We are committed to ending all forms of forced non-therapeutic genital cutting.
This includes female genital mutilation (FGM) and ritual circumcision of boys.
A child's right to bodily autonomy must not be overridden by other people's religious or cultural beliefs.
The National Secular Society supports a person's most fundamental right to grow up with an intact body and to make their own choices about permanent bodily modifications.
All forms of forced cutting on children's genitals breach basic child rights and safeguarding guidance.
Several communities have genital cutting traditions, often rooted in religious beliefs. But children, and particularly babies and young infants, are incapable of giving consent to such medically unnecessary, harmful, painful and permanent procedures.
Sometimes health benefits for non-therapeutic genital cutting are claimed despite the evidence to the contrary. All forms of forced genital cutting risk serious emotional, sexual, and physical harm – including death.
Child safeguarding must always be prioritised above the desire of adults to express their belief through forced cutting of children's genitals.
Female genital mutilation (FGM)
"It is irrelevant whether or not a person believed the operation to be necessary in the child's best interests as a matter of custom or ritual."
We are committed to the eradication of forced genital cutting of girls and women known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in all its forms.
There are thought to be well over 100,000 women and girls affected by FGM living in the UK. We work with like-minded organisations to protect girls from the harm of forced genital cutting.
FGM practices vary. Some forms involve a pinprick or the removal of a small amount of tissue from the clitoris. Other forms include complete removal of the clitoris and labia, and stitching the vulva closed. Communities which practice FGM often cite religion as a motivation.
All forms of FGM are child abuse and are rightly illegal in the UK. But some British girls are still unprotected. Some have been sent abroad to undergo the procedure and others are having it performed secretly in this country.
There have been only two successful prosecutions for FGM since it was banned in 1985. We are concerned that fear of upsetting cultural and religious sensitivities is preventing authorities from tackling FGM effectively.
"...a right specifically for African families who want to carry on their tradition whilst living in this country"
As with all forms of forced genital cutting, those who speak out against FGM are often accused of disrespecting their parents or cultural heritage, and of over-dramatising a 'minor' procedure that others 'don't complain about'. Together with the perceived humiliation of speaking about one's own genitals, these factors combine to ensure that many sufferers are reluctant to speak out.
Ending FGM requires sustained civil society action to change attitudes and inform girls of their rights.
Male circumcision
While all forms of FGM are rightfully banned, non-therapeutic circumcision of boys is permitted in UK law.
The foreskin is a normal body part with physical, sexual and immunological functions. Removing it from non-consenting children has been associated with various physical and psychological difficulties. These are likely to be greatly under-reported because people who have experienced sexual harm are often reluctant to reveal it as societal dismissal or stigmatisation may compound the harm.
Circumcision is excruciatingly painful. When performed on babies, little to no anaesthesia is used. Even when performed under anaesthesia on older children, the recovery entails weeks of pain and discomfort.
The procedure is also dangerous. Between 1988 and 2014, there were 22,000 harms recorded by the NHS resulting from circumcision. They included scarring and full penis amputation. In 2011, nearly a dozen infant boys were treated for life-threatening haemorrhage, shock or sepsis as a result of circumcision at a single children's hospital in Birmingham. At least three babies have bled to death from circumcision in the UK since 2009: Celian Noumbiwe, Angelo Ofori-Mintah, and Goodluck Caubergs.
Between 2012 and 2022, the General Medical Council (GMC) dealt with 39 complaints relating to 30 doctors regarding circumcisions. The complaints include incidents in which children's penises were left deformed and babies required blood transfusions.
Any claims of marginal health benefits of circumcision are extremely contested. No national medical, paediatric, surgical or urological society recommends routine circumcision of all boys as a health intervention. There is now growing concern among doctors that existing ethical principles of non-therapeutic childhood surgery should no longer include an exception for non-therapeutic circumcision.
62% of Brits would support a law prohibiting the circumcision of children for non-medical reasons. Only 13% would oppose it.
There is very limited regulation of non-therapeutic circumcision in the UK. We do not know how many such procedures are performed annually or the degree of harm, as there is no requirement for any follow up or audit and the boys themselves are too young to complain.
