Mon, Dec 09, 2002 page9

• Millions of women still being terrorized by genital mutilation

  There are parts of this world where cutting out the genitals of a young girl is thought of as an intelligent thing to do despite the pain and humiliation it inflicts

  • By Emma Bonino
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  Tomorrow, women from around the world will gather at the European Parliament to fight against Female Genital Mutilation. According to the WHO, some 130 million women have, over the last few years, suffered from genital mutilation in some form. In reality, those figures are probably even worse, because illegalities are almost always underestimated.

  Female genital mutilation, according to the WHO, consists of the "removal of all or part of the external female genital organs." It is a painful procedure carried out in unsafe ways by old women who are seeking to initiate girls into womanhood, and, more concretely, into a life that will be an unending chain of physical pain and social marginalization. Indeed, genital mutilation makes a woman's experience of sex, that taboo of taboos, into a painful, humiliating, punitive procedure.

  Over the last 80 years, women in democratic societies have struggled to be recognized and treated as citizens endowed with equal rights. The right to own property, vote, work, divorce, the right to choose whether or not to have children have been secured only through political struggle. All these civil victories for women contributed mightily to the advancement of social life and have been instrumental in initiating comprehensive social reforms that have transformed Western societies.

  In these epochal battles, women's fiercest enemy has been tradition, and its staunch ally: religion. With the help of information, education and mass participation, women and men, have defeated ignorance and the violence that goes with it hand-in-hand. The fight against female genital mutilation is not a replay of the West's "battle of the sexes" circa the 1960s; rather, it is a struggle against the fear of unknown enemies; against fear of change and the opportunities and contexts that arrive in the wake of change.

  Throughout the world, from sub-Saharan Africa to the Arab peninsula, from certain regions of the Far East to expatriate communities in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, women are reacting against their being genitally, socially, civilly, and politically mutilated. In other words, they react to their being considered and treated like some "unknown other."

  Networks of local practitioners, non-governmental organizations and politicians are collaborating to confront the issue of female genital mutilation at a national level and to publicize it. There are ongoing efforts in Africa and elsewhere to internationalize a campaign that seeks to bring to galvanize public awareness of the dark fact that, in many countries, women remain mere commodities at the disposal of tradition.

  Today, most of the African, Arab, and Asian countries blighted by the custom of female genital mutilation are nonetheless signatories of the international conventions that condemn this practice, particularly the international Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the international Convention on the Rights of the Child.

  Most of these countries also support a series of UN resolutions that call for eliminating female genital mutilation. But all these commendable efforts have failed to counter the phenomenon. So the issue is not good words and public promises, it is one of securing the political will that is necessary to stamp out the practice.

  Female genital mutilation is a crime with real victims, but who are the criminals? Should we incarcerate all women who carry out these mutilations on their fellow women? Should we imprison mothers because they willingly sacrifice their daughters' physical integrity on the altar of tradition? Should we impose sanctions on countries that do not make the practice unlawful? Should we patrol remote African villages with groups of human rights activists?

  Freedom bid

  Tradition can only be countered by creativity. We need to find ways to address the lack of a real freedom of expression for women in so many societies and, at the same time, to redress damage done to those victimized by female genital mutilation. In doing so, we must be aware that the solution to genital mutilation of women cannot be limited to this issue alone. In fact, it needs to be part of a more comprehensive effort aiming at empowering and giving civil rights to women -- 50 percentof the people that live in societies where the practice is carried out.

  Such a concerted action must go beyond the sacrosanct effort of providing the old women who practice female genital mutilation with another job or in finding symbolic or ritualistic substitutes to the act of cutting off a woman's clitoris. We need to reach into politics, because there will be no freedom for African, Arab, or Asian women without the advent of political democracy in their countries.

  Here is the challenge that confronts those who live in countries where female genital mutilation is not routinely practiced but who care about the fate of women around the world. Failure to recognize the political aspect of the issue will ensure defeat and the continuance of a violent practice that abuses millions of women each year.

  Over the last few years, I have had the chance to meet hundreds of individuals and groups in places where the practice exists. Those people made the fight against female genital mutilation a priority in their lives. Their courage and resolve is encouraging, but we must not leave them to fight their fight alone.

  In Brussels on Wednesday, eminent personalities from Africa and all over the world will launch an appeal open to signatures to internationalize their struggle. Those who want to join the Stop Female Genital Mutilation campaign carried out by AIDOS (Italian Association of Women for Development), TAMWA (Tanzania Media Women's Association), and No Peace Without Justice can sign the petition by visiting www.stopfgm.org. In allowing so many lives to be blighted through genital mutilation, we degrade ourselves and our world.

  Emma Bonino is a Member of the European Parliament, a former EU Commissioner, and a prominent member of the Transnational Radical Party.

  Copyright: Project Syndicate
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