SAFEGUARDING POLICIES that have been put in place to protect women and girls against female genital mutilation (FGM) are causing distrust among African diaspora communities.
The new study, published by African women’s rights organisation Forward and the University of Huddersfield, reveals that current FGM safeguarding measures are undermining the welfare and safety of those they need to protect.
Many families claim to feel racially profiled, criminalised and stigmatised.
Interviews with communities and professionals, found that health and social care workers, teachers and the police have concerns about mistrust within their communities.
They also question the need to single out FGM from other forms of child abuse.
Safeguarding policies which came into force from 2014 are thought to have increased scrutiny, suspicion and stigmatisation of families.
This can take place in schools, the healthcare system or when they choose to travel abroad.
Amy Abdelshahid, lead author and head of evidence at Forward, is one of the many professionals who took part in the study. She expressed her concerns to The Guardian.
“The current FGM safeguarding policies are causing quite a lot of harm. Communities are feeling targeted and that they are racially profiled. There is a general sense of assumption that many of these African diaspora communities are having the intention of subjecting their daughters to FGM, even if in some of the cases that’s not actually true,” she said.
Victoria Atkins, the safeguarding minister, said: “Female genital mutilation is a crime. It causes extreme and lifelong physical and psychological suffering to women and girls and we will not tolerate this child abuse taking place in our country.
“The government introduced tough safeguarding laws which compel certain professionals to report if they have encountered a potential child victim of female genital mutilation, regardless of what community they are from.”
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I attended a FGM meeting in Oxford several years ago. In attendance were African people from Nigeria and North East Africa.
The Caucasian-heritage female Doctor was pleading with African men and women not to damage the pleasure parts of their young daughter’s vaginas and to resist the cultural demand to have their daughters “cut.”
The Doctor shown a film of a seven-year-old girl being held down by senior aged African men and women whilst they “cut” and removed the pleasure part of her vagina with a razor blade.
I can still hear that little child’s screams; her legs kicking and the strong flow of blood. The little child screamed and trembled. Once the “cutting” was over the sewing began. They sew her vagina closed and sang a native song to hide the child’s continued screams. The child appeared to be in shock.
I was in shock and silent.
The African men in their native costume explained in their highfalutin way that they “loved their daughters,” and “cutting their daughters was part of their cultural heritage.”
I had heard enough from these pompous; sanctimonious and priggish African men; who I sensed cared little about the child’s future difficulties with passing urine; menstruating, enjoying sexual intercourse and giving birth. I could see that these African men did not care.
I said “men of Africa, are we still so savage; brutal and inferior in our thinking, reasoning and behaviour to our daughters that we still require Caucasian Western European women to plead with us not to destroy the pleasure parts of our daughters’ bodies?”
At this the African men rose up as one and grabbing me threw me out of the meeting; whilst they loudly condemn my question.
I was shocked to discover my East African male friends fully supported the “cutting” of girls; and even argued it was good for the girls as “cutting” prevented the girls from becoming prostitutes.
It was at this point that I began to believe the Creed of African Inferiority promoted by Rev Dr Charles Darwin, the Anglican and Catholic Churches and Margaret Sangster of Planned Parenthood, were correct. African people should not be seeking to justify the barbarous act of “cutting” the pleasure parts of their daughter’s vaginas.