In December last year, Sanaipei Saitoti, a mother of four, took her nine-year-old daughter, Mary, across the border from Kenya to Tanzania to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM).
Mary did not survive. She bled to death, a tragic victim of an ancient practice that claims over 44,320 girls and women globally each year due to complications arising from the procedure.
Mary’s death forms part of a worrying trend in East Africa: families are sidestepping the legislation that outlaws FGM.
See also: Female genital mutilation: a striking reality in the 21st century | Experts’ Opinions
Keegen Kwagwe, National Coordinator of the Youth Anti-FGM Network Kenya, explained that emerging tactics such as the one used by Sanaipei are making fighting FGM increasingly hard.
“The problem is no longer awareness, they know it is wrong,” he said. “It’s the strategies people use to evade the law.”
Cross-border FGM
FGM was prohibited in Kenya in 2011, but the practice is rife in most communities where culture is highly valued. To avoid prosecution, families like Sanaipei’s are increasingly crossing into Tanzania where FGM remains prevalent despite the international community’s pressure to end the practice.
The failure of Tanzania to ratify the 2016 East Africa Community Prohibition of FGM Act, which would enforce regional cooperation to prosecute offenders, has been a major obstacle in combating FGM across the region.
“This frustrates our efforts,” Kwagwe laments. “Tanzania’s failure to adopt the law has given families an escape route, making it harder for us to tackle the problem at its roots.”
Medicalization: A new challenge in FGM
Beyond the border issues, the other emerging trend is the medicalization of FGM. Families are increasingly seeking health professionals to perform the procedure as a way of reducing complications and trying to evade detection.
They take the girls to hospitals, pretending to seek medical care for them, while others invite paramedics into the privacy of their homes to administer anesthetic or pain relief medication during the procedure.
“I know of parents who feign illness for their children, only to disappear to the hospital and come back with the rite already done,” says Kwagwe.
The challenge of verifying whether or not FGM has taken place further complicates the work of anti-FGM projects.
“You can’t ask a child to undress to check whether they have been cut,” he says.
This growing trend is compounded by doctor-patient confidentiality laws, which protect healthcare providers from having to disclose whether they have performed FGM.
“This is being exploited,” Kwagwe notes. “We need to look at revising these confidentiality clauses because they’re helping perpetuate this practice.”
Victimizing the survivors
In some of these incidents, police do not prosecute the real perpetrators. In raids, it is the child survivors, some just nine years old, who are arrested while the adults responsible for orchestrating the procedure flee.
“Instead of protecting the survivors, police are arresting these girls, who didn’t even consent to the procedure,” Kwagwe explains.
The legal system also places a burden on the girls as they are frequently required to testify against their parents which pits them against their family and serves to make reintegrating into the community almost impossible.
Cultural pressure and stigmatization
The persistence of FGM can be explained by cultural issues, particularly in rural areas like the Maasai community. To the people there, FGM is a rite of passage to adulthood for girls, thus making them marriageable.
Girls who have not been subjected to FGM are regarded as unclean and unfit for marriage. It is this highly cultural stigma that forces families to make difficult decisions, with many more afraid of being ostracized by society than by any law.
“I didn’t want her to be ridiculed or isolated,” Sanaipei said, explaining why she had her daughter circumcised. “She would have been viewed as an outcast within our Maasai community if left uncircumcised.”
The stigma also extends to the men who marry uncircumcised women, further entrenching it into the social way of life.
See also: Where culture clashes with rights: Mauritania’s female genital mutilation battle
