teacher seeing bruises during a PE lesson.

"In a lot of child protection cases there's a build-up," says Niven. "But it doesn't happen with this type of crime. There's no contact with social services and no previous offences. The child could live in a family where there's no other detriment to them. That's one of the reasons we aren't getting those referrals."

The subject is particularly urgent as the summer holidays begin and girls are at risk of being sent abroad to be cut. There is also a worrying degree of ignorance: in March, the NSPCC published a survey of 1,000 teachers which showed that one in six didn't know that FGM is illegal in the UK. Almost the same proportion didn't regard FGM as child abuse, while four out of five said they'd had no training on how to spot warning signs.

It sometimes feels as if that elusive first prosecution is as far away as ever. While the kind of attitude expressed by Germaine Greer in 1999 seems anachronistic, the authorities remain caught between opposing accusations: not doing enough to stop FGM because of "political correctness" on the one hand, and encouraging "racist curtain-twitching" on the other. (That's the accusation recently levelled at the NSPCC by a mischief-making website, by the way.)

The police in London say they want to eradicate FGM within 10 years, which is ambitious. But it's a serious form of violence against women, and they need all the help the public can give them.

Joan Smith is co-chair of the Mayor of London's Violence Against Women and Girls Panel and an honorary associate of the National Secular Society

www.politicalblonde.com ; twitter.com/@polblonde. This article originally appeared in the Independent and is reproduced with the author's permission. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the NSS.

See also: The worst kind of FGM

The “cutting season” and FGM in the UK: A national disgrace, a national shame

Posted: Tue, 2 Jul 2013 11:36

Last month, a coalition of Egyptian NGOs launched a campaign, 'Kamla' (meaning 'complete' in Arabic), against female genital mutilation (FGM), after a botched operation resulted in the death of Egyptian teenager, Soheir Mohamed Al- Batea.

FGM is an intensely harmful practice that is endemic in a number of countries around the world, particularly in Africa. In Somalia, 97.9% of women aged between 15 and 49 are affected by it, in Guinea 95.6%, in Sierra Leone 94%, in Egypt 91.1%, in Eritrea 88.7%, and in Mali 85.2% of the female population undergo FGM. This practice cannot be tied to a specific religion; it should be seen in a wider context of 'culture' and 'tradition'. In Ethiopia, 74.3% of women have undergone FGM; 62.8% of the population there are Orthodox/Christian and 33.9% Muslim. Likewise, in Burkina Faso, where 72% of females have undergone FGM, 23% of the population is Christian and 60% Muslim.

In total, 140 million girls and women are living with the consequences of FGM across the world. Some of the long-term consequences include internal infections, complications in pregnancy and child birth, psychological damage, and sexual dysfunction. FGM ranges from cutting off a girl's clitoris to cutting off all of her external genitalia (sometimes with a shard of glass or razor blade). She might then get sewn up, with a tiny hole through which she can urinate, and later menstruate. It is seen in some cultures as a desirable proof of virginity and cleanliness. There is also a belief that FGM can reduce a woman's libido, and thus the chances of her having extra-marital sex.

As ever, it seems to derive from two places, both of them also common to traditional conservative religious culture: one is the compulsion to control the woman's sexuality, to undermine the ownership she has over her own body and sex; the other, is a simple disgust of women. From Eve the transgressor and the identification of the woman as the source of human original sin, to Orthodox Jewish men not touching their menstruating "ritually impure" wives (who then have to clean themselves in specific, designating bathing areas), to this, FGM.

Now, before you start thinking that this is some distasteful 'foreign' practice, beyond the comprehension of 'Western' values, you should know that not only are there 65,000 women living with the consequences of FGM in the UK, but 20,000 girls under the age of 15 are at risk of it here each year. And it doesn't end there. Women are actually being sent to the UK to be mutilated, from countries such as France. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

So what is the UK government doing about it? Well, the practice has been illegal in the country since 1985. Despite this, there has never been a prosecution or conviction relating to FGM in the UK since it was criminalized. Between 2008 and 2009 almost 160 incidents were recorded. Still, no convictions. The practice has been illegal in France since the mid-eighties also. However, there they do prosecute people for it: some 100 parents and practitioners of FGM have been convicted in France since it was banned. Just last month in Spain, two Gambian parents were sentenced to six years in prison for having a clitoridectomy performed on both their daughters.

Young girls in the UK are sometimes taken to their countries of origin so that FGM can be carried out during their summer holidays, allowing them time to heal before they return to school. Apparently this is, rather gruesomely, called the "cutting season".

The idea that we implicitly help this practice happen by allowing families to take their girls abroad during the holidays is disgusting. The idea that we may even be allowing the practice on British soil is horrific. How can we as a society stand blind to this practice, on grounds of 'difference' or 'culture'?

A number of women speaking out against the practice in the UK are getting attacked for doing so.

There are those who argue that FGM represents a specific cultural heritage, that it is a misunderstood practice unique to a non-western culture. Where preventing FGM for females represents an imperialist denial of what it is to be a liberated woman within that culture.

These spurious claims of cultural autonomy immune from critique and intervention are offensive to those of the same culture who do not perpetrate such crimes against their young girls. This sort of cultural relativism also completely ignores the permanent context of the subjugation of woman within many of these communities.

Whilst FGM is not a strictly secular issue, in so far as it is not uniquely tied with religious doctrine or permission, its facilitation in the UK comes within the same sort of context that allows for the undermining of equality and human rights by religious practices such as Sharia law. Exceptionalism of this sort is unable to provide any rational basis for its legitimacy. Whether grounded within the religious context, the cultural context, or one based on mere tradition, it is not sufficient for practices like these to be defended simply on hazy and vague notions of culture and tradition that are particular to some, and apparently "incommensurate" with so-called "Western" values (for "Western values" read Human Rights - rights that have been agreed to by countries throughout the world in various UN conventions and resolutions). This type of defence, incapable of being grounded in reason or universalizable justification, and has no place within any secular legislative space seeking to uphold the basic human rights of women.

