By Charlene Porter
Staff Writer

Washington — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced February 16 that the United States will partner with the University of Nairobi to fund a pan-African Center of Excellence in Kenya to advance research in ways to end the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

Clinton made the announcement in Washington, where activists convened to talk about their work to end the practice, which affects some 100 million to 140 million women worldwide. The event was held in recognition of the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation.

“This center will focus on developing local solutions to end the practice and offer medical training on how to support the women who have been hurt and damaged by it,” Clinton said. “I hope others in the business and international communities will join the United States in supporting this very important new initiative based in Africa, where we think it needs to be.”

FGM/C occurs in dispersed communities in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia and among some immigrant communities that have retained the practice after a move to Western countries. An estimated 3 million girls are at risk of being cut in Africa this year alone, according to U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer.

The World Health Organization defines FGM/C as “procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.” The procedure can have adverse short-term and long-term consequences, including severe bleeding, urination problems, and later, cysts, infections, infertility, complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn death.

“It has no medical benefits. It is, plain and simply, a human rights violation,” Clinton said at the February 16 event, dismissing suggestions by some advocates that it is a culturally valuable practice, or in some way important to the practice of Islam. It is thought to have begun in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago, and spread from there to other regions.

Clinton also showcased the work of the nongovernmental organization Tostan that has made notable progress in helping African communities recognize the adverse health consequences of FGM/C and abolish the practice through community consensus.

Founder and executive director of Tostan Molly Melching says the group has seen hundreds of villages in Guinea, Gambia, Mauritania, Somalia, Djibouti and Guinea-Bissau disavow the practice.

“It’s not about blame and shame,” Melching said in a February 15 video conference between New York and several African locations. Tostan provides health information in the native language describing the consequences of the practice. “People actually decide as an extended family to abandon the practice.”

Melching said FGM/C has persisted because of community pressure and parents’ beliefs that their daughter must be cut if she is to be considered proper and make a good marriage.

Melching and Verveer, also participating in the February 16 event, introduced a religious official who has played a significant role in changing minds about community standards. Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America, has traveled widely through Senegal to urge abandonment of the custom. Melching credits the cleric for starting a movement that has led more than 5,000 Senegalese villages to reject FGM/C.

In his own family, Magid had five daughters for whom he would not allow the procedure. Telling that to his neighbors, extended family and friends created a “moral pressure” to drop the practice. “I can tell you that the young generation now who have female children, they’re not doing it in many places,” Magid said. He predicted that young parents’ use of social media tools will create further pressure to stop FGM/C. “If the young couple make a pledge in Sudan, in Mali, and in Senegal, you will see it really declining very fast.”

Melching agrees. “We see the movement growing. There is a momentum.”

Clinton cited momentum in the form of new legislation in Africa. “Now, Kenya has just passed an outright national ban on FGC, becoming the 18th African country to do so.”

Clinton expressed hoped that FGM/C will be abolished within a generation, if not sooner.