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Isis denies ordering that all girls in Mosul undergo FGM
Ian Black and Fazel Hawramy | The Guardian, Friday 25 July 2014
Doubts grow over UN report, seemingly reliant on year-old document from Syria thought to have been doctored
Jihadi extremists who have taken over the Iraqi city of Mosul have denied ordering families to have their daughters undergo female genital mutilation in order to prevent “immorality” or face severe punishment, as claimed by a senior UN humanitarian official on Thursday.
Supporters of the Islamic State (Isis), previously known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, dismissed the story as propaganda based on a fake document – though residents of Mosul, as well as Kurdish officials, insisted it was true.
The claim about enforced FGM came from the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Jacqueline Badcock, who told reporters that up to 4 million women and girls aged 11-46 faced the risk of genital mutilation. “This is something very new for Iraq, particularly in this area, and is of grave concern and does need to be addressed,” she said. “This is a fatwa from Isis. This is not the will of Iraqi people, or the women of Iraq in these vulnerable areas covered by the terrorists.”
Isis orders all girls and women in Mosul to undergo FGM, UN report says
Reuters in Geneva | theguardian.com, Thursday 24 July 2014
Report says ‘fatwa’ issued by militant group in and around Iraqi city could affect 4 million, but doubts expressed on social media
The United Nations said on Thursday that militant group Islamic State (Isis) had ordered all girls and women in and around Iraq’s northern city of Mosul to undergo female genital mutilation.
But doubts emerged on social media about the basis for the report. One document posted on Twitter suggested it may be a year old and have been issued by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, the group’s previous name.
Other internet comments, including from Middle East analysts, questioned whether the order fitted with the cultural traditions of the region.
A UN spokesman in Geneva said that it was seeking clarity and trying to establish the facts.
Wealthy Somalis Flout Kenyan Law to Have Daughters Circumcised
Abjata Khalif | Bloomberg | posted 16 July 2014
Halima Abdi charges foreign visitors at least $1,000 for a tour of remote northeastern Kenyan villages that most people wouldn’t dream of making. Her clients are young girls sent by their parents to undergo traditional circumcision.
Most of her customers are ethnic Somalis who arrive from countries such as the U.K., Sweden and the Netherlands, Abdi explained in an interview at her cramped one-room office in the suburb of Eastleigh in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. Abdi says she’s offered “consultancy services” to hundreds of migrant families from abroad since she began operating in 2000.
“I have undergone the female cut and I have administered the same to my daughters and their granddaughters too will go through it,” said Abdi, a 48-year-old mother of five children. “These beliefs and values are still present and valued by Somalis in Africa and the developed world.”
Undoing the damage
May 3, 2014 | Jane Wheatley
Each year more than 2 million girls worldwide are subjected to genital mutilation, but a pioneering technique is restoring hope to those affected.
It’s a crisp and sunny winter’s day in Barcelona and I have come to meet Fatou, an 18-year-old architecture student with a sweet smile who arrived in Spain from her native Senegal seven years ago.
Like many African girls, Fatou was circumcised as a child, a procedure now known as female genital mutilation, and last year she underwent surgery to remove scar tissue and restore sensation. “Now when I have sex with my boyfriend, I feel something where I felt nothing before,” she tells me. “But also I am no longer different from the Spanish girls here. At school when they talked about sexual feelings, I didn’t understand. Now I am the same as them, and that is just as important.”
Home Affairs Committee – Second Report
Female genital mutilation: the case for a national action plan
Here you can browse the report together with the Proceedings of the Committee. The published report was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 25 June 2014.
- Terms of Reference
- Key Facts
- 1 Introduction
- FGM in the UK
- Recent developments and our Report
- 2 Prosecuting FGM
- Cases considered by the Crown Prosecution Service to date
- Why it has been difficult to secure a prosecution
End female genital mutilation
The Guardian UK | Editors picks | Posted 26 May 2014
Female genital mutilation: three charged with circumcising girls committed to stand trial
May 23, 2014 | Emma Partridge
The first three people ever charged with female genital mutilation in NSW were committed to stand trial at a Sydney court on Friday.
A mother, a retired nurse and a sheikh have been accused of circumcising two girls, aged six and seven, at a Sydney home in 2012.
Sex crimes police allege the procedure was done for cultural reasons.
FGM: UK’s first female genital mutilation prosecutions announced
21 March 2014 | BBC News UK
The first UK prosecutions over female genital mutilation have been announced by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Dr Dhanuson Dharmasena, 31, of Ilford, east London, will be prosecuted for an alleged offence while working at the Whittington Hospital in London.
Hasan Mohamed, 40, of Holloway, north London, faces a charge of intentionally encouraging female genital mutilation.
Dr Dharmasena and Mr Mohamed will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 15 April.
Female genital mutilation ‘more common than thought’ in Australia
Australian Associated Press | Thursday 2 January 2014
NSW community services minister Pru Goward says community engagement is needed to prevent the crime, not tougher laws
The genital mutilation of female children is much more common in Australia and by Australians overseas than authorities can detect, NSW community services minister Pru Goward says.
But toughening the law on this “hideous” crime is not an option, she says.
Instead, community engagement and education is needed to prevent more little girls being targeted, Goward told ABC Radio on Thursday.
Goward’s comments came after a Sydney father was charged with having his then nine-month-old baby daughter circumcised while abroad in February 2012.
Britain seeks to prosecute FGM perpetrators
AHA Newsletter December 2013
Britain’s first ever criminal charges could be brought over female genital mutilation after the new Director of Public Prosecutions ordered 4 old cases to be reopened.
Read more here.
Investigation in UK as to why no successful prosecutions have been brought for FGM
AHA Newsletter December 2013
In the UK a major inquiry has been launched into female genital mutilation (FGM) to uncover why there has not been a single prosecution in the UK since it was made a criminal offence, and to try to bring an end to the illegal practice.
Following a report from the Royal College of Midwives, which identified more than 66,000 victims of FGM in England and Wales and warned that 24,000 girls under the age of 15 were at risk, the committee will probe the systems for collecting and sharing information on FGM, which campaigners have stated is patchy in places and non-existent in others.
Read more here.
France’s approach in combating FGM is promising
AHA Newsletter December 2013
France’s approach to combating female genital mutilation (FGM) is promising, writes John Lichfield. Although France has no specific laws against FGM, there have been 29 trials and 100 convictions in the last three decades based on laws banning grievous bodily harm and violence to children. The comparison to the UK–where there is a specific law against FGM but where there have not yet been successful prosecutions–is leading some UK campaigners to look to France as an example.
Read more here.
In Malta, bill against FGM should be strengthened
AHA Newsletter December 2013
In Malta, a forthcoming bill to criminalize female genital mutilation must be tightened to prevent defendants from invoking religious or cultural arguments in their defense, human rights lawyer Therese Commodini Cachia told an audience of nursing professionals.
Read more here.
Among Tanzania Maasai, women who reject FGM are refused as bridges
AHA Newsletter December 2013
In Tanzania, some Maasai women who reject female genital mutilation (FGM) are refused as brides. One woman, whose groom canceled wedding plans at the last minute because his bride had not undergone FGM, says “We are being rejected by our own society because we have refused to be circumcised”.
Read more here.
Tanzania police make arrests in effort to combat FGM
AHA Newsletter December 2013
Tanzanian police have arrested 38 women for carrying out illegal genital cutting on a group of girls. The women were arrested as they performed a traditional dance around a house where police found 21 girls, aged from 3 to 15, who had recently undergone excision.
Read more here.
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