Almost 2,000 Islington women are living with the effects of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), it was revealed this week.
Speaking at a workshop at City and Islington College this week, FGM specialist at Whittington Hospital Joy Clarke led the campaign to educate people about the danger and legal ramifications of the procedure.
FGM is a ritual practice which mostly occurs in Africa and involves the removal of some or all of the external female genitalia, often in an effort to keep young girls ‘chaste’.
Speaking about the need for action on FGM, Ms Clarke said: “Change must come from within. It’s good that I’m doing this, but people have got to be interested, they’ve got to believe what I’m saying, and they’ve got to acknowledge that FGM is a problem in their communities that they need to deal with.
“FGM is all of our business. It’s a global issue, a local issue, and together we can work to stop it.”
The talk on Friday 14 November was organised by Islington charity Manor Gardens, which works with communities to encourage mental and physical health.
Ms Clarke sees around 160 women a year from Islington and Haringey who face health problems as a result of their mutilation. She estimates that, in Islington alone, almost 2,000 women and girls live with the effects.
The vast majority of girls who undergo the procedure have it done in their native countries, such as Somalia where more than 90 per cent of women are ‘cut’. They then return to ordinary life once the ritual is complete.
Ms Clarke estimates that in the UK, 16,000 girls under the age of 15 have been born to mothers who have undergone FGM.
On top of this, 127,000 women and girls in the UK, who predominantly live in African and Middle Eastern communities, live with the effects of FGM, and another 60,000 are at risk of the procedure.
FGM has been illegal in the UK since 1985, and since the 2003 FGM Act, has been punishable by a prison sentence of up to 14 years for those who perform or solicit the procedure.
FGM is a known problem in Islington, and the first two people ever to be prosecuted for the act in the UK were from the borough.
Dhanuson Dharmasena, a doctor at Whittington Hospital, and Hasan Mohamed were first prosecuted in March – their trial continues.
However, due to the fear of being ostracised from the community, few FGM victims or their family members ever go to the police.
Ms Clarke said: “Girls are unlikely to report their parents, especially if they come from a caring family, but we want to equip them with the knowledge to stay safe, and let them know that if they disclose information they can be protected.”
ALL genital mutilations of ALL children are criminal, sexual violence that must end. As a male victim of forced genital cutting I find the efforts to segregate ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ survivors appalling. Hypocrisy. The UN Convention for the Rights of the Child was not drafted to focus only on one gender: ALL children deserve the Right to bodily autonomy and security of person- NOT just female children.
Another sexist article, another sexist institution. This silence on the devastating effects, sometimes fatal, of male genital mutilation here in the UK, is deafening.
I was denied the right to live my life with the whole body that I had at birth. I am a man of 57 years of age. It was my late mother’s preference that I was circumcised shortly after my birth. She had all her genitals when she died, and so does my sister. To the best of my knowledge, my late father also died with his whole intact body, although I had for many years mistakenly presumed that he too was circumcised. I lived for more than 50 years without hearing a bad word said about male circumcision, during which time I had suffered the adverse effects of a surgery that many males circumcised as adults have admitted, but nobody warned me about. Those adverse effects were exerting a profoundly damaging impact on my life and my relationship with my wife, (who still has all the genitals she was born with). Yet during those 50+ years I had heard plenty about the harm of FGM, and how much it was part of the sexual discrimination against women in our society. I am mocked and ridiculed for calling attention to a human rights violation that for many (even victims themselves) doesn’t exist. You do not enrich the life of a man by cutting off a perfectly healthy, natural, functional, sensitive and erogenous body part. The term “it’s a man’s world” now has a distinctly hollow ring for me.
Why is child molestation illegal regardless of the sex of the child, but genital mutilation is only illegal on females?
You state: “FGM is a ritual practice which mostly occurs in Africa and involves the removal of some or all of the external female genitalia, often in an effort to keep young girls ‘chaste’.”
You can speculate all you want as to the reasons FGM is carried out, but I see no exceptions for FGM under religious or hygienic excuses. It is recognized as abuse, because there is no consent given by the child and no medical need for it, but your lack of acknowledgement for male genital mutilation tells me it’s OK to molest boys, as long as it’s with a knife. Males have genitals too, which can and are mutilated, and if we apply the same principles that has led to outlawing it on girls, to exclude boys is pure sexism and disgusting discrimination.