It is now being recognised more widely that non-therapeutic religious and cultural circumcision is a breach of children's rights. We want to see the same protections for girls' bodily autonomy extended to boys.
Take action!
1. Write to your MP
Ask your MP to support an end to non-consensual religious genital cutting
2. Share your story
Tell us why you support this campaign, and how you are personally affected by the issue. You can also let us know if you would like assistance with a particular issue.
3. Join the National Secular Society
Become a member of the National Secular Society today! Together, we can separate religion and state for greater freedom and fairness.
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UK must honour equality and human rights obligations, NSS tells UN
Posted: Thu, 22 Sep 2016 15:54
The National Secular Society has urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to recommend to the UK Government that it abolish religious discrimination in faith schools' admissions procedures.
The call came in a wide-ranging submission for the UK's periodic review by the United Nations in which the NSS highlighted a number of areas where individual rights are being restricted by undue religious influence.
The NSS said that previous recommendations on human rights and equality had not been acted on by the UK.
The submission highlights the UK's failure to address religious discrimination in 'faith' school admissions and employment practices – and is highly critical of Government plans to increase levels of discrimination by allowing more religiously selective schools by removing the existing 50% cap.
The submission also highlights a number of other areas where the UK's record of upholding human rights is poor, including abortion access in Northern Ireland, caste discrimination, and FGM.
Discrimination in faith schools
The NSS raised serious concerns about the UK's failure to address religious discrimination in 'faith' school admissions procedures and employment practices.
Equality Act exceptions permit schools designated as having a religious character to select pupils by reference to faith where the school is oversubscribed. The Government has recently announced plans to remove a 50% cap of faith-based admissions for newly established schools ('free schools') enabling them apply 100% religious selection in admissions.
The NSS submission noted that whilst the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child had previously called on the UK to "actively promote a fully integrated education system" (in the context of Northern Ireland), the UK's response has been to facilitate greater levels of religious segregation in English faith schools.
The Government has recently acknowledged that in minority faith schools in England the ethnic make-up is overwhelmingly formed of pupils from predominantly similar ethnic (and very likely religious) backgrounds.
Our submission recommended that the UK eliminates religious selection in admissions procedures to publicly-funded schools and amend legislation to ensure that religious discrimination in employment at faith schools is limited to positions where there is a genuine occupational requirement.
Freedom of thought, conscience and religion
The Society urged the Human Rights Council to echo the recommendation of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and call on the UK to repeal legal provisions for compulsory worship and Religious Observance in UK schools and ensure that young people have the independent right to opt-out of any acts of worship held in schools.
Right to education
The NSS raised concerns about children in the UK being schooled in unregistered and sometimes illegal settings, and being denied their right to a broad and balanced secular education.
Our submission recommended that the UK develops a more robust strategy for protecting the rights and interests of children, including instituting a system to ensure it has accurate information about where every child is being educated and regularly reporting on the number of children missing from the formal education system either through home-schooling, supplementary, or illegal unregistered 'schools', taking investigative steps where children are unaccounted for, and closing down illegal schools.
Gender-based violence
The NSS raised serious concerns at the UK's failure to successfully prosecute a single case of female genital mutilation (FGM).
Alarmingly, 30 years after FGM was made illegal in the UK, a 2016 Home Affairs Committee report found that "some clinicians are ignoring the duty on frontline healthcare professionals, social care workers and teachers to record data on FGM incidence".
The submission urged the UN to question the UK Government on the current state of their strategy and stress to the UK that the universality of individual Human Rights should be upheld and not overridden on the grounds of religion, tradition or culture.
Abortion in Northern Ireland
Our submission highlighted the UK's failure to act on an earlier Human Rights Council recommendation to "Ensure by legislative and other measures that women in Northern Ireland are entitled to safe and legal abortion on equal basis with women living in other parts of the United Kingdom."
Since 2012 the situation in Northern Ireland and the UK Government's failure to act has, if anything, become more concerning.
The NSS called on the Human Rights Council to reiterate recommendations on abortion access in Northern Ireland
Freedom of expression
The submission was also an opportunity to raise concerns about the Government's apparently stalled proposals for 'extremism disruption orders'.
Ill-thought out measures with an ill-defined notion of non-violence extremism "risk capturing a whole range of behaviour and speech", the NSS warned.
