We
ask the Kenyan Government that FGM is taught in all the schools of
Kenya

The are between 140 to 160 millions
of women in the world have undergone Female Genital Mutilation, 3
million girls are at risk every year only in the African continent.
We do not need a treaty or a convention to acknowledge the
irreversible health problems, which FGM leads to. Just as a mean of
general understating, the main risks go from genital infections, to
fistula, from heavy hemorrhages to complications during childbirth,
from painful intercourse and menstruation to infertility, from
septicemia to death. Without including the tremendous psychological
effects of it: depression, sense of loss, lack of desire, anxiety, to
mention some.FGM for the above reasons has to be condemned as a
violation of children’s and women rights.

The main justifications for FGM are
religion and culture. No religion has ever demanded FGM to be
practiced and culture is a transformative process which can change as
we change and can’t be supportive of a crime such as FGM.

In culture, people represent and
identify themselves. In culture, people feel “safe”. Practicing
communities say it is tacitly known that girls must undergo FGM when
they reach the right age, as a way out from childhood to womanhood
because culture
demands it. But what
happens when culture generates violence. Yes, violence is cultural.
Violence does not exist in nature, so it is a cultural construct and
as FGM is a form of abuse as it violates the basic rights and
integrity of girls and women, it is a form of violence. We need to
acknowledge that there’s no other way to eradicate violence (any
form of violence) if not through culture itself. It is a big deal,
indeed, because it requires a lot of guts to discuss one’s people
principles and at the same time open to different perspectives on
issues, which past generations gave for granted.

When communities object that FGM is
unchangeable, they should try and look back at their history and see
how many things have been modified since they were moving from land
to land looking for pastures for their herds. It was in Kenya that
Somali writer Nuruddin Farah said: Today
in Somalia (which is also
one of the countries in Africa with the highest rate of FGM) –
people use I- phones and I
-pads, is that not a sign of cultural change? So why they can’t
change also their perception of FGM? This
iworks for Kenya as well.

In a digital world where
information and knowledge is accessible on a mass scale, where the
“other” become more easily the mirror for ourselves, it is more
difficult to think at culture as a static unchangeable thing. If
culture shows the symptoms of not changing, in a case where FGM is
still justified as “cultural”, it is perhaps because is used by
politics to control over women’s lives, suppressing gender
equality, continuing to support the patriarchal system. Eradicating
FGM is a call to revise culture, to change politics through culture
(and not the other way around). It is about promoting a holistic
vision through which occupy a new space and have impact, where
tradition and innovation can stand side by side.

Eradicating FGM should not be seen
as a threat to people’s culture. On the contrary acknowledging the
danger of the practice, the inhuman conditions in which women are
forced to live throughout their lives and protecting children from
such an horrible abuse, is a way to change culture eradicating the
bad of it and preserving only the good. Cultures and people changes,
are mutable and transformative… people make and change culture not
the other way around…

We ask the Government of Kenya to
ensure that FGM is taught in all the schools of the country (in rural
and urban areas), using adequate tools to engage with the students
according to age, like educational workshops and the arts. Children
of today are the change makers of tomorrow. It’s necessary to
provide girls of a proper education about FGM so that they can
protect themselves and live a complete life.

If the children of today can
acknowledge what FGM is, and what are the risks and consequences of
this practice, tomorrow we could live in a world free of FGM.
Children can educate their parents and together raise a public
dialogue where FGM won’t be a taboo anymore but part of a pro active
discussion and confrontation on how to build a sustainable future for
the country where children and women will be free of this form of
abuse.