Maria says it was the most violent day of her whole life. Even now, 30 years later, she remembers every detail. That morning, her mother told her “We are going to purify you.”
Maria didn’t know what that meant, but it all happened very quickly. Grabbed by her arms and legs; the dhaia – the traditional midwife and circumciser – took out a razor blade and cut something out of her gut.
The pain was tremendous as she saw blood running down her legs and started to scream and cry. She felt she must have done something awful to be punished like this. Angry, Maria dared to ask why they had done this to her, her mother said that these were their traditions and they did it for her own good, so that she would become a decent woman and find a good husband. They would not speak of this again because “that part of your body no one sees, no one touches and no one talks about,” her mother said.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) refers to a number of practices that involve cutting away part or all of a girl’s external genitalia or other injuries to the female genital organs. Every year, about three million women in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Middle East suffer from it. In Egypt, when Maria was a teenager, around 96 percent of women underwent FGM.
Until the early 90s, FGM was a dominant tradition. A woman, especially in rural Egypt, who was not cut was unlikely to get a husband. But in 1994, on the eve of the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the debate rekindled. In 2006, FGM was completely banned by law. Nevertheless, it remains practiced underground.
One afternoon, a young woman called Sally knocked on Maria’s door. Sally was a member of a civil society organization that had begun a FGM awareness program supported by the UN. She invited Maria to attend their meetings. Maria learned that FGM is far from being a religious commandment (which was a widespread belief), but a physical and psychological violation of women’s fundamental human rights. “God made us the way we are; who are we to correct God? Neither the Bible nor the Quran says that we have to cut our girls,” Sally said.
Besides its arguments, the CSO program included micro-loans for dhaias who agreed to stop performing FGM, and for other women from the town. Maria and her eldest daughter volunteered in the CSO, educating women in surrounding towns about the issue. Maria spared her youngest daughters the agony she suffered by FGM. Following a program funded by UN and other organizations, more and more villages are declaring themselves “FGM-free” and more girls are being saved.
Maria has already changed, and now she says that the happiest day of her life was when her elder daughter enrolled in the university, because it is proof that she has been able to give her a better life. And she hopes that her two other daughters will follow suit.
This article was contributed by UNFPA to celebrate UN Day.
