Komara’s granddaughter was three years old when her clitoris was cut out. In this area of Mali it was accepted practice that girls must have parts of their external genitalia removed, in order to become women. Unfortunately this young girl did not survive the process. She suffered a massive haemorrhage, dying in a pool of her own blood.
Komara decided she had seen enough. Joined by mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters she spoke out against the practice. More and more people in Tounkara village got behind her. A fortnight ago I was there as the whole community – girls, women, former cutters and elders explained publicly on local TV how they were stopping the practice in their community.
Why is the UK failing to stop female genital mutilation while in Mali an increasing number of communities are protecting their girls from this abuse? Perhaps because criminalising an abuse is ineffective without action to inform and enforce.
The Director of Public Prosecution, Keir Starmer, has acknowledged this week that although female genital mutilation has been a criminal offence here since 1985, there has not been a single prosecution. Perhaps some lessons from Tounkara could help protect the 20000 British girls at risk of mutilation, because their families hail from countries like Mali and parts of Africa and the Middle East where this abuse is common.
Local Plan worker, Boucom Madima, explained to me that trust and time are key. “We have been working with 80 villages for ten years and the rate of excision for girls under four in this area has dropped from 97% to 46%. Some villages are divided with voices being raised against it, others are hesitant. Most are now in the middle of abandoning the practice and 27 have totally banned it.”
The conversation starts around the health risks. The local health worker briefs parents on the dangers of haemorrhage, infection, tetanus and HIV and warns that girls are twice as likely to die in childbirth after undergoing female genital mutilation.
Suleiman, who lives in Tounkara, has five girls but stopped mutilation after the pain the first two suffered. When another girl haemorrhaged after being cut, the two cutters (the aunt and her niece) made the connection and decided to stop using the blade. They told me, “Side effects don’t show straight away. Before we never connected the stomach pains or difficulty in childbirth with excision… Now we know it is connected we cannot carry on.”
The village council also backed Komara’s campaign. The chief makes space at village meetings for sessions to tackle head on the dangers of mutilation and the arguments for it- including tradition, cleanliness, preserving a girl’s honour. Although there is no national law yet against female genital mutilation, this community is about to declare itself free of the practice.
Munkoro village is conservative – children are seen and not heard and women are rarely vocal in public. So it was a sign of the social revolution that had taken place that 15 year old Namala could publicly declare, looking straight into the TV camera,
“Excision is bad for girls. I remember the pain. There is danger of loss of blood, of tetanus, of HIV infection. We must stop excision in Mali.”
When will such openness, engagement and attitude change happen in the UK? So far even two acts of parliament and a parliamentary enquiry have not succeeded in protecting our girls.
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