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UN agencies unite against FGM
Accra, March 4, Ghanadot/GNA - Ten United
Nations agencies have pledged to support efforts to ensure a
major reduction in the practice of Female Genital Mutilation
(FGM) in many countries by 2015, when the Millennium
Development Goals are set to be achieved.
A statement by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
in Accra on Tuesday said the goal could be achieved by
building on the progress of existing programmes and working
hand in hand with communities.
The agencies are: the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, the UN
Development Programme, the UN Economic Commission for
Africa, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organizations and the UN Population Fund.
The others are the Office of the High Commissioner on Human
Rights, the UN Refugee Agency, UNICEF, and the UN
Development Fund for Women and the World Health
Organization.
The agencies said; “We have seen great success in people
turning away from this harmful practice. To take these
efforts to scale, we also need to see strong leadership on
female genital mutilation at all levels”.
The agencies, also expressed concern about the
medicalisation of female genital mutilation, where the
mutilation was performed in health facilities, saying the
argument that a mild form performed by medically trained
personnel was safer, should never be considered as an
option.
The statement also expressed regret that despite various
interventions by local communities, government and
international organizations to reduce the prevalence, FGM
remained a threat to the rights and health of women.
According to the statement, between 100 and 140 million
women and girls in the world were estimated to have
undergone FGM and three million girls were estimated to be
at risk of undergoing the procedure every year.
It said recent studies indicated that women who had
undergone FGM had higher risks for caesarean sections,
longer hospital stays, and post-partum haemorrhage, adding
that their newborn babies had higher death rates during and
immediately after birth as well.
The statement explained the practice was a manifestation of
unequal relations between women and men with roots in deeply
entrenched social, economic and political convention, hence
the need for a collective, explicit and widespread community
involvement to eliminate it.
GNA
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