FGM is a despicable violation of a young girl's body; it is a hideous attempt to control her as a woman, her sexuality, her self. It is simply not enough for the government to state that FGM is illegal in the UK; what matters surely is how many cuttings are prevented. One of the most prescient and depressing comments on the situation comes from a question posed by Muna, a Somali-born schoolgirl living in Bristol, in a BBC article last year; she asks simply, "What would you do if the girl had blue eyes and blonde hair, would FGM still be carrying on in the UK?"

Would it?

The “cutting season” and FGM in the UK: A national disgrace, a national shame

Posted: Tue, 2 Jul 2013 11:36

Last month, a coalition of Egyptian NGOs launched a campaign, 'Kamla' (meaning 'complete' in Arabic), against female genital mutilation (FGM), after a botched operation resulted in the death of Egyptian teenager, Soheir Mohamed Al- Batea.

FGM is an intensely harmful practice that is endemic in a number of countries around the world, particularly in Africa. In Somalia, 97.9% of women aged between 15 and 49 are affected by it, in Guinea 95.6%, in Sierra Leone 94%, in Egypt 91.1%, in Eritrea 88.7%, and in Mali 85.2% of the female population undergo FGM. This practice cannot be tied to a specific religion; it should be seen in a wider context of 'culture' and 'tradition'. In Ethiopia, 74.3% of women have undergone FGM; 62.8% of the population there are Orthodox/Christian and 33.9% Muslim. Likewise, in Burkina Faso, where 72% of females have undergone FGM, 23% of the population is Christian and 60% Muslim.

In total, 140 million girls and women are living with the consequences of FGM across the world. Some of the long-term consequences include internal infections, complications in pregnancy and child birth, psychological damage, and sexual dysfunction. FGM ranges from cutting off a girl's clitoris to cutting off all of her external genitalia (sometimes with a shard of glass or razor blade). She might then get sewn up, with a tiny hole through which she can urinate, and later menstruate. It is seen in some cultures as a desirable proof of virginity and cleanliness. There is also a belief that FGM can reduce a woman's libido, and thus the chances of her having extra-marital sex.

As ever, it seems to derive from two places, both of them also common to traditional conservative religious culture: one is the compulsion to control the woman's sexuality, to undermine the ownership she has over her own body and sex; the other, is a simple disgust of women. From Eve the transgressor and the identification of the woman as the source of human original sin, to Orthodox Jewish men not touching their menstruating "ritually impure" wives (who then have to clean themselves in specific, designating bathing areas), to this, FGM.

Now, before you start thinking that this is some distasteful 'foreign' practice, beyond the comprehension of 'Western' values, you should know that not only are there 65,000 women living with the consequences of FGM in the UK, but 20,000 girls under the age of 15 are at risk of it here each year. And it doesn't end there. Women are actually being sent to the UK to be mutilated, from countries such as France. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?

So what is the UK government doing about it? Well, the practice has been illegal in the country since 1985. Despite this, there has never been a prosecution or conviction relating to FGM in the UK since it was criminalized. Between 2008 and 2009 almost 160 incidents were recorded. Still, no convictions. The practice has been illegal in France since the mid-eighties also. However, there they do prosecute people for it: some 100 parents and practitioners of FGM have been convicted in France since it was banned. Just last month in Spain, two Gambian parents were sentenced to six years in prison for having a clitoridectomy performed on both their daughters.

Young girls in the UK are sometimes taken to their countries of origin so that FGM can be carried out during their summer holidays, allowing them time to heal before they return to school. Apparently this is, rather gruesomely, called the "cutting season".

The idea that we implicitly help this practice happen by allowing families to take their girls abroad during the holidays is disgusting. The idea that we may even be allowing the practice on British soil is horrific. How can we as a society stand blind to this practice, on grounds of 'difference' or 'culture'?

A number of women speaking out against the practice in the UK are getting attacked for doing so.

There are those who argue that FGM represents a specific cultural heritage, that it is a misunderstood practice unique to a non-western culture. Where preventing FGM for females represents an imperialist denial of what it is to be a liberated woman within that culture.

These spurious claims of cultural autonomy immune from critique and intervention are offensive to those of the same culture who do not perpetrate such crimes against their young girls. This sort of cultural relativism also completely ignores the permanent context of the subjugation of woman within many of these communities.

Whilst FGM is not a strictly secular issue, in so far as it is not uniquely tied with religious doctrine or permission, its facilitation in the UK comes within the same sort of context that allows for the undermining of equality and human rights by religious practices such as Sharia law. Exceptionalism of this sort is unable to provide any rational basis for its legitimacy. Whether grounded within the religious context, the cultural context, or one based on mere tradition, it is not sufficient for practices like these to be defended simply on hazy and vague notions of culture and tradition that are particular to some, and apparently "incommensurate" with so-called "Western" values (for "Western values" read Human Rights - rights that have been agreed to by countries throughout the world in various UN conventions and resolutions). This type of defence, incapable of being grounded in reason or universalizable justification, and has no place within any secular legislative space seeking to uphold the basic human rights of women.

FGM is a despicable violation of a young girl's body; it is a hideous attempt to control her as a woman, her sexuality, her self. It is simply not enough for the government to state that FGM is illegal in the UK; what matters surely is how many cuttings are prevented. One of the most prescient and depressing comments on the situation comes from a question posed by Muna, a Somali-born schoolgirl living in Bristol, in a BBC article last year; she asks simply, "What would you do if the girl had blue eyes and blonde hair, would FGM still be carrying on in the UK?"

Would it?