Somalia has the world’s highest rate of FGM with 98 percent of women between 15 and 49 having been subjected to the potentially deadly ritual
Somalia’s next government should ensure a law is passed banning all forms of female genital mutilation (FGM), a U.N. official said on Tuesday, describing the deeply entrenched practice as a “horrendous rights violation”.
Somalia has the world’s highest rate of FGM with 98 percent of women between 15 and 49 having been subjected to the potentially deadly ritual.
A bill on FGM is sitting in parliament but is unlikely to be debated until next year because of elections expected this month in the Horn of Africa country.
Jeremy Hopkins, deputy representative for UNICEF in Somalia, said the U.N. children’s agency was optimistic a law would eventually go through, but the details in it would be crucial.
“Our approach for the legislation is to go slow. We don’t want to risk this being politicised,” he said in an interview in London.
“We promote total abandonment of FGM, whereas there is a large part of public opinion in Somalia which will promote a milder form of FGM,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Most women in Somalia have undergone the severest form of FGM, known as infibulation, in which the external genitalia are sliced off and the vaginal opening sewn up.
The cutting is usually done by traditional circumcisers, sometimes using rusty and unsterilised instruments.
Hopkins said there was evidence that families were moving towards “a milder form of FGM”, but that this was not something UNICEF condoned.
“I would say there has been quite a big shift in recent years away from infibulation to this lesser form,” he added.
It is not clear whether the alternative form involves a small nick or the partial removal of the clitoris.
Hopkins said UNICEF was concerned that parents appeared to be increasingly taking their daughters to clinics to undergo FGM.
Campaigners say the “medicalisation of FGM” serves to legitimise the practice.
“It’s still a horrendous rights violation and I would question the integrity of any health staff who undertake such (a procedure),” Hopkins said.