FGM can cause
a host of health problems. In some cases girls may bleed to death or die from
infections. — File pic
Indonesia is embarking on a renewed campaign
to end female genital mutilation (FGM), according to its women’s minister
Yohana Yembise, despite opposition from religious leaders who have stymied past
efforts to combat a practice that is common.
Home to the world’s largest Muslim population,
Indonesia tried to ban FGM a decade ago but opposition from influential Islamic
clerics has meant it is still widely practised.
Almost half of Indonesian girls aged 11 and
under have undergone some form of FGM, the United Nations’ children agency,
UNICEF, said in February, citing government statistics fromIndonesia for the
first time in a global study of FGM.
Together, Indonesia, Egypt and Ethiopia
account for half of the estimated 200 million women and girls around the world
who have been cut, according to UNICEF.
Yembise, Minister for Women's Empowerment and
Child Protection, said the government has begun working with women's and
religious groups to raise awareness of the dangers of FGM and a survey was
underway to provide “scientific evidence” to support the government's goal to
halt the practice.
“We try to approach the traditional and
religious leaders to understand and to be aware that we have to end this female
genital mutilation,” Yembise told foreign journalists.
FGM, which involves the partial or total
removal of a girl’s external genitalia, is practised across a swathe of African
countries and in pockets of Asia and the Middle East.
FGM can cause a host of health problems. In
some cases girls may bleed to death or die from infections.
Others may suffer fatal childbirth
complications later in life.
Rights groups in Indonesia have long called
for a ban on FGM, while supporters of the practice argue that in Indonesia a
less drastic form of cutting is usually carried out.
The UNICEF study showed that three in four
Indonesian girls underwent FGM when they were under six months old, and the
procedure was usually carried out by midwives.
After the government tried to ban FGM in
2006, the country’s top Muslim clerical body issued an edict arguing that the
practice was a required part of religious tradition.
Grata Endah Werdaningtyas, a senior foreign
ministry official, said the new campaign would target families.
“We have to target the concerned groups like
the parents because they are the one who decide (on children’s circumcision) —
not the doctors, not the religious leaders,” she told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation.
But widespread superstition remains a
hindrance, she said.
“In some parts of Indonesia, they say a girl
has to be circumcised or else she can't cook rice properly, or she can't get a husband,”
Werdaningtyas said.
Reuters
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