{"id":15438,"date":"2016-02-11T16:23:47","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T16:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/?p=15438"},"modified":"2018-04-22T12:01:20","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T16:01:20","slug":"silent-epidemic-the-fight-to-end-fgm-in-colombia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/blog\/2016\/02\/silent-epidemic-the-fight-to-end-fgm-in-colombia\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent epidemic: The fight to end FGM in Colombia"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOGOTA, Columbia \u2013 \u201cWhen I was 9 years old, my mother told me that three of her sisters died because her grandmother practiced female genital mutilation<\/a> (FGM),\u201d says Patricia Tobon Yagar\u00ed, an Ember\u00e1 indigenous lawyer from Colombia. \u201cHer mother managed to rescue her, and she told me that the practice had been eradicated in our Ember\u00e1 community.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Yagar\u00ed believed that to be true \u2013 until 2007.<\/p>\n

That year,\u00a0a newborn Ember\u00e1 girl died <\/a>due to complications caused by FGM in a remote part of the country, and, unlike in many other such cases, the doctor who treated her decided to report it.<\/p>\n

The story made national news, stunning not only the majority of the Colombian population \u2013 but of the Ember\u00e1 themselves. The secrecy surrounding the practice, which was soon revealed to be long-standing and wide-spread, had been so profound that most Ember\u00e1 men said that they were entirely unware it occurred, and even women who had suffered FGM themselves reported that they did not know they had been cut \u2013 until the birth of their first daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy that time, I was a lawyer working with the Ember\u00e1,\u201d says Yagar\u00ed. And after the news broke, she immediately dedicated herself to eradicating the practice among her people.<\/p>\n

Exposing the silent epidemic<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Approximately 250,000 Ember\u00e1 live in Colombia. And while the silence surrounding FGM has made exact figures hard to come by, according to Yagar\u00ed, as many as two out of three Ember\u00e1 girls are subjected to the procedure.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n
Patricia Tobon Yagari\u00a0(right), an Ember\u00e1 indigenous lawyer from Colombia, is helping lead efforts to educate Ember\u00e1 communities about FGM. \u00a9 UNFPA Colombia<\/div>\n

Globally, an estimated 200 million girls have suffered FGM, which is defined as<\/a> all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. The procedure can immediately result in shock, haemorrhage and potentially deadly infection, and over time, often leads to infertility or complications in childbirth that increase rates of newborn death.<\/p>\n

FGM is most prevalent in 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East, but as global awareness around the issue has grown over the past decade, FGM has increasingly been reported throughout the world, and it is now known to also be common in several Asian countries<\/a>. The Ember\u00e1 are the only group in Latin American currently known to practice FGM, and its origin among them remains murky.<\/p>\n

But one thing remains certain \u2013 it is the silence around FGM and the lack of accurate information regarding its risks that perpetuate this human rights violation. In 2008, Yagar\u00ed began working with UNFPA, the Colombian government and indigenous authorities to provide that critical information and eliminate the procedure.<\/p>\n

Educating communities to end the abuse<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cThe effort has to be a movement and it has to start with the community,\u201d said Cornelius Williams, UNICEF\u2019s Associate Director Child Protection, during a UN high-level event held in observance of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM<\/a>, which occurs on 6 February. \u201cIn most countries, FGM is part of the oral tradition, and we must stimulate dialogue so families understand the issue. Parents want their daughters to grow up healthy and be able to have kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

The UNFPA-sponsored intervention among the Ember\u00e1 aims both to educate midwives and other indigenous health workers and to inform communities about FGM\u2019s extreme medical risks and complete lack of medical benefit. It has been successfully carried out in two Ember\u00e1 communities.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n
Three Ember\u00e1 girls carry wood. \u00a9 UNFPA Colombia<\/div>\n

However, Ember\u00e1 are found in 17 departments and 124 municipalities in Colombia \u2013 and in areas of Ecuador and Panama \u2013 and most of these communities have remained resistant to allowing outsiders in to talk about this sensitive issue.<\/p>\n

But progress is occurring. In 2012, Ember\u00e1 leaders signed an agreement officially banning the procedure. And in 2015, the anti-FGM intervention was successfully established in eight additional communities. In one of these communities, Risaralda, four deaths caused by FGM were reported in 2014 alone. Last year, thanks to the programming, there were none.<\/p>\n

In addition, indigenous authorities have reported that after women are informed of their rights through the intervention, they feel empowered to also stand up against other issues, including gender-based violence<\/a> and an unfair distribution of workload between men and women.<\/p>\n

Internationally, studies show<\/a> that when rates of education among girls increase, rates of FGM and other forms of discrimination go down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is structural discrimination against indigenous people,\u201d says Yagar\u00ed. \u201cAnd most indigenous women cannot avail themselves of the state\u2019s programs for education, health and housing. But it is the education that I have received that has allowed me to guide this process and speak about topics aimed at guaranteeing the rights of women among my people. We need steady education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more from UNFPA here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exact figures about FGM are hard to come by, but as many as two out of three girls from the indigenous Ember\u00e1 group are subjected to the procedure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,4],"tags":[5658,3285,293,277,5622],"class_list":["post-15438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-gender-equality","category-news","tag-colombia","tag-fgm","tag-gender-equality","tag-health","tag-womens-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}