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FGM slowly declining
2006-10-26 08:46:27
By Walusanga Ndaki
Two years ago the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) reported that there were some 6.3 million Tanzanian women who had undergone female genital mutilation (FGM).
Of course, according to the intense mobilisation campaign against the practice, the reported number seemed to be frightening.
But, on the other hand, two years later (this year) the good news on this habit whose practice is extensively on the wane has witnessed the number of mutilated women going down.
Female genital mutilation, a practice widely engulfing the northern flank of the country from Mara to Arusha, down to Singida and Dodoma has highly encountered the wrath of modern society as it is the source of a myriad of problems, including the spread of the deadly disease – AIDS.
According to LHRC’s Executive Director, Helen Kijo-Bisimba, women affected by FGM in the country make 18 per cent of the total women population falling in the age group of between 15 and 45 years.
”Tanzania is among those African countries where FGM is commonly practised. Our study had disclosed that about 50 per cent of the regions in the mainland practise FGM,” she says.
Arusha region leads on the list with a score of 81 per cent, while there are no cases of FGM in Kigoma.
In the report presented in 2004, FGM is practised in almost all the regions in the country and in some communities even dead women are subjected to FGM, especially in the Rombo-Chagga communities.
On a wider scale, FGM affects over 100 million women in Africa, says Bisimba, adding that about 2 million girls are at the risk of facing FGM everyday on the continent.
While the international community is against this practice, many countries are yet to devise legal systems banning or illegalising FGM.
Launching the LHRC report, the Ambassador of Sweden to Tanzania, Torrald Alexsson, said FGM had been banned in Sweden, and it was illegal within and outside his country.
”The government of Tanzania has shown its commitment to fight against FGM through legislation of Sexual Offences Provision Act of 1998, but there is no law banning FGM,” said the ambassador.
But, despite a few hitches on the road to ensure that FGM disappears in society, law enforcers have to throw their lot behind this move which has been a thorn in society on the part of the fair sex.
In one incident, an anti-female genital mutilation activist accused the police in Morogoro Region of protecting people who champion for the harmful culture.
Explaining his experience in a one-day meeting on FGM in Dar es Salaam, anti-FGM activist, Pastor Zakayo Katungo, alleged that on January 3 in 2004, he had reported a case of a girl at Mangahe Village who was subjected to FGM, but officers at the Morogoro police station did not take any action.
Katungo said: ”I followed up a case against a parent who forced her daughter to be circumcised. I furnished the necessary evidence to the Morogoro Police Station, but until today no action has been taken.”
He also alleged that in 1999 when he had been following up a case of three girls who were also forced to undergo FGM in Matombo Ward, the police officers at Matombo station beat him up instead.
But such bad news have always been overcome by good news.
A good example of the good news is about some 40 traditional female genital mutilators in Pare and Maasai communities in Maore Ward, Same District, who voluntarily surrendered their tools of trade and swore never to practice it again. This happened two years ago.
Their decision followed intensive sensitisation and awareness campaigns on the ill-effects of FGM carried out by the Network Against Female Genital Mutilation (NAFGEM), a non-governmental organisation dedicated to the elimination of the practice in Tanzania.
As they handed over their wares to NAFGEM in front of Same District Administrative Secretary, Wallboard Sereya, the former mutilators said they resolved to lay down their tools after being made aware of the effects of the bad practice.
”We have decided to lay down our tools and play our part in the on-going campaign against the practice in our respective villages by declaring in front of this gathering to never again involve ourselves in the harmful practice,” they swore in a statement.
They further pleaded: ”As from now, we 40 women circumcisers join a growing team of men and women from all walks of life in Kilimanjaro Region to march towards forces of zero FGM tolerance in the region.”
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