Press Information
Conference on FGM in Northern Iraq: female genital mutilation is a human rights abuse
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is a grave human rights violation.
While justifications for FGM may differ, the victims are always the same:
Young women and girls who become subject to a severe physical encroach
on their right of self-determination and physical integrity. The
consequences are grave as well: Besides a hazard for the health and physical
well-being, affected women regularly suffer under pain and psychological
aftereffects such as panic and depression.
Iraqi Women from several NGO meet this weekend in Arbil/Northern Iraq
to discuss the problem and search for strategies to encounter FGM in
Northern Iraq. At the conference, which is supported by WADI and the USAID
Iraq Civil Society Program, NGO practitioners, womens rights activists,
and jurists will exchange their experiences and perspectives. A film on
FGM in Northern Iraq, which was produced last year, will be shown and
later on discussed by the participants.
Over years, the problem of FGM practice in Northern Iraq was hidden
under the cover of the unspoken understanding that everything related to
it is »shameful«. Meanwhile, FGM, has been practiced in high numbers. A
research, undertaken by WADI in the Germian region found that about 60
% of the questioned women were mutiliated. The public taboo, not to
speak about it, only abetted the practice and isolated victims. Womens
rights activists at place reckon that the number of FGMs has steadily
increased over years.
Womens organisations now encounter the taboo. Mobile Teams of female
social workers carry out an information campaign especially in remote
areas at the countryside, where the problem is pressing. Part of this
campaign is a film, which has been funded by WADI last year and which
shows, besides physicians and womens rights activists, an Islamic cleric
arguing against FGM.
The conference this weekend aims at bringing the problem into a public debate. The aim is to develop perspectives for further campaigns against FGM. The conference shall give an impetus to the legislative and political process as well.
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