Female Genital Mutilation December is Cutting Season
What female genital mutilation also known as female cutting is and is not.
In Northwest Tanzania, December is known as cutting season, female genital mutilation illegally performed on girls between infancy and the age of 15, most commonly before puberty starts.
What is female genital mutilation?
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| The World Health Organization (WHO) distinguishes among four types of FGM |
Female
genital mutilation (FGM) refers to all practices involving partial or complete
removal of or injury to the external sexual organs of women and girls for
non-medical reasons.
The practice is generally carried out with a knife or a razor blade without anesthesia and in non-sterile conditions. The World Health Organization (WHO) distinguishes among four types of FGM:
The practice is generally carried out with a knife or a razor blade without anesthesia and in non-sterile conditions. The World Health Organization (WHO) distinguishes among four types of FGM:
FGM Type I
Partial or total removal of the clitoris
and/or the prepuce.
FGM Type II
Partial or total
removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the
labia majora.
FGM Type III
Narrowing of the
vaginal orifice with creation of a covering seal by cutting and repositioning
the labia minora and/or the labia majora, with or without excision of the
clitoris.
FGM Type IV
All other harmful
procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example:
pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization.
Female genital mutilation safe house in Tanzania
Rhobi
Samwelly whose own experience inspired her to set up the safe house funded by
the Anglican Church and supported by other churches together with the local
mosque.
Around
134 girls to find refuge at the safe house in Mugumu in
the Mara Region of Tanzania during the six-week-long cutting season, that
traditionally occurs every two years in Serengeti District. FGM, a traditional
pre-requisite to marriage amongst the Kurya people who live in the area
however, it has been illegal since 1998.
There are financial, as well as cultural
reasons, why so many parents support the FGM practice. The main reason is parents
force girls to undergo FGM because they want dowry.
When girls are circumcised,
their parents have already arranged for them to be married. When the girls
finish the initiation, their parents introduce them to their husband, whose family
gives them cows as dowry.
In some communities in Tanzania, women who have not undergone FGM are victims of social exclusion in the belief that a woman who has been cut demands a higher dowry for her parents and she will be more faithful to her husband.
In some communities in Tanzania, women who have not undergone FGM are victims of social exclusion in the belief that a woman who has been cut demands a higher dowry for her parents and she will be more faithful to her husband.
Female genital mutilation is illegal
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| Female genital mutilation safe house in Tanzania |
The
practice is illegal and the Tanzanian Serengeti government during the cutting
season says there are immense challenges to stopping it.
One commissioner stated, "The problem is that FGM is done secretly. It's difficult for police officers to safeguard every household to find out if it's happening or not."
One commissioner stated, "The problem is that FGM is done secretly. It's difficult for police officers to safeguard every household to find out if it's happening or not."
However, December 2013, approximately 38 women were arrested for carrying out illegal
genital mutilation on a group of girls aged from 3 to 15.
The women were arrested
by the police as they performed a traditional dance around a house where 21
girls, ages 3 to 15, had recently undergone FGM. Sentences for FGM can garner up to 15 years
in prison.
