Stopping Female Genital Mutilation
11 Mar 2014
I congratulate the organisers of the petition. I will deal with the allegation that, in some sense, I was preaching tolerance of FGM. I had a different point. In some ways, perhaps we have been too tolerant in the past. We need prosecutions, partly because of the exemplary nature of the process, and we need the duty to report.I believe that—this is quite controversial—we need routine medical examinations and we certainly need to raise consciousness among health and education professionals. We also need to support the victims of FGM with more units such as those in Newham. I repeat, however, that unless we understand why people who consider themselves conscientious family members would collude with this process, we cannot eradicate it. I would like this country to be an FGM-free zone: a place of safety for young children. However, along with all that I have set out, we also need to have some understanding of how embedded it is in culture.
People are talking about FGM as if it is a brand-new issue. It is not; it has been spoken about since the ’60s. Those of us of a literary turn of mind will remember the American novelist Alice Walker’s 1992 novel, “Possessing the Secret of Joy”, which is about FGM. We also remember that whenever FGM has been raised, whether by women on the continent, writers overseas or health professionals, it has been met with a ferocious defence from those countries and communities. Jomo Kenyatta, who was otherwise a much respected liberator and leader in Kenya—he was the first Prime Minister—was a great defender of FGM.
Let me remind the House about the incidence of FGM in particular countries. The countries with the highest level of FGM according to UNICEF are as follows. In Somalia, 98% of women are affected; in Guinea, it is 96% of women; in Djibouti, it is 93%; in Egypt, it is 91%; in Eritrea, it is 89%; in Mali, it is 89%; in Sierra
Leone, it is 88%; and in Sudan, it is 88%.
I put it to the House that, despite the fact that we have known for perhaps 50 years of the medical harms and the problems associated with FGM, incidence of FGM in those countries remains very high. That is a clue that, on their own, knowledge, education and consciousness raising will not bear down on the practice. As I
have said, communities are invested in the process. Very often mothers and grandmothers collude to have the FGM done. In some societies, such as Sierra Leone, the people who do the cutting are women. They belong to some secret cult, and despite the fact that, I believe, FGM is illegal in Sierra Leone, those women will march to defend their right to cut children. Unless we understand that kind of thing, we will just be talking. It is a difficult and complex subject, which is not new. People have been fighting against it for half a century. It is not simply a function of ignorance, as I say. In those countries, it is against the law, and there are education programmes, yet still relatively sophisticated people have FGM performed on their female children.
For 29 years, Britain has specifically banned the practice of FGM. At this point, it might be helpful to put on the record what FGM is. FGM can range from the removal of the clitoris to the sewing up of the vagina, leaving only a small aperture for urination. It is not necessary to be a doctor or medical expert to understand
the medical problems that can arise for someone who has had their vagina sewn up—perhaps in adolescence—opened up again so their husband can consummate the marriage, sewn back up and then opened up again to have a baby. It is the most extraordinarily cruel procedure. The medical problems are obvious, and have
been so for decades.
I was reading about the subject at the weekend in preparation for this debate. Quite often, FGM is done with a knife or razor blade. I have read narratives from young women who have been held down by family members, and their blood has spurted from between their legs on to the face of the cutter. Those women bear those memories for a lifetime. I hope no one is accusing me of preaching tolerance of a brutal and ultimately profoundly sexist practice. What is FGM about? It is partly about controlling women—controlling their sexuality and controlling them in their society.
Even though a new law was passed in 2003 that made it illegal for British-based parents to send girls abroad to be cut, no prosecutions have resulted. That is shameful. I would not necessarily use France as an example of best community relations, but on this question the French have performed rather better than we have in the UK. In the past 34 years there have been 29 trials, in which 100 people—both parents and cutters—have been convicted. The most recent was in Nevers in central France 18 months ago, in which a father and mother of a small girl were jailed for two years and 18 months respectively. Now, one would not want to put
children’s mothers and fathers in prison, but that can happen in the context of other dreadful crimes. I believe that unless people know that there is some possibility of prosecution, efforts to bear down on FGM will just be talk. People have to know that when it comes to it, either the cutter or the family members will bear the full sanction of the law.
Some people have said to me, “If you simply prosecute people, that on its own is not going to do it.” Of course it will not do it on its own, but in this society we use the law to signal our abhorrence of certain practices. The law should be used at the very least to signal our abhorrence of FGM and to protect not hundreds but thousands of young girls in this city who might be in danger of FGM even as we speak.
Another thing that happens in France is systematic examination of girls for signs of FGM during health checks. We have to look at that. If the possibility for prosecution rests on asking young girls who are already in a patriarchal family structure to inform on their parents, it seems to me that our levels of prosecution are going to remain low to zero.
Of course it is important to change attitudes—that is what the campaign in The Guardian and some of the local campaigns are doing—and to support victims and to try to get the information out there. But as I have said, if we look at the countries where FGM is an issue, they have had that information. They have made it
illegal and they have raised consciousness and had poster campaigns, yet levels of FGM remain very high.
In my short-lived career as a public health spokesperson, one of the things I learned was that in public health matters, although we of course want to change people’s personal understanding and practices, the most effective measures are those taken upstream. Nothing has done more to bring down levels of smoking in
this country than banning smoking in pubs and clubs. That brought down levels not only of smoking but of adult and childhood asthma. I believe that if we deem FGM to be a public health issue, we need upstream measures on it, such as prosecutions and looking at the question of medical examinations.
Of course we want to change hearts and minds but if people are contemplating having FGM done to their daughter or are thinking that they can send their daughter home in the school holidays to have it done, they need to know that they are courting prosecution.
We need always to be careful about how we talk about communities and cultures. It does no good to try to imply that the mothers of the young girls affected are in some sense monsters. It is important to understand the cultural context, and to understand that it is because of that cultural context that mere exhortation of
people to stop doing FGM to their female children has failed in country after country. I am clear: it is a disgrace and a shame that in 2014 we cannot protect those young girls in London and other big cities. We do not need simply consciousness raising and educational information. It is not even a question of the units that we are now getting, thankfully, in places such as Newham. We have to face up to the need for prosecution and for routine medical examination.
FGM is a practice to which some of the British authorities have turned a blind eye for too long. It is long overdue that we, as a political class, take serious action on FGM. I am therefore grateful to the people who organised the petition and made the debate possible.
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