Maria Lwantale
Stephanie Wilhelm
English 112
May 27, 2013
Genital mutilation: Negotiating Human Rights and Culture!
I come from a small country called Uganda. We perform certain acts not because we want
to, but as culture dictates. I remember being oblivious to genital mutilation, but all this
changed during my years in high school because I attended boarding school. As
adolescents, we enjoyed talking about our sexuality and bodies. One sunny Saturday
evening, as we sat down in our dormitory, one of the girls asked if anyone had under gone
genital mutilation just like her. Diana yelled out loud: It was one of the most embarrassing
and painful experiences I have ever gone through. She said that it is held in a group setting
and the act involves cutting off ones labia minora. I was in total dismay! My family chose
to stubbornly ignore certain cultural acts and this is one I am happy to have skipped
judging from the information I know right now. The second time I heard of it was during
my last year in high school. We had a social studies class that everyone used to enjoy so
much because it had some very interesting topics. Interesting and controversial topics just
like female genital mutilation. The topic at hand one chilly morning was female genital
mutilation. I was prone to being absent minded and being mentally absent from class. Just
hearing the three words woke me up. Ms. Kelly Miti described it as the cutting off of a few
of a womans sexual parts which I found pretty irritating. She stated that the act is often
done to control the sexual urge among girls undergoing puberty to keep them chaste and to
uphold fidelity among those that are married. With this knowledge on the topic, I started
paying more attention to it if it was talked about in public, radio or written about in
newspapers.
My paper will discuss female genital mutilation and show whether it is a cultural
obligation that needs to be upheld or it is actually a violation of women rights. The
opponents of the practice say it is a cultural necessity, while the opponents state that it is a
violation of women rights because it causes tremendous pain, trauma and yet no practical
importance was found in it. I will explain why culture should be a want rather than an
obligation while describing its effects on the rights of women. I was born and raised in
Africa which is the root for the act. This act has been around for generations and
generations. I do not know the exact time when it was started but I know for sure that it
has been going on for a very long time. John Hopkins writes in Female Genital Cutting
Cultural Conflict in the Global Community that the debates over female genital mutilation
began in 1958. The economic and social council of United Nations formally requested the
World Health Organization to study the practice. The world Health Organization was
hesitant since it was more of a cultural issue than a medical issue. In the mid 1990s, the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank gave aid to the World Health
Organization which did research on the act and found out that the it is dangerous causing a
lot of pain and death. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World
Health Organization then issued a joint statement condemning the practice as a violation of
human rights. Female Genital Mutilation became a target of unified international action.
According to the Female genital mutilation. An article in the Health Science Journal,
Kontoyannis Maria and Christos Katsetos write that female genital mutilation is a
procedure which involves partial or total removal of the external female genital organs.
The World Health Organization recognizes degrees of severity of the mutilation.
Clitoridectomy is the first form of genital mutilation in which the hood of the clitoris and
surrounding tissue are removed. Excision is the second form in which the clitoris and the
labia minora are removed and the last form is Infibulation, in which the clitoris, the labia
minora and at least the anterior two thirds and often the whole of the medial part of the
labia majora are removed. The age at which the practice is performed varies; it could be
done at any time between a few months old until puberty, on the first wedding night, or
even during the delivery of the first baby. Infibulation is widespread in Somalia, Djibouti,
parts of Mali, northern Nigeria, some parts of Ethiopia and Sudan. Clitoridectomy and
excision are practiced on the west coast of Africa, Chad, the Central African Republic,
southern Egypt, Kenya and Tanzania. The practice is also common among Muslim groups
in the Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan and Indonesia. Female circumcision is also practiced
in Muslim United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, and South Yemen but it is not practiced
in the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabia.
Female genital mutilation is based on fear of a womans sexuality which is a natural quality
that should be educated through love and not crippled by violence but the proponents of
the act state that it is a cultural tradition that has been passed on generation after generation
and viewed as a way to maintain cleanliness among women. (Female Genital Mutilation:
Conflict in the Global Community 7). According to Genital Autonomy: Protecting
Personal Choice, Every year about two million African girls are terrorized by the ritual
