A new study by the Cairo-based Tadwein Center for Gender Studies found that 86% of disadvantaged women between the ages of 18 and 35 in Egypt, a country of more than 102 million people, have also undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). called female genital mutilation (FGC).
This is only one percentage point of the data for AGO in the last National Health Survey of Egypt, in 2014.
“I was shocked to see how little has changed, as Egypt has promised to end genital mutilation by 2030,” said Habiba Abdelaal, a fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East and South Africa Policy. . DW.
The practice is still widespread despite the illegal mutilation of Egypt in 2008, the increase in prison sentences for practitioners and family members involved, and the establishment of the National Committee for the Elimination of STIs in 2019.
Rays of hope
Although the prevalence of genital mutilation in some populations in Egypt has hardly changed since 2014, the researchers told DW that there have been other changes.
“Two things have changed for the better since 2014,” said Amel Fahmy, director of the Tadwein Center and co-author of the study. “Only 38.5% of women and 58% of men support the continuation of ANGO.”
This marks a significant drop in favorable views among women in particular. Previously, support for AGO was about 50% for women.
“The second change is that the daughters of circumcised women continue to be less likely to be circumcised, at about 57.4%,” Fahmy said.
However, these figures reveal that almost half of the girls born in Egypt are still at risk of having genital mutilation. The United Nations says any form of “AGO is a violation of human rights and a form of violence against women and girls.”
“A medical reason” for ANGO
The removal of all or part of the external genitalia is usually performed on girls between the ages of 9 and 13, but there are victims from the age of 6, say anti-ANG activists.
The practice is often carried out in the name of promoting purity and preserving tradition. Some see it as a religious duty. However, the most popular is a “medical” reason.
AKGO medical treatment is widespread in Egypt, as reflected in the 2014 Demographic and Health Survey responses: 37.9% of mothers — compared to 81.9% of daughters — had the procedure performed by authorized health professionals.
Midwives and traditional cutters had done the procedure before.
“Some medical practitioners claim that there is a medical reason for the cut, which is just a margin for lawyers to close the case,” Abdelaal said.
This is the view shared by Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-born activist and tough fighter against ANGO. “There is no medical reason to cut a girl’s clitoris, clitoral tissue, lips and sew the vagina together,” she told DW.
“Rejected or expelled”
Eltahawy said she remembers more than one conversation with “women who are being mutilated themselves, who have vowed to cut off their daughters despite any law.”
This is partly due to the perceived duties of love and care, Eltahawy said: “They do it to their daughters and granddaughters because they love them, because they do not want to be rejected or banished – they want to survive.”
Eltahawy said another reason for the prevalence was that “ANGO is part of a systemic patriarchy and systemic heresy, as it is intertwined with the obsession with maintaining a girl’s virginity until they get married.”
That’s why, Eltahawy said, it is not just up to single mothers to commit to not allowing their daughters to have amputations.
Thirty percent of those surveyed in the Tadwein study said they would not allow a son or a hypothetical son to marry a woman who had not been circumcised.
A success story in reducing ANGO rates
The German-Iraqi NGO WADI has been working successfully with women in Kurdish areas in northern Iraq since 2004 to combat the practice.
Back then, the area was among the places with the highest prevalence of genital mutilation in the world.
“We only work with women and the success is huge,” Arvid Vormann, WADI project coordinator, told DW.
The organization’s approach is to send groups of two women social workers to villages. “Depending on the different levels of transparency, we literally started by explaining that ANGO is outdated,” Vormann said.
At first it was tougher and social workers were often attacked because they opposed cutting.
In 2011, all forms of AML were officially banned in Iraq, although enforcement remains as low as in Egypt.
For women, the NGO’s long-term commitment has paid off as mindsets have changed: mothers do not cut their daughters and men embrace women who are not circumcised. Also, midwives trained at WADI must swear not to cut little girls.
By 2020, the Kurdish region of Iraq was considered free of mutilations.
“But our work does not end here, as many women living with genital mutilation still need advice,” Vormann told DW. WADI social workers are now focusing on helping women who have been circumcised with psychological support and practical information, such as the use of lubricants to reduce friction during sexual intercourse.
Involvement of men in the discussion
Activists say Egypt will need a wider community effort to reduce the high rate of genital mutilation.
“It’s a crime against women and it’s a crime against women – and we continue to ask the women in charge to fix it,” Abdelaal said.
He said men should be involved in the discussion. “We live in a male-dominated society after all,” he said.
But men will also need to listen. “Female genital mutilation will not end in Egypt until we finally overcome this taboo of female autonomy, over the body of sexual openness,” Eltahawy said. “And that will require a sexual revolution in which we say that I own my body and that it is my right to experience pleasure.”
Fahmy fears that there will be no end to genital mutilation in the next generation.
“ANGO is closely linked to education,” Fahmy said. “And as levels of education among girls increase, progress will have to be 15 times faster to end genital mutilation by 2030.”
Edited by: Sonia Phalnikar
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