FGM is something a short while ago I knew very little about. After taking up the batten to highlight this antiquated and barbaric crime, illegal in the UK, I have submerged myself in understanding it further. To be honest it has been a difficult challenge, making me very uncomfortable and hard to stomach. I guess many of us feel this way and can’t bring ourselves to discuss it, learn about it and stop it from happening. When you get a glimpse of how horrendous this mutlilation is and damaging in every sense you quickly get passed it and realize you feeling uncomfortable is insignificant and inappropriate. Imagine the discomfort faced by the young girls and women cut.
I would like to encourage you all to raise the awareness and take up the fight against female genital mutilation. There has been an international effort to stop this since 1970
Lady Rendell, is a long-term campaigner and is very outspoken. She has said that it would be classified “not as a quaint custom but as child cruelty, as child abuse, because that’s what it is”.
“Even if it may be committed without child abuse or cruelty in mind, that’s what it is. I think that if we can persuade the Home Office to do more when the police are doing so much, I see that at last there has been a breakthrough and things are going to change. I hope so.”
You wouldn’t think school girls in the UK have to worry about female genital mutilation (FGM), but we do. Its illegal in the UK, it is still happening I was surprised to learn 24,000 girls in the UK are currently at risk of FGM. People just don’t talk about it, doctors don’t check for it and teachers don’t teach it. We need to change this attitude.
I learnt that French girls are sent to Britain to be cut and brutalised in this way. This is very shaming for us in the UK. France are very out spoken and have zero tolerance to this barbaric act, they have already prosecuted and jailed 100’s of people, dozens of high profile cases. It was defined as a crime under French Law in 1983 with a threat of 10 years in Prison and up to 20 years if found cutting a girl under the age of 15.
“Sweden and Italy have prosecuted, you get the feeling that our government is not doing enough yet.
In the UK recently there was a petition calling on educating girls as young as 5 about this brutal act, FGM, it was started by Fahma Mohamed and the final result was sent to the Department for Education, the then minister Michael Gove. On the change.org website It won with 234,375 online signatures.
Even though this might be a bloody, difficult to understand subject to teach at school to young people and some parent may object. But I would still say this culture is wrong and needs to be totally abandoned, most girls are cut by the age of 5 and 10% of the children are killed in the this process. The sooner we start to educate sooner we can save the next generation.
Ruth Rendell helped introduce tough new laws in 2004 making it an offence to send a child abroad for the procedure. It was made illegal in the UK 1985 but there have been no successful prosecution and in 2003 it was illegal to take out children to be cut.
FGM is child abuse. It forces girls into a future of pain from the moment they are cut. They face the risk of infertility, pain during urination, menstruation, childbirth and sexual intercourse. The pain doesn’t go. It’s a traumatic experience they have to live with every single day, physically and emotionally. This must stop.
It involves removing external female genital area for non medical reasons, We have to talk about it and stop being. Women who have undergone female genital mutilation are twice as likely to die in childbirth and four times more likely to give birth to a stillborn child, experts say.
This is not a religious act as it is being painted as, it is purely an antiquated, barbaric, cultural practice that has no place in this world, there is no Quranic text that FGM is allowed or has place in Islam.
FGM is practiced all over the world especially in Africa, 29 countries and most common in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mali, Egypt, Sudan and Somalia. And as a result of migration, it is increasing in Western counties amoungst the diaspora populations from area where the practice is common.
Basically we all need to get together and end this practice that has gone underground and more dangerous to our vulnerable.
There is still a lack of understanding about this subject, there are various degrees, Type 1 or 2 or 3, People are uncomfortable about talking about this subject.
We are great in the UK, always strived to make things better for people through change and determination. Do you care enough to change the perception and eradicate FGM?