A group of Kenyan teenagers have created an app called i-Cut to help girls affected by Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
The five Kenya girls, 'The Restorers', created an app called i-Cut, designed to connect girls affected by Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) to legal and medical assistance.
The students, Stacy Owino, Cynthia Otieno, Purity Achieng, Mascrine Atieno and Ivy Akinyi, have named themselves 'The Restorers', and will be the only Africans participating in the 2017 Technovation Challenge in Silicon Valley in August.
The app will help connect affected girls to legal and medical assistance.
Girls who are forced to undergo the procedure can also alert local authorities by pressing a panic button on the app.
Despite being illegal, Kenya still records a high number of FGM cases. According to a 2016 Unicef report, one in five girls have undergone the procedure in the east African nation.
The practice is mostly done when the girls are between the ages 10-14 years.
"This app a good way of getting people to talk about FGM," said Dorcas Adhiambo Owino, the group's mentor and Kenya's Technovation program lead.
"It is a conversation starter and that shows anyone can be involved in the fight against FGM."
The team beat nine Kenyan semi finalists to secure a spot at the Technovation Challenge taking place in August in California.
They will meet other finalists from other parts of the world and compete for a chance to win $15,000.
Sponsored by Google, Salesforce and Adobe, Technovation challenges girls aged 10-18 to create an app that solves problems faced by their communities.
Two sisters have died in Somalia from complications that arose after undergoing female genital mutilation, according to Hawa Aden Mohamed, who campaigns against the procedure.
Ten-year-old Aasiyo Abdi Warsame and her sister, Khadijo, 11, died a day after they were subjected to the procedure in the remote village of Arawda in Puntland State on September 11, said Aden Mohamed, director of the Somalia's women's rights group Galkayo Education Center for Peace and Development.
According to Aden Mohammed, the sisters were cut the same day by a local circumciser.
They continued bleeding 24 hours after the procedure, and died while their mother was taking them to a health center, Aden Mohamed said.
"Unfortunately, they never made it to the hospital as they all died on the way," said Aden Mohamed, who has been calling for legislation banning the practice commonly done on young girls in Somalia.
The sisters' death comes two months after Somalia's government vowed to pursue a landmark prosecution in the case of a 10-year-old girl who died after female genital mutilation, a practice that is legal in the country.
Deeqa Dahir Nuur died two days after she was subjected to one of the most extreme forms of female genital mutilation, according to doctors who tried to save her after she suffered complications from the procedure performed by a local cutter in another village in Somalia on July 17.
Aden Mohamed, a survivor of the procedure, said young girls continue to bear the consequences of the practice because of the government's reluctance to pass anti-female genital mutilation laws.
"It is another sad story coming even before the dust settles and action is taken in the Deeqa case. Yet there seems to be reluctance in discussing and passing the anti-FGM law," she said.
"We hope that this will serve as a wake-up call for those responsible to see the need to have the law in place to protect girls from this heinous practice," Aden Mohamed added.
In Somalia, 98% of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have been cut, the highest rate in the world, according to United Nations statistics.
The report said around 200 million girls and women in the world are affected by the practice.
Female genital mutilation involves the altering or removing of the female genitals, such as the clitoris or labia. The procedure can cause severe bleeding and health issues including infections and infertility, as well as complications in childbirth.
The practice is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women, but remains widespread in Somalia, where more than half the female population believe it should not be abolished.
The Nigerian government has taken the historic step of outlawing the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), in a move campaigners describe as “hugely important”
According to 2014 U.N. data, about a quarter of Nigerian women have undergone FGM, which can cause infertility, maternal death, infections and the loss of sexual pleasure. The practice was already banned in some states, but now it will be outlawed throughout the country. As one of Africa’s cultural and political powerhouses, campaigners are hoping Nigeria will influence other African nations, where FGM is still legal and widely practiced. An estimated 125 million women and girls worldwide — mostly in Africa and the Middle East — are living with the consequences of FGM. While stressing the importance of this new law, campaigners also urged caution, saying it was crucial that not just laws, but also attitudes, had to change in order to bring an end to the practice.
Girls pose on April 6, 2015 at a market in Nougboua in Chad. Seven civilians were killed in an attack in Chad blamed on Nigerian Boko Haram rebels, officials said on April 6. AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE DESMAZES (Photo credit should read PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP/Getty Images)
As the most populous country in Africa, Nigeria’s decision carries significant weight, but it would need to be implemented effectively, said Mary Wandia, FGM programme manager of Equality Now. “With such a huge population, Nigeria’s vote in favour of women and girls is hugely important,” she said. “We hope, too, that the other African countries which have yet to ban FGM – including Liberia, Sudan and Mali, among others – do so immediately to give all girls a basic level of protection.”
Others stressed that the battle to end FGM in a generation was far from over, saying it was crucial that attitudes, as well as laws, were changed.
Tanya Barron, chief executive of the global children’s charity Plan UK, said prosecution must be just one strand of international efforts to end FGM. “This must be centred on working with girls and their communities to ensure that they know the risks of this human rights violation,” she said.
They promise you a chocolate, a movie or just an outing; they take you instead to dingy, dark room, pin you to a bed, take off your pants and cut that tiny part of you that was eventually supposed to make you experience one of the greatest pleasures of being a woman. With blades, knives or anything remotely sharp and long, they cut off your clitoris, and say it's in the name of culture. All this when you're a young girl of seven, or eight, or nine.
