In June, the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA) released a report highlighting that worldwide restrictions due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic have put over two million girls all over the globe at a higher risk of undergoing forced female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). Dr Ramiz Alakbarov, deputy executive director of the UNFPA, said that the situation has created a “catastrophe within a catastrophe”, voicing his concern that the current scenario will reverse progress made by the international community to end violence against women thus far.
The UN has set itself a deadline of 2030 to eradicate the practice of FGM/C—which is also underlined as Sustainable Development Goal 5.3—as its policymakers believe that the change in mindset towards female sexuality and genital purification needs to be one that is generational. But its agenda for action in COVID-19 preparedness and response with respect to the issue highlights glaring gaps in its ability to address the issue from a holistic perspective.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines FGM/C as the practice of removing, partially or totally, the external genitalia of women and girls, or the injury of genital organs, for non-medical reasons. It describes the practice as a violation of the human rights of women, girls, and children, stating that the practice poses serious psychological and physical risks to the health of those who undergo it. Despite the international organization’s firm stance on the issue, at least 200 million women and girls in over 31 countries across the globe have been forcibly been made to undergo the painful and scarring procedure. The practice is predominantly practiced in parts of Africa and the Middle East, but is also common in other countries without any documentation for the procedure, like in India.
Under international law, all four classifications of the practice have been deemed as violative of the medical, sexual, and reproductive rights of women and children. Article 1 of the 1979 Convention of on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) guarantees the right to be free from gender discrimination ‘in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil, or any other field’. Legal experts argue that while the health benefits of male circumcision have been widely corroborated and its cultural significance in Muslim and Jewish communities has primarily revolved around hygiene, FGM/C has been found to be a practice aimed at controlling women’s sexual desires and reducing their role in society.
The preamble of the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention, which has been signed by 35 countries and ratified by 28, includes a direct recognition of genital mutilation, calling the practice a major impediment to achieving equal rights between men and women. Article 38 of the Convention urges member parties to take necessary legislative measures to ensure that practices like excision and infibulation, along with other forms of mutilation, are criminalized.
Among the 29 African countries where FGM/C is traditionally practiced, 26 already had laws by 2019 that criminalized the act. Penalties across the board range from monetary compensation or fines, to a minimum sentencing of three months in prison. Most recently, Sudan passed a historic law incriminating families and practitioners who carry out these procedures. But several countries like Mauritiana, Liberia, and Burkina Faso have struggled to enforce or sustain such legislation due to lack of awareness among the citizenry, strong backlash from conservative and religious groups, and a systemic inability to check those slipping through the cracks and continuing the practice illegally.
Given the current state of the pandemic, activists rallying for the cause also believe that the number of FGM/C cases are going to rise globally, mainly because girls are no longer in school and are at home and under parental supervision, where it can be assumed that they have ‘enough time’ to recover from the procedure. Kenyan anti-FGM/C campaigner Domtila Chesang told The Guardian, “With the schools closed, there’s no alternative—they are left to the mercy of their parents and communities.” Further, in several communities, the economic crisis caused due to lockdowns have incentivized parents to marry off their daughters and cut their genitalia immediately, as this gives some sort of proof for sexual purity, allowing families to negotiate more lucrative nuptial agreements.
In India, around two million women, mainly from the Dawoodi Bohra community, have undergone forced FGM/C in their childhood and continue to bear psychological and physical scars from the unchecked and undocumented cultural practice of female circumcision, called khatna or khafz. In 2017, Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi declared that FGM/C should be banned in the country, threatening the Dawoodi Bohra that the Centre would introduce a new law if it did not comply and halt the practice. However, an affidavit issued by her ministry a few months later completely contradicted her stance: “It is respectfully submitted that at present there is no official data or study (by NCRB etc) which supports the existence of FGM in India.”
