We all want to prevent the trauma, human rights violation and
life-long suffering inflicted on 8000 girls every day across Africa and around
the world.
The real question is HOW do we stop this deeply entrenched
custom that has continued for over 2000 years, passed down from generation to
generation, where a mother who has endured the trauma as a child inflicts the
same trauma on her daughter? How do we break the generational cycle?
There’s the legal approach. Governments have enacted laws
against FGM and threatened “cutters” with imprisonment. And still they are
defiant. The day the law was passed in Senegal in 1999, one village cut 100
girls in protest.
Another strategy is to target traditional cutters and give
them alternative employment. However still mothers find someone to cut their
daughters.
Another way is having anti-FGM activists host meetings in
villages and lecture the women about the horrendous health consequences of
slicing off a beautiful, precious child’s genitals with a razor blade without
anaesthetic.
If the girl does not die from shock, blood loss or
infection, she is condemned to a lifetime of pain and suffering.
And life is hard enough in poor rural villages in Africa
without adding unnecessary hardship to the lives of women who carry the burden
of childbirth, childcare and work.
All heavy-handed, authoritarian methods have not stopped FGM.
Shocking, shaming, blaming, judging and condemning have failed abysmally to end
the widespread harmful practice.
So WHY have these
methods failed?
The ‘tradition’ is fiercely defended in African communities as
a religious duty, as a way to honour ancestors and to gain marriageability,
family honour and respectability. And the practice is wrapped in a code of
silence where women are forbidden to talk about the tradition they revere as a deeply
personal and sacred rite of womanhood.
And yet, how long
the tradition has existed or the strength of feelings and beliefs doesn’t make FGM right. For the health and
wellbeing of millions of girls and women, the harmful practice must stop.
The Breakthrough
One courageous American woman has found a way. Through 40 years of living and working in Senegal, Molly Melching has devised a strategy that promises to end FGM across Africa and the world.
The exquisitely written book However Long the Night by author Aimee Molloy tells the inspirational story of Molly’s journey from a bright-eyed university student from Illinois to a powerful campaigner heading up the acclaimed organisation, Tostan.
In the Senegalese language of Wolof, Tostan is a beautiful
word meaning the hatching of an egg at the breakthrough moment when the chick
emerges from the shell.
Molly Melching hatched not just a good idea but gave birth
to a human rights revolution. Over
25 years Tostan has led more than 5000 villages in Senegal to make public
declarations to end the practice of female genital cutting. (Tostan prefers to
call the practice FGC rather than FGM for “mutilation”.)
And thousands of villages in neighbouring countries around
Senegal in west Africa have also made public declarations. Millions of people
have been reached and lives and communities transformed through Tostan.
Tostan’s grassroots movement to end FGC is now spreading
throughout Africa with the potential to end the practice within a generation.
This remarkable achievement has come through a unique, pioneering approach.
What is the Secret to
Tostan’s Success?
Molly wanted to understand the motives driving the practice.
Through talking with thousands of women in villages she discovered:
1.Mothers cut their daughters as an act of love. Cutting makes a daughter marriageable in a culture
where women depend on husbands for their survival. An uncut woman would be
unable to find a husband and become a social outcast, shunned and ridiculed as
‘unclean’ by other women. To cut her daughter makes her a respected member of
the village, honours her family and secures her future. Although misguided, the
maternal intentions are good.
2. African culture is built on interconnectedness. Change
cannot be made by individuals. If one girl or a few girls are spared from being
cut they risk ostracism and social disgrace. Even if a whole village stops the
practice, it is not enough because people are related to members of other
villages; with relatives in at least 10 other surrounding villages. So change
has to occur amongst all the villages in a region. Abandoning the practice must
be a collective decision.
3. Abandoning the tradition cannot be done through force or
shame, or patronising judgement. Stopping FGC must be done with respect and
understanding of the beliefs and fears, motives and social needs of the people through
equal, collaborative discussion.
4. The continuation of the tradition is based on ignorance
and misinformation. Women attribute the pain and health problems experienced by
girls and women to bad spirits. They
have not connected haemorrhaging, infection and death of girls to the cutting procedure.
Nor do they know that suffering pain in urination, menstruation, sexual
intercourse and childbirth is not
normal.
They believe such pain is part of being a woman; that every
woman suffers in the same way. They believe that cutting girls is normal and
universal; that all women around the world are cut.
But through Tostan’s educational workshops in remote rural
villages women have become hungry for knowledge and discovered empowerment.
Tostan’s three-part Approach
to Transformation
1.Health Education: Knowledge about anatomy and health given
in a respectful participatory way using creative means such as theatre, music
and dance with women sharing their stories has broken through the code of
silence, myths and mistaken beliefs to confront the harmful effects of cutting
girls.
2.Human Rights: Informing women that they have a right to a
free choice about what’s done to their bodies, a right to health, to live
without pain, to even experience sexual pleasure has changed attitudes and
lives. Teaching human rights has stopped FGC as well as child marriage and
domestic violence and has empowered women to take on leadership roles in their
villages.
3. Public Declaration: Villages have come together to make
public declarations to end FGC, which has ensured the power of collective
commitment and accountability. The entire community mind set has been changed,
not just isolated cases of non-conformity, with the risk of ostracism.
Bringing the harmful practice out in the open has broken the
code of secrecy and created unity and powerful resolve amongst men and women, boys
and girls.
Tostan has led an astonishing human rights revolution and
the movement will continue until every girl is safe to grow up happy and
healthy.
Be inspired: read However
Long the Night by Aimee Molloy.
Read more about Tostan
and become a supporter.
The Orchid Project,
based in London, supports the revolutionary work of Tostan throughout Africa
and the world.
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