FGM slowing down ? The UN asserts it, the Indonesian case contradicts it
Sisyphe | 28.06.2013 20:35 | Gender | Health
The UN communication with regard to sexual mutilations is deceitful. It underestimates the number of excised girls, ignores the reality of excisors countries such as Indonesia, and maintains strict taboo of the religions role.
Unicef provides annually the status about the situation of female genital mutilation.1) It is estimated that some 130 million women worldwide have endured it and that three million girls are subject annually to the circumciser’s knife or to any other kind of mutilation. Figures are far below reality.
Unicef also announced that these mutilations are decreasing everywhere. It is also false : in some countries, the scourge increases. The agency also asserts that in 25 years, mutilations will have disappeared. A dream...
The implicit assumption of these statistics is that excising countries are known and identified. Howewer, only Africa (and Yemen) fall into this accounting. Does only Africa excise ? No, but to collect representative data and integrate them, Unicef needs the approval of the governments.
What happens in the Middle East and Southeast Asia ? About the first, we do not know much and the second contradicts the findings of Unicef. In Indonesia and Malaysia, the feminine genital mutilations (FGM) are common, and rising. Moreover, they contribute to the increasing medicalization denounced by the WHO in other countries.
The silence of the UN may once again lead to a painful revision. In the mid-2000s, they had to swallow a snake size : a comprehensive survey of its services concluded that circumcised girls each year were not two million as stated previously, but three ! 50% more, a news discreetly reported. At this time, the end of the beam was planned for 2010.2)
This figure of three million is already questionable. Taking into account the number of female births in African countries every year and choosing the lowest assumption among three various surveys, we get a quite different result : 5,3 million. If we include Indonesia with a very low hypothesis (50% mutilated girls), this number reaches 6,3 million !
Read more:
http://sisyphe.org/spip.php?article4449
Unicef also announced that these mutilations are decreasing everywhere. It is also false : in some countries, the scourge increases. The agency also asserts that in 25 years, mutilations will have disappeared. A dream...
The implicit assumption of these statistics is that excising countries are known and identified. Howewer, only Africa (and Yemen) fall into this accounting. Does only Africa excise ? No, but to collect representative data and integrate them, Unicef needs the approval of the governments.
What happens in the Middle East and Southeast Asia ? About the first, we do not know much and the second contradicts the findings of Unicef. In Indonesia and Malaysia, the feminine genital mutilations (FGM) are common, and rising. Moreover, they contribute to the increasing medicalization denounced by the WHO in other countries.
The silence of the UN may once again lead to a painful revision. In the mid-2000s, they had to swallow a snake size : a comprehensive survey of its services concluded that circumcised girls each year were not two million as stated previously, but three ! 50% more, a news discreetly reported. At this time, the end of the beam was planned for 2010.2)
This figure of three million is already questionable. Taking into account the number of female births in African countries every year and choosing the lowest assumption among three various surveys, we get a quite different result : 5,3 million. If we include Indonesia with a very low hypothesis (50% mutilated girls), this number reaches 6,3 million !
Read more:
http://sisyphe.org/spip.php?article4449
Sisyphe