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Law Should Be Enforced to Curb FGM, Say Activists
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- Published on Tuesday, 03 July 2007 03:42
At a press conference here on February 18, the organisation's Programme Officer, Habil Oloo, said that although protection of young girls from harmful rites was a major milestone achieved with the enactment of the Children's Act, the government needed to put in more efforts to stop FGM and early marriages.
He explained that rescue centres were overflowing with girls running away from their homes, and that it was proving impossible to cope with the increasing number."By girls taking refuge away from their homes, the family unit is slowly but unintentionally being broken," Oloo pointed out. He noted that girls needed to be nurtured by their parents or guardians, and not in rescue centres.
Addressing the press on the same day, Mrs Priscilla Nangurai, a headmistress at a girls school in Kajiado town (approximately 110Km from Nairobi), regretted that there were many girls who did not know who to turn to when faced with circumcision or early marriages.
Kajiado town is inhabited mainly by the Maasai community, who are notorious for forced early marriages. The community also has the second highest FGM prevalence rate in the country. 89 percent of Maasai girls go through this rite.Nangurai has rescued over 120 girls. She is currently sheltering 40, who have run away from their homes to escape FGM and early marriages.
One of the girls, 14-year-old Jedida Nkadayo, gave a heart-rending account of how she was circumcised in 1997, and thereafter forced by her father into marriage with an old man. "I was circumcised because in Maasai culture, you can't give out a girl if she is not circumcised," she said.
"I stayed with the man for three days and ran away with the help of my mother, who had reported the matter to the area chief," she went on.
Research reveals that as efforts to eliminate FGM intensify, perpetrators of the rite are getting cleverer by the day. Julie Maranya, an anti-FGM activist, said that among the Kisii community in western Kenya, where she comes from, girls are normally circumcised between ages 12-16.
"But parents have now realised that at these ages, the girl will have been sensitised on the dangers of FGM, and are now starting to circumcise at six years," she said.
The Kisii have the highest prevalence rate of FGM in Kenya (97 percent).
The National Focal Point is appealing to the government to introduce regular medical checks on all girls in FGM prone areas.
The aim will be to monitor and take to task, parents who are still promoting the practice. "In the event that a girl was 'uncut' in one term and the next term she is circumcised, the parent or guardians should be prosecuted," Oloo asserted.
