Egypt making slow progress on genital mutilation

AP

MANSHIET EL-IKHWA: The Egyptian court acquitted a doctor in November charged with committing female genital mutilation that led to a 13-year-old girl's death in a Nile Delta village, the country's first trial on charges of breaking the ban on the practice.

Raslan Fadl, the first doctor in Egypt to be put on trial for committing female genital mutilation, is still practising. And in this Nile Delta Village, he has plenty of patients.

Young girls and their families on a recent day sat in Fadl's waiting room, where the bright yellow walls are decorated with Winnie the Pooh pictures, in the same building where Sohair el-Batea came for her operation last year. Residents call him a well-respected figure in the community, known for his charity work.

It could not be determined whether any were at his office for "circumcision", as it is known here, and Fadl would not speak to The Associated Press. But Fadl's continued popularity demonstrates the challenges to curbing the practice in Egypt, where more than 90 per cent of women are estimated to have undergone it — one of the highest rates in the world.

Female genital mutilation was criminalised in 2008 and the most important Sunni Muslim religious authority has declared it dangerous and without any religious justification. The UN says there appears to be a slow reduction in the rate of the practice, but that it is still widespread.

Even in the home village of the girl, Dierb Biqtaris, there is little outcry against the practice.

Rasha Mohammed, a friend of Sohair, remembers that the girl felt scared before the operation and didn't want to go. But Rasha chalks up her death to an accident, saying 11 other girls underwent FGM with the doctor that day and "nothing happened to them."

Sohair's grandmother declined to comment on the case, saying a year and a half has passed and she doesn't want to bring up the topic again. "It was her destiny," she said.

Emad Hamdi, a local worker, said he is still weighing whether to circumcise his daughters. He said he's heard that without it, a girl would be "sexually voracious", which could be "dangerous for her" — a common justification for the practice. A widely-used Egyptian Arabic term for it translates literally as "purification."

Genital mutilation is practised in 29 countries, most of them in East and West Africa, but also in Egypt and parts of Iraq and Yemen. It is practised among both Muslims and Christians, usually because it is seen as needed for cleanliness or to 'prevent a girl's sexual desire'. Social pressure is strong: Many families fear that an uncircumcised daughter will be unable to marry. Rights advocates condemn the practice as an attempt to control women's sexuality that scars girls physically and psychologically.

It was not easy getting the landmark case to trial — one indication why no cases came to court for years despite the ban. Sohair's family initially filed a police report saying she died as a result of FGM, but changed their story after reconciling with the doctor, said lawyer Reda el-Danbouki.

So rights groups had to push for trial. Prosecutors were slow, preferring "for the matter to end", he said.

The latest survey, conducted in 2008, showed 91 per cent of women aged 15-49 have undergone the procedure. But among women aged 15-17, the rate is down to 74 per cent, suggesting more families are deciding to forgo it with their daughters. Duamelle said the reduction has been significant but "doesn't go fast enough".

In southern Egypt, organiser Manal Fawzy hoped for a "sharp punishment" for the doctor as a deterrent.

But the ban is just one tool, she said. "To change a behaviour, it's so difficult."

She runs the Assiut Childhood and Development Organisation, a Unicef partner organisation that takes a community approach to getting people to abandon the practice. It operates in Assiut province, where rates are among highest in the country. The group identifies residents who are already critical of genital mutilation and gives them training and information to convince their neighbors.

"When I see a neighbour like me, and she stands against this practice and we are in the same tradition and the same village and the same place, it is very effective for them," Fawzy said. The group also calls on religious leaders and doctors to speak to residents.

The group encourages families to publicly declare their rejection of the tradition, sometimes in front of hundreds of people. There tends to be resistance at the beginning, and people are reluctant to talk about the sensitive subject, she said. But slowly the taboo is being broken, she said. "You find it's something critical for them, for their life."

Survivors of female genital mutilation

In Sidfa, 340 kilometres south of Cairo, several survivors spoke to The Associated Press about undergoing female genital mutilation as children without anaesthesia.

Awatef Mohammed Salem, 40, underwent a female genital mutilation operation as a child without anaesthesia. Salem has two daughters and decided not to submit them to the practice.

Hamdiya Nazmi said one of her seven daughters was "circumcised" but she decided not to do so with the other six after being convinced by Fawzy's organisation. "I spoke with people who live near me and convinced them it was wrong too." She remembers feeling terrified when she was taken to the midwife as a girl for her own operation.

Ihsan Abdel Waly, a 75-year-old local midwife who used to circumcise girls, said she was convinced to stop doing it seven years ago after speaking to doctors.

Abdel Waly started practising in her early twenties. She learned from her mother who performed the procedure on her. "During my mother's generation there were hardly any midwives. It was a mother's duty to perform the procedure to her own daughter. My generation was full of mid-wives. It became a job."

Abdel Waly is mother to four boys and one girl. She operated on her only daughter. "I regret working as a midwife and operating on all these girls," she said. She feels it's her responsibility now to speak out against FGM.

"In the old days, it was out of ignorance," she said. "Medicine developed and people now understand."

Badreya Ramzy, 55, was also forcefully circumcised when she was five years old without anaesthesia by a midwife.

Badreya is mother to three men and two women. She circumcised one of her daughters before being educated about it.

"I ran out of my house on to the streets screaming when I saw the midwife," said Samya Shehata, 35, a Coptic Christian. "My mom eventually caught me, helped the midwife hold me down and did the operation."

Laila Nazma, 37, remembered it as "a day of hell," having undergone it at age 12.

"I will never forget when my mother said, 'Let's go,' and I knew what she was talking about," said Nazma, also a Coptic Christian. "I fainted from the pain and bled a lot. When I woke up after the operation I felt like I was butchered."

Youssra Hosny, a 34-year-old Muslim, was cut at nine months old.

"When I grew older I wanted to understand what happened to me," Hosny said. "I decided to visit the midwife that did this to me. I told her to tell me the story. She did. I was very angry after I found out everything. I have two daughters and would never do this to them."

Hosny is a mother to two boys and two girls who are not circumcised. She now works for a local non-governmental organisation the Assiut Childhood and Development Organisation, a Unicef partner organisation which implements awareness-raising programming to encourage people to abandon the practice.

Egyptian Coptic Christian Manal Nasef Fahmy and her 17-year-old daughter Marina were both subjected to female genital mutilation.

"The midwife came to our home. My father took me far away so I don't hear my older sister screaming as she underwent the operation. I was next after my sister and I will never forget it," she said.

Manal had a doctor circumcise her daughter Marina without anaesthesia. "I decided to have her circumcised before being educated about it. I will always regret it," Manal said.