Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is illegal in New Hampshire. It’s illegal in lots of places, but it’s a cultural norm in many more. FGM is reportedly on the rise in those places, so the burning question must be, is the Pandemic to blame.
Related: Maine Democrats Block Effort to Make FGM Illegal
Anti-FGM activists say lockdowns and school closures during the pandemic left many girls at home, vulnerable to genital cutting in communities that see the practice as a prerequisite for marriage and, in some places, as a rite of passage. Girls who have not been cut might be shunned by the community or considered not fit for marriage.
“The girls are normally protected and shielded by the fact of being in school, which is an alternative to marriage,” says Domtila Chesang, founder of I-Rep Foundation, a community-based group aimed at eradicating FGM in West Pokot County in Western Kenya.
In this context, the Pandemic is less about the effects of the flu and more about how politicians and “world leaders” forced” their citizens to behave. The girls are not home because a virus made them stay there that was someone else’s handiwork.
Politicians or local leaders made these demands and, in this case, from an age group with the least to fear.
We’ve demonstrated often that children, in particular, have more to fear from the political response than the virus. Depression, anger, frustration, and even suicide have taken more lives in our state than COVID19 (which has killed no one under the age of 20).
The politics will kill them, not the pandemic.
By the same logic, rising FGM rates in third world countries are a product of the culture and the political fear, not some flu.
“These girls are not just being cut. They are also being forcibly married off. And a girl that has had FGM is worth more. It’s seen as an investment into the girl and her ability to be married off,” says Nimco Ali, an activist who was born in Somaliland and subjected to FGM.
They are being married off because the political response has not just left them home; it has made making ends that often don’t meet more difficult. Parents are selling them off for a bride price. That value is higher if they’ve been cut.
It’s one thing to have laws against FGM, Ali says, but you also need activists on the ground to hold local leaders accountable for enforcing them.
“Unless you’re within communities doing the work day in, day out, so when times like the pandemic occur, you can be there to actively prevent and protect girls, we will keep on seeing these peaks” in FGM, Riddell Bamber says.
This is vital work, but it has nothing to do with the SARS CoV2 Pandemic, as NHPR’s headline intimates. These are acts of policy by people, none of whom will take the blame, all of whom – for the most part- are being coddled by a media that favors the destruction wrought by the political response and the mandates that lead to these problems.
Ending FGM is an outstanding cause but implying that “the pandemic” is responsible and not elected or self-appointed leaders is dishonest and misleading.
