In a country where female genital mutilation is commonplace, the United Nations Population Fund and the UN Children’s Fund in Ethiopia is helping young girls to stand up against the procedure.
This work falls in line with the new sustainable development agenda where goal five sets out to empower females and ensure gender equality over the next fifteen years.
In the Afar Region of Ethiopia, infibulation is a traditional practice. This is where elderly women from the community remove the clitoris, as well as the labia minora and labia majora, from young girls.
Afar has the second highest rate of FGM in Ethiopia which is why projects and awareness programmes are being rolled out across schools and communities to educate people on the harm caused by the traumatic tradition.
After one such talk by CARE Ethiopia, twenty four year old Hawa Buha became one of the first in her conservative pastoralist community to defy the tradition.
She convinced her parents to let her forego the mutiliation but faced much ridicule as a result.
“People were saying that I would die as a witch as no one would marry an uncircumcised girl,” said Ms. Hawa.
Despite the criticism and fears of being alone, more girls from Ms. Hawa’s area joined her in her decision and refused the procedure.
Supporting this movement, religious leaders in Afar have been campaigning for over fifteen years asking communities to abandon FGM and reaching out to leaders to explain that the dangerous surgery has no basis in Islam.
In 2006, the Ethiopian government finally crminialised the procedure and to help enforce this, the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme of Female Genital Mutilation began facilitating conversations about the tradition in the hope of challenging entrenched ideas.
Committees were set up at the kebele (sub-district) and village levels to monitor progress. These committees comprised local leaders, ex-circumcisers, local judges, village elders and religious leaders.
By 2013, all of the six Afar districts covered by the Programme had publicly declared abandonment of FGM. Some 7,000 girls, including Ms. Hawa, were spared circumcision during this period – an unprecedented trend.
Despite avoiding the procedure and being deemed unfit and unclean for marriage, Ms Hawa still had an offer of marriage. As part of another local tradition named ”absuma”, Ms. Hawa was required to marry her first-born male cousin, taking away her own choice when it came to a potential husband.
Once again standing up women’s rights, Ms. Hawa refused the marriage. After intense uproar, threats and lengthy negotiations, she was finally allowed to marry a man of her own choosing allowing others in the community to follow suit and feel empowered too.
Enehaba Seid, the man Ms. Hawa chose to marry said: “We are the pioneers in our locality, and many young people have followed us. In the past, no one wanted to touch an uncircumcised girl now, young men are fighting over these girls.”
Now parents to two children, it seems this young couple are inspiring females to make their own choices and changing the views people have towards women who haven”t undergone FGM. They are encouraging women to feel empowered and helping Ethiopia take the first steps towards a more sustainable future.