NAIROBI, July 24 (HANA)--African experts on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) opened a week-long talks in Nairobi Monday to discuss ways of combating the traditional practice of female cutting, urging Kenya to scale up the enforcement of laws to discourage the practice.
Government and civil society experts from the continent said weak laws are eroding the east African nation’s gain in the fight against female genital mutilation.
“Laws have to go hand in hand with campaigns geared towards behavior change among the people practicing female genital mutilation,” Efua Dorkenoo, an official with a UK-based organization, Foundation for Women Health Research and Development (FOWARD) said in her opening remarks.
“There has to be a policy to dictate the disciplinary measures to be taken on professionals found conducting FGM,” Dorkenoo said.
She said the Kenyan government had left the task to civil society organizations, which, she said, were operating under a limited budget.
The meeting which is discussing the legal and child protection interventions currently emerging in Sub Saharan Africa, however, commended Kenya on its effort to eradicate the vice.
The five-day workshop seeks to address the weaknesses of strategies adopted by different governments in stopping FGM.
Dorkenoo expressed concern over the revelation that health workers were fuelling the rise of female cutting.
She said one of the objectives of the conference was to propose stiffer penalties for health workers found to be engaging in female circumcision.
“Kenya’s effort to eradicate FGM, has been successful and other countries want to borrow a leaf,” Dorkenoo said.
According to statistics, FGM has declined in Kenya from 38 per cent in 1998 to 32 percent in 2002.
The Kenya Health Demographic survey indicates 22 per cent of prenatal deaths occur among women who have been circumcised.
It is estimated that between 100-140 million women in more than 28 countries in Africa have undergone some type of genital cutting.
Each year three million girls are forced to undergo the outdated practice. Even as efforts are made to ensure that laws go hand in hand with community education, implementing anti FGM legislation remains controversial. Enditem
