Arora KS, Jacobs AJ. J Med Ethics 2016;00:1–7. doi:10.1136/medethics-2014-102375

Journal of Medical Ethics

“…… In order to better protect female children from the serious and longterm harms of some types of non-therapeutic FGA, we must adopt a more nuanced position that acknowledges a wide spectrum of procedures that alter female genitalia. We offer a revised categorisation for nontherapeutic FGA that groups procedures by effect and not by process. Acceptance of de minimis procedures that generally do not carry long-term medical risks is culturally sensitive, does not discriminate on the basis of gender, and does not violate human rights. More morbid procedures should not be performed. However, accepting de minimis non-therapeutic f FGA procedures enhances the effort of compassionate practitioners searching for a compromise position that respects cultural differences but protects the health of their patients…..”

 

NPR

“…..The new traditions are taking hold in Maasai and Samburu communities in Kenya and Tanzania. After two or three days of preparatory sessions for the girls, the celebration culminates with communal singing and dancing and blessings by the village elders, who pour a mixture of milk and honey and water over the heads of the girls. Goats and cows are slaughtered for specially prepared stews or roasts. Traditional beer is brewed for the men to drink. The young women don multi­colored clothing and decorative beads that dangle from their heads and hang around their necks.

Such ceremonies have included from 200 to over 1,000 girls….. with several communities often coming together for the celebration. Usually, the elders also make a public declaration abandoning FGM, and the young men will similarly make public assurances that they will marry women who did not undergo FGM. That’s important because any girl who refused to be cut was shamed and shunned, subjected to a life of isolation, without marriage or children.

And at the center of the celebration are the girls themselves. During the two to three days preceding the celebration, participating girls in the alternative rites of passage are secluded, in a school dormitory or village hut, where they learn about womanhood: lessons which now include sex education, information about STDs and violence against women, and presentations emphasizing the importance of continuing education for girls and women’s rights. The traditional cutters who had in the past performed the cut also are usually present, discussing their role in the past — and explaining the health reasons for abandoning the practice…..”