Nigeria Bans FGM......was it Culture or Religion or Misogyny (Oppression of women)

[franksterr]

This week, the former president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, signed a bill prohibiting the practice of female genital mutilation (known as FGM), in Africa's largest country.
Depending on the type of FGM, it can involve the removal of parts of the vagina (including the clitoris) with a razor blade or the sewing together of the vulva, and is carried out as a religious or traditional practice to preserve sexual purity and restrict female pleasure.

Nigeria is thought to have one of largest numbers of FGM victims in the world – with up to a quarter of all women (aged of 15 to 49) subjected to the horrific procedure.
Women who have suffered FGM risk serious health implications such as complete loss of feeling, severe infections or infertility, and some even die as a result.
Despite there being no medical reason to carry out FGM, close to 140 million women and girls around the world have suffered this horrific violation of human rights.

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Shocking statistics indicate that up to 500 cases of FGM have been identified...


But it's not only women in foreign countries who are affected – despite up to 500 cases of FGM being treated in British hospitals each month, no successful prosecution has yet been brought against a perpetrator.
So although it's amazing news that FGM will now be illegal in Nigeria, a shift in attitude is what's really needed to put an end to this crime once and for all.
"It's encouraging to see Nigeria introduce this law," Tanya Barron, Chief Executive of children's charity Plan UK, which works to combat FGM worldwide, told Cosmo.
"But global experience tells us ultimately, it's through changing attitudes – not just laws – that we'll end FGM.
"It's important any government has the right legislation and policies in place, to tackle a practice that has such devastating effects on girls and young women. Yet prosecution must be just one strand of our efforts to end FGM worldwide. We must work with girls and their communities to ensure they know the risks of this human rights violation.

http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/reports/news/a36063/nigeria-bans-fgm/

In October 2009, she was killed when her father ran her over with his Jeep in a parking lot, crushing her body beneath its wheels. Police allegedthat her father believed she had become “too westernized”; he was tried and convicted of second-degree murder. She liked makeup, boys, and Western music, and hoped to be able to support herself. She also refused to submit to the marriage her father had arranged for her to an Iraqi man who was in need of a green card. Noor wanted to choose her own fate. Instead, her father chose it for her.


Or consider the case of the Egyptian-born taxi driver in Dallas, Texas, who reportedly shot his seventeen-and eighteen-year- old daughters, Sarah and Amina, a total of eleven times for dating American boys. At a vigil commemorating the two girls, their brother took the microphone and said: “They pulled the trigger, not my dad.” Or Fauzia Mohammad, who was stabbedeleven times by her brother in upstate New York because she wore “immodest clothing.” Or Aiya Altameemi, whose Iraqi-born father held a knife to her throat and whose mother and younger sister tied her to a bed and beat her because she was seen talking to a boy near their home in Arizona. Several months before, Aiya’s mother had burned her face with a hot spoon because she refused to be married off to a man twice her age. Her mother, father, and sister were latersentenced to two years of probation. Fauzia and Aiya survived, but they are scarred for life.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...merica/391760/

[franksterr]

There is a little-known battle for survival going in some parts of the world. Those at risk are baby girls, and the casualties are in the millions each year. The weapons being used against them are prenatal sex selection, abortion and female infanticide — the systematic killing of girls soon after they are born.
According to a recent United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of the World Population Report, these practices, combined with neglect, have resulted in at least 60 million "missing" girls in Asia, creating gender imbalances and other serious problems that experts say will have far reaching consequences for years to come.
"Twenty-five million men in China currently can’t find brides because there is a shortage of women," said Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute in Washington, D.C. "The young men emigrate overseas to find brides."
The imbalances are also giving rise to a commercial sex trade; the 2005 report states that up to 800,000 people being trafficked across borders each year, and as many as 80 percent are women and girls, most of whom are exploited.
Click here for FOXNews.com's Asia center.
"Women are trafficked from North Korea, Burma and Vietnam and sold into sexual slavery or to the highest bidder," Mosher said.
State-Sanctioned Infanticide?
Mosher, the first American social scientist allowed into China, puts much of the blame on Beijing's one-child policy, which took effect in 1979.
The policy encourages late marrying and late childbearing, and it limits the majority of urban couples to having one child and most of those living in rural areas to two. Female infanticide was the result, he said
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/06...g-in-asia.html

[franksterr]

Breast Ironing

A hidden form of abuse known as “breast ironing”, in which girls as young as 10 have their chests pounded with hot objects to disguise the onset of puberty, could be taking place in Britain.

The mutilation is a traditional practice from Cameroon designed to deter unwanted male attention, pregnancy and rape by delaying the signs that a girl is becoming a woman. Experts believe that the custom is being practiced amongst the several thousand Cameroonians now living here.
A conference on how to prevent the abuse both in the UK and overseas is being held today in Ealing, west London. Its organisers, a charity called CAME Women’s and Girl’s Development Organisation (Cawogido), is already working with the Met Police and social services to tackle the problem.
The Independent understands a woman was arrested two years ago in London because police believed she had performed the procedure on her daughter. She was later released without charge, although the Metropolitan Police was unable to confirm the report but the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said that the practice was known to them. An Acpo spokesman said: “Similarly to the way we deal with cases of female genital mutilation, we would treat this as a form of child abuse. Police would take steps to safeguard the child or young person and build a case of child abuse to put to the CPS for a decision on charging.”
The UN has identified breast ironing as one of five forgotten crimes against women and estimates that some 3.8 million teenagers are affected. As well as being painful, it exposes girls to health problems including abscesses, cysts, infection, tissue damage and even the disappearance of one or both breasts

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/breast-ironing-girls-have-chests-flattened-out-to-disguise-the-onset-of-puberty-8842435.html