07 May 2007: ISS Today: African Traditions and Practices: Cultural Rights or Human Rights Violations?

7 May 2007: African Traditions and Practices: Cultural Rