Spotlighting Female Genital Mutilation: An Insidious International Human Rights Crisis

*Image credit: The Desert Flower Foundation

The practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is one of the most egregious manifestations of gender-based violence in the world today. For this reason, FGM is “recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights, the health and the integrity of girls and women”. FGM encompasses “all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons…” It is mostly performed on girls between the ages of 5 and 9. Unfortunately, despite its deleterious effects on the lives, health, safety, and well-being of approximately 200 million girls and women worldwide, FGM continues to be reverenced as a “cultural tradition” in adherent societies.[1] 

Understanding FGM through Gendered and Socio-psychological Lenses

At their core, hetero-patriarchal ideologies that perpetuate and sustain the practice of FGM are rooted in sexism and an irrational fear of the supposed dangers of (uncontrolled) female sexuality. To its modern-day proponents, FGM is not only a prerequisite for marriage but also a rite of passage into “respectable” womanhood, as it is believed to guarantee female chastity and increased male sexual pleasure. Moreover, since unmutilated women and their families often experience severe social ostracism and stigmatisation at the community level, FGM is regarded as an important “part of the initiation ritual for women and girls into the society.” In this connection, much like extreme hazing rituals in Western societies, FGM operates as a gateway to culturally policed social acceptance in adherent societies—despite the considerable personal harm and even fatal repercussions it occasions.

FGM and International Human Rights Law

Whilst FGM is practised by “more than 90% of the Muslim population in Indonesia and Malaysia”, the countries with the highest prevalence of FGM among girls and women aged 15 to 49 are Somalia at 98 per cent, Guinea at 97 per cent, and Djibouti at 93 per cent.

Whether medicalized or not, the practice of FGM violates a panoply of human rights, which include the rights to life; the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; protection from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse; freedom from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and protection from sex-based discrimination. Significantly, these rights are enshrined in several international human rights instruments that Somalia, Guinea, and Djibouti have all ratified or acceded to. Those international human rights instruments include: the Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989; Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment 1984; Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women 1979; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966; and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights 1966.

Moreover, Guinea and Djibouti have ratified the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa 2003 (the Maputo Protocol), which is the first human rights instrument to frontally address the issue of FGM. Among other things, the Maputo Protocol enjoins States Parties to prohibit and condemn FGM and all other forms of harmful practices that “negatively affect the human rights of women and which are contrary to recognised international standards.” To this end, it urges States Parties to prohibit "through legislative measures backed by sanctions, all forms of FGM, scarification, medicalisation and para-medicalisation of female genital mutilation and all other practices in order to eradicate them" (see Article V of the Maputo Protocol).  

Under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969, which codified the principle of pacta sunt servanda, when States Parties ratify or accede to legally enforceable human rights instruments, they have ipso facto agreed to be bound by their provisions. In light of their ratification or accession to the aforementioned human rights instruments, Somalia, Guinea and Djibouti are obligated, under international human rights law, to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of girls to live free from the violence of FGM.

Piercing the Cultural Veil, Challenging FGM through Activism

The insidious nature of FGM means that it is a pervasive and deeply entrenched cultural phenomenon in adherent societies. Whilst cultural relativism is an important paradigm for constructing empathy for and relational understandings of diverse cultures, piercing the cultural veil around FGM is necessary to challenge it effectively.

Activism against FGM has been significantly bolstered, especially within the international arena, by the courageous public testimonies of high-profile survivors, which have helped to spotlight an insidious international human rights crisis that thrives in secrecy. A notable example is Waris Dirie, a Somali model and philanthropist, who first shared her experience as a survivor of FGM during an interview with Marie Claire in 1997. The next year, she released her autobiography—‘Desert Flower: The Extraordinary Life of a Desert Nomad’—detailing her harrowing journey from the nomadic deserts of Somalia, where she was subjected to FGM at 5 years old, to the fashion runways of Europe. The publication of her autobiography and the interview that followed were instrumental in elevating an urgent yet largely hidden issue to international prominence.

In 2002, she established the Desert Flower Foundation (DFF) with the ambitious goal of “eradicating female genital mutilation once and for all, educating people worldwide, helping affected women and saving and protecting girls from this heinous practice.” Through its impactful “Save a Little Desert Flower” sponsorship programme, the DFF has notably “saved 1,000 little girls in Africa from FGM", together with child and forced marriage. In its 23 years of existence, the DFF has served as a beacon of hope for survivors of FGM and its transformative impact exemplifies the value of challenging FGM through activism.

Towards the eradication of FGM

On December 20, 2021, the United Nations General Assembly passed a historic resolution imploring all members of the international community to eradicate FGM. To date, several jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and Canada, have enacted legislation criminalising the performance of FGM and assistive acts. FGM has also been outlawed in several adherent societies such as Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal, Djibouti, and Guinea.

However, this legal interdiction has been unsuccessful in compelling the eradication or even reduction of FGM in those jurisdictions—two of which have recorded the highest FGM prevalence rates in the world. As a consequence, the right of women and girls to be free from the violence of FGM is guaranteed de jure but not de facto—a status quo that significantly undermines their enjoyment of substantive equality with boys and men.

Thus, it is imperative that global efforts to eradicate FGM address the interplay of cultural, gendered, economic and socio-psychological factors that sustain it and relegate dissidents to communal marginality. Certainly, its discernible reduction in certain adherent societies demonstrates that meaningful progress is possible when education, poverty alleviation to combat the economic disempowerment that often drives families to treat FGM as an "investment" that can help them to escape extreme poverty, and cultural transformation converge, especially at the community level. This is crucial since individually-oriented FGM abandonment programmes, like CARE in Kenya, have exposed supporters to coercive social sanctions in the absence of community-driven transformation.

Engendering local institutional buy-in has proven useful in empowering communities to abandon FGM on their own terms by facilitating the introduction of alternative rites of passage. This approach is having a “positive impact” in Kenya, Tanzania, and Burkina Faso. Moreover, encouraging—through education and respectful community engagement—the communal adoption of FGM-abandonment pledges, which contributed to the elimination of foot binding in China in one generation, could also yield promising results.

Finally, empowering women economically, through education, and elevating their social status, especially within communities, must be seen as central to the project of eradicating FGM since it will better position them to “participate in a process of community consensus around norms upholding the protection of the rights of women and children.”

Ultimately, addressing the cultural, gendered, economic, and psycho-sociological drivers of conformity by implementing culturally relatable models that effect sustainable change at the community level will enhance the efficacy of FGM eradication strategies within adherent societies and beyond.

[1] I deploy the terminology “adherent societies” to denote those societies comprised of groups, sects, and communities that adhere to the practice of FGM—regardless of whether it has been criminalised—and where prevalence rates are conspicuously high.