Female genital mutilation (FGM)--also known as khatna or khafz in the Muslim Bohra community, where it is practised in India--does not have any laws in India banning it. The United Nations has declared female genital mutilation a human rights violation, and yet, the act is not banned in India.
Why do some girls have to go through the torture?
In the community, the clitoris part of a woman's vagina is also known as 'haraam ki boti' or 'source of sin' or more simply, 'unwanted skin'. The idea behind cutting off this part of the vagina is padded with centuries of patriarchy--if a woman knows the pleasure she can receive through it, she might go "astray" in the marriage, or bring "shame" to the community.
For the uninitiated, the clitoris has more nerve endings than anywhere else in the female human body. So, depending on how sensitive a woman's clitoris is, they either derive absolute pleasure from it, or its stimulation can sometimes even lead to pain. The most interesting nugget of information is that the sole purpose of the clitoris is to derive pleasure. No other male or female organ is designed only for pleasure, according to psychologytoday.com.
Who cuts the clitoris?
Untrained midwives or older women in the community are usually the ones carrying out this procedure. The procedure is carried out usually with a knife or a blade, on girls aged anywhere between six and 10--the idea is to "get it over with" before they hit puberty.
More often than not, girls end up getting unwanted infections, have to tolerate extreme pain, or just end up bleeding for days together, because of the lack of training of the women performing these procedures. How does FGM effect women later in life?
Cases of some women blocking out the horrid experience completely have been reported. They don't even know what's been done to their body. It's a very effective psychological way of blocking out pain from early years; minor rape victims have been reported using the same defense mechanism to "erase" the painful memory.
Even the ones who remember look at sexual intercourse as just an activity they need to do after marriage; the idea of pleasure thrown out of the window.
"I don't think I ever enjoyed sex in my marriage. I often wonder what it would have been like if I hadn't been cut. The sad part is I will never know," a mother from the Bohra community of Mumbai, who chooses to remain anonymous, told Hindustan Times.
The irony is, the Bohra community is known to be a more "open" Muslim community than most others, as it allows for its girls to get an education and travel, if they wish to.
Why is India becoming a hub for FGM?
The Muslim Bohra community is spread over the western cities of India, Pakistan, Yemen, East Africa, and some strewn parts of America and Australia.
India is now becoming a hub for FGM because of the recent legal action taken against FGM among Bohras in Australia and USA. In 2016, Australia sentenced three Dawoodi Bohras to 15 months in jail under the country's female genital mutilation law. In 2017, United States officials arrested two doctors in Detroit for allegedly cutting the private parts of six girls; the trial is still underway.
In India of 2018, however, a law against female genital mutilation remains to be formed.
A group of 30 survivors of female genital mutilation (FGM), belonging to a particular community, has started an online campaign against the practice and to put pressure on the government to bring a law to ban it. The group, ‘Speak Out on FGM‘, has launched the petition on ‘Change.org’ website, and claimed to have received over forty thousand signatures already.
Female genital mutilation refers to several different harmful practices involving the cutting of the female genitals for non-medical reasons. In December 2012, the UN General Assembly unanimously voted to work for the elimination of FGM, reckoned as a violation of human rights.
The group is launching another campaign, ‘Each One-Reach One’, on February 6, observed as Female Genital Mutilation Day, to reach out to the people and raise awareness about it. “This is an effort to wipe out this custom from our community. I am happy that thousands of survivors are joining this campaign not only from India, but also from Canada, Australia, South Africa, Britain, etc,” A survivor told PTI.
She said, “At the age of seven, I was subjected to FGM in Mumbai in an unhygienic condition and clandestine manner. The shock and the physical and psychological trauma of that day are still fresh in my mind.” “We have also launched several WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages, which have received overwhelming response from across the globe,” said the survivor, who is now 53 and working with a publishing company.
Survivors maintained the reason for the tradition of FGM is to curb sexual drive of women and control them. They claimed FGM has nothing to do with religion and is more of a cultural practice. According to the World Health Organisation, between 100 million and 140 million women and girls across the world are thought to be living with the consequences of FGM.
“This is the first time that survivors in India have joined hands to publicly campaign against this horrific practice,” said Preethi Herman, Country Lead, change.org. The message of this campaign is loud and clear. FGM needs to be banned, she added.
At least 200 million females estimated undergo FGM globally
At least 200 million girls and women in 30 countries are estimated to have undergone female circumcision, half of them in Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia, the UN children’s agency has said in a report. The UNICEF statistical report said the global figure includes nearly 70 million more girls and women than it estimated in 2014. It said this is due to population growth in some countries and new data from Indonesia.
The UN General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution in December 2012 calling for a global ban on female genital mutilation, a centuries-old practice stemming from the belief that circumcising girls controls women’s sexuality and enhances fertility. One of the targets in the new UN goals adopted last September calls for the practice to be eliminated by 2030.
While there has been an overall decline in the prevalence of female genital mutilation over the last three decades, UNICEF said it isn’t enough to keep up with increasing population growth. If current trends continue, it warned that the number of girls and women undergoing FGM “will rise significantly over the next 15 years.” In the 30 countries, UNICEF said the majority of girls were circumcised before reaching their fifth birthdays. “In Yemen, 85 per cent of girls experienced the practice within their first week of life,” the agency said.
According to the data, girls under the age of 14 represent an estimated 44 million of those who have been cut, with the highest prevalence in this age group in Gambia at 56 per cent, Mauritania at 54 per cent and Indonesia where about half of girls aged 11 or under have undergone the practice.
