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FGM: Time to strike on govt`s poor response
2007-02-21 08:57:35
By Beatrice Philemon
I still remember an incident that happened in Manyara region, then Arusha, about a decade ago whereby approximately 5,000 girls were mutilated and twenty of them died later on from complications at one of the so called “mass mutilation ceremonies.`
I felt so sad that I think I will never forget the incident for the rest of my life. What depressed me even more was one circumciser, who was quoted as saying: `It is too late for the government to stop us circumcising women this season. They should have done that earlier.`
Just a fortnight—over a decade after, I was saddened and shocked by results of a recent study which revealed that Manyara region is still on the lead in Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) by having 81 per cent of the total number of women and girls affected by the problem.
The new findings are part of a leading campaign dubbed -
`Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation Day,` by the National Coalition Against Female Genital Mutilation (NCAFGM) and are based on a research conducted by Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS).
Apart from Manyara, the research found, other regions in which mutilation is still rampant are Arusha—55 per cent and Dodoma—68 per cent.
According to national health statistics, FGM affects 18 percent of the female population in Tanzania.
It is performed at an early age in approximately 20 of the country`s 130 main ethnic groups.
Among some peoples FGM is compulsory and among others, a woman who has not undergone the practice will not be able to marry.
Societies where FGM is widely practised include the Gogo people of Central Tanzania and the Maasai people in Morogoro and Manyara region.
Other regions on record are Mara, Singida, Arusha and Kigoma.
The Tanzanian government finds itself in the embarrassing situation of being the centre of focus in a new campaign against female genital mutilation.
It has allowed mass FGM ceremonies to take place in the open despite international protest and the fact that the practice in theory is outlawed in Tanzania.
Female genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision, is prohibited by law in Tanzania, but the law is not effectively enforced and the practice of FGM continues openly.
In some parts of Tanzania, `mass circumcisions,` like the one which killed twenty innocent lives about eleven years ago, are carried out in which thousands of girls are genitally mutilated at a go.
Despite appeals from national and international organisations, the government of Tanzania has not acted to prevent these openly organized ceremonies, and the fact that the statistics have never changed for over ten years raises more logical questions than correct and overt answers.
Campaigns against FGM in Tanzania have been complicated by lack of local and central government and police backing and by the strong position of the practice locally.
Although the theoretical ban on FGM should protect campaigners when spreading information locally, the total disinterest by local government has made them targets of attacks.
Not being able to work locally, organisations now target the government, demanding it to take more effective action.
The lack of action is documented by several, known cases.
According to the Tanzanian Legal and Human Rights Centre, local government in the Maasai dominated Morogoro Region have issued statements against FGM, but there was no government follow-up, even in cases on record where children have bled to death, no one is charged.
For instance, the Legal and Human Rights Centre especially investigated one case in Morogoro, in which three girls, 13 and 14 years old, ran away from their father in the summer of 1999 in a desperate effort to save themselves from the practice of FGM.
They fled to a local church for protection, and several pastors took them to the nearest police station at Matombo.
Rather than protect the girls, the police however arrested one of the pastors for having unlawfully taken custody of minors .
It was also reported that the pastor was beaten severely and asked to confess that he had raped the girls.
The girls then were taken to a hospital for an examination, where it was confirmed that they had not been raped.
The police then turned them over to their father, who had them mutilated the next day and married within a month.
When the Legal and Human Rights Centre interviewed one of the girls later on, she explained how painful it had been to her that even the police and the courts could not help in their efforts to save themselves from genital mutilation.
Subsequently, however, after the Centre submitted its report on the incident to the authorities, the young, now married girls changed their versions of events and said they did want to pursue the prosecution of their father.
Another example of the difficulties in fighting FGM in Tanzania was made when a 78-year old Gogo circumciser from the Dodoma Rural District, Nyangadule Kodi, was on record just last year defending FGM publicly.
In an interview made by the African Church Information Service in May, last year, Kodi explained that the procedure took fifteen or twenty minutes, `depending on the sharpness of the knife` and justified FGM as `a rite of passage for girls into womanhood, grooming and training of cultural values that maintain domestic stability within the community.`
Older women like Nyangadule Kodi reportedly maintain that they would not allow their male relatives to marry un-mutilated women, because such women are `not polite and are over-sexed.`
The Tanzanian Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act, a 1998 amendment to the Penal Code, specifically prohibits FGM. Section 169A(1) of the Act provides that anyone having custody, charge or care of a girl under 18 years of age who causes her to undergo FGM commits the offence of cruelty to children.
The penalty for this offence is imprisonment up to fifteen years, a fine up to 300,000 shillings or both imprisonment and fine.
The law also provides for the payment of compensation by the perpetrator to the victim of the offence.
I think time has now come to push for more effective action on the part of the government to end the practice of FGM in Tanzania - through education as well as enforcement of the law.
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