Female genital mutilation down by 6% in Mauritania
The government of Mauritania was successful in lowering female genital mutilation by six percent in the North African country in 2010, and it is pushing for more to curb the practice by making it illegal.
According to the latest figures by the country’s ministry of social affairs, female genital circumcision has went down from 71 percent in 2009 to 65 percent in 2010, but in Mauritania’s interior region female genital mutilation is still rife and reaches as high as 96 percent, making the North African country the eighth highest country in the world to cut female’s genital.
To quell the practice the government is mulling and in cooperation with Mauritania’s Association of Scientists to take the necessarily procedures to make the practice illegal and punish those who commit any female genital cutting or mutilation.
Female genital mutilation has many names including female genital mutilation, female circumcision, or female genital mutilation/cutting, and it is any procedure that involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs.
Three years strategy
Mauritania’s ministry of social affairs have made a national strategy and for the upcoming three years to increase the awareness of the risks associated with female mutilation.
It had also promoted religious edicts or fatwas by religious scholars who denounce the practice.
Conservative scholars and spiritual leaders have rejected efforts by the UNICEF and the government to curb the practice, and on the contrary they promoted it as an important practice for women’s "cleanliness" and to "protect" their "honor".
The absence of one solid scholarly opinion whether to sanction the practice have constrained the government’s efforts to fully quell it.
The Mauritanian government also eyes to reach the most poor and those who are the least contacted by its campaigns such as villagers and farmers where they see it as a conventional tradition.
Health problems
Many Mauritanians think of female mutilation as a simple and an uncomplicated procedure, unaware of the health risks, and the conditions required to alleviate a "failed" procedure.
A young girl can die from a procedure if she cannot take the pain, and it can cause other problems such as constant bleeding, severe mutilation of the sexual organs, infections, bladder disorders, burning sensation while peeing and extreme itchiness.
Female genital mutilation can lower sex drive and pose as a problem for married couples leading to a divorce.
There is not particular age for the girl to undergo the circumcision but most of the time the procedure is done as a punishment for girls that act in a "disrespectful" and "sexual" manner contradicting cultural or religious norms with the opposite gender.
The circumcision also widens marriage prospects for girls and can give them the reputation that they have protected their honor, and can work as evidence that their families have raised "honorable" girls.
The United Nations has also declared February 6 as "International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation".
(Translated from Arabic by Dina al-Shibeeb)