Calls to end the practice of female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone were renewed after a 10-year-old girl has died after undergoing through the procedure as part of a mass initiation into a secret society. A number of women involved in the initiation are now reportedly on the run—among them, the deceased girl’s mother, The Guardian reports.
Rugiatu Turay, founder of grassroots group Amazonian Initiative Movement dedicated to ending FGM, told the outlet: “This is the second time that a girl has died in that family: one of the sisters died of excessive bleeding after being initiated two years ago, and the father was against it this time, but the mother is the breadwinner in the family and she wanted it.” She added, “Being the breadwinner does not give you the right to take the life of your child. We want to ensure that this incident is regarded as child abuse and use this as a test case to push the government to strengthen different institutions to take action when incidents like this happen.”
The Guardian further notes that although the practice has been technically banned since emergency health measures were introduced in 2014, FGM remains a common practice in Sierra Leone, “where nine in 10 girls are cut, often with crude instruments such as penknives, broken glass and razor blades.”
Turay stressed how the government failed to outlaw the practice. “These girls are dying and nobody’s protecting them, not the government, not the police,” she said. “Even FGM campaigners are threatened. We need to use this incident as a test case: we don’t want a situation like when a 19-year-old died [from FGM in 2016] and the post-mortem results were changed [to hide the cause of death]. We need to be ashamed.”
We are one with activists in condemning FGM. No other girl needs to die from this kind of archaic practice rooted in patriarchy.
[The Guardian]
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
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