Further, in 2018, Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor sought clarification via a parliamentary question on whether the incumbent administration has made any efforts to convince heads of religious organizations and sects to discourage the practice of FGM/C. To this, Minister of State for Women and Child Development Virendra Kumar simply said that there is no such proposal. Despite several public interest litigations filed by survivors of the practice, most notably by the organization WeSpeakOut, the Centre has been rigid in its stance that the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, as well as relevant sections regarding sexual rights in the Indian Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code are sufficient in addressing such cases. For example, people can be tried for FGM/C under IPC Sections 319 to 326 and POCSO, but there is a dire need for a more rounded approach that addresses other systemic factors contributing to FGM/C. This includes addressing family members who aid and abet the practice, introducing strict regulations for medical practitioners carrying out the process, penalizing the propagation of FGM/C, and introducing reforms and particular rules on the prevention, support, rehabilitation, and awareness programs provided to victims.
While it has been proven time and again that the practice of FGM/C has negative implications on women and girls’ health, complications arising from chronic infections, mental health disorders, and fertility/childbirth issues also add a toll to states’ medical and economic resources. The UN estimated that around $1.4 billion a year could be saved from the eradication of the practice if nations joined the fight against the practice.
But all this talk about FGM/C within human rights discourse also highlights the inherent Eurocentrism and Westernization of ‘universality’. In her 2019 paper Entitled, Empowered Or Victims – An Analysis Of Discourses On Male And Female Circumcision, Genital Mutilation/Cutting And Genital Cosmetic Surgery, E. Katariina Paakkanen combines feminist theory and Foucault’s conception of power to argue that, while the labelling of all forms of FGM/C as human rights violations can help girls and women realize their rights to bodily integrity, the lack of discussion on their factual effects can further reinforce heteronormative beliefs that women are always victims of their culture and religion in the Global South. At the same time, the oppressive, yet more socially acceptable Western practices of cosmetic genital surgery is completely left out of FGM/C narratives as they are veiled under the garbs of autonomy and choice, even though they are driven by deeply patriarchal beauty standards and practices. While Paakkanen does not paint the two situations as equal by any means, she does highlight that it is important to situate factors such as subjectivity and culture when discussing such matters within the framework of human rights.
Further, Paakkanen also points out that there is also little to no discourse on male genital cutting in the context of human and children’s rights despite the inherent power struggle and its widespread practice on non-consenting minors due to its scientific backing and the strong need to secure religious and cultural practices. In the United States, where FGM/C is illegal, circumcision rates for men in the decade preceding 2014 were 91% among white men, 76% in black men, and 44% in Hispanic men. Keeping this in mind, then, it can also be construed that societies and countries in the Global South are reluctant to enforce UN-recommended FGM/C legislation due to the inherent nature of human rights discourse to portray certain gendered practices as superior to others.
Therefore, the UNFPA’s suggestions of integrating female genital mutilation in gender-based violence emergency programmes, strengthening hotlines, and increasing community-based protection for victims of FGM/C during the pandemic is highly inconsistent with the on-ground realities of several states, especially India, where such infrastructures do not even exist outside of the health crisis due to a blatant inability to recognize the existence of the practice. The UNFPA’s recommendation of including women and girls in COVID-19 preparedness talks is also unable to address deeply rooted patriarchy seeping into the politics of several African nations in question that systematically deny females decision-making roles.
The world has a long way to go in addressing the issue of FGM/C, the first of which is by not framing the issue as a solely African problem and extending the ambit of the conversation to more progressive-seeming countries like India, where survivor-led groups are leading the fight without any governmental help. For example, what does the future hold for women in Poland, who has just pulled out of the Istanbul Convention or in Turkey, where femicide is rampant but the government plans to do the same? In India, legislators must recognize FGM/C as a real issue and as an obligation to the international treaties that it has signed and at least begin to create official documents and records on its practice as a first step to introducing specific legislation banning the practice. Lastly, if the conversation surrounding FGM/C must continue within the ambit of human rights discourse, the international community must include male circumcision and similar practices and conversion therapies forcibly conducted on non-binary, intersex, and trans people to truly find an inclusive solution to the problem.
Should India Introduce a Law on Female Genital Mutilation?
And how can the world do better by its survivors?
August 2, 2020
SOURCE: YOURTERM.ORG