"The UK already has sufficient legalisation in place to combat hate speech, including incitement to violence or hatred. Additional restrictions on free speech can only further jeopardise and chill freedom of expression."
Caste discrimination
The NSS took the opportunity of the UPR to restate its criticisms of the Government on the issue of caste discrimination.
"We recommend the UK legislate to implement its international obligations in respect of caste, in line with its human rights obligations, as recommended by the UN, and indeed as required by the UK Parliament," the NSS submission said.
This issue of caste-based discrimination was additionally raised at the United Nations Human Rights Council by the NSS this week.
1200 cases of FGM reported in three months – but data “likely” to underestimate
Posted: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 12:13
New data has shown a surge in reported cases of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in England, with over 1200 reports made in the first three months of 2016.
Figures released by the Health and Social Care Information Centre showed that there were 1242 newly "recorded cases of FGM" from January to March 2016 and that over half of the cases came from women and girls in London.
The Centre said that the data included 11 "newly recorded cases" of FGM involving "women and girls reported to have been born in the United Kingdom."
The release of the figures comes after a law requiring the mandatory reporting of FGM in England and Wales came into force in October 2015.
Dr Antony Lempert of the Secular Medical Forum said forced genital cutting was a "serious problem throughout the world including the UK" and that the new law was possibly leading to "an increased culture of reporting of FGM" even though reporting is only mandatory in cases involving girls who are under 18 years old.
Commenting on the new data he said: "Most cases in the reported dataset were of FGM types 1 and 2 which include the permanent violent removal of the clitoris and labia. Type 3 FGM includes the practice of infibulation whereby the vaginal opening is sewn up. This carries significant risks for menstruation, urination and childbirth and is known to increase maternal and infant mortality and often causes lifelong misery.
"Forced genital cutting involves powerful adults with vested interests forcibly removing erogenous, functional, intimate tissue from the healthy body of a vulnerable child whose intimate relationships will be affected lifelong by the practice. In some cases children will suffer horrendous injuries, some will die. In all cases of forced genital cutting, children's basic human rights are denied."
The Secular Medical Forum also warned that "Official figures are likely to be underestimates as most of the cutting of children's genitals takes place in secret.
Dr Lempert said that the "lifelong misery" caused by FGM is also "likely to be underestimated as many adults suffer in silence rather than face the shame or the danger of challenging the culture of their birth."
To stamp out the practice, Dr Lempert said that prosecution of perpetrators certainly had a place, but he cautioned that this would not be enough on its own. He said that educating children to the danger had to be part of the solution and that there could be no "tacit abandonment" of "children to forced genital cutting."
He said that even some parents who resist the communal pressure to have FGM inflicted on their own children "will resist attempts to prosecute their parents or community leaders even should they later find out how much harm has been done to them."
"Basic human and child rights must not depend on the accident of place and culture of birth nor on the gender of the child".
He also argued that efforts to tackle FGM were being undermined by the acceptance of non-therapeutic male circumcision. "Some communities understandably challenge the perceived hypocrisy of being lectured at and prosecuted for cutting girls' genitalia by societies which laud the practice of forced genital cutting of male genitalia similarly for no medical reason."
Dr Lempert said that "Whilst the harms are naturally different between boys and girls, so they are between the different types of FGM which range from a small pinprick to severely mutilating surgery. All forms of forced genital cutting risk serious sexual, physical and emotional harm including death for no medical reason."
"The Secular Medical Forum supports the inalienable right of every person to grow up with an intact body protected from the various whims and religious or cultural dogmas of adults within whose communities they happen to have been born. We consider the best approach to tackling FGM is one that educates all children and communities that children's bodies are not the property of their parents, that surgery should be performed only when there is a medical imperative and that all forms of forced genital cutting by definition, deny children their basic human rights."
Stephen Evans, National Secular Society's campaigns director, said: "These latest figures show that despite the excellent work that has been done to raise the profile of FGM, there can no room for complacency, and more needs to be done to protect potential victims from this horrendous form of abuse. The human rights of children must never be overridden on the grounds of religion, tradition or culture."
There has never been a successful prosecution for Female Genital Mutilation in England and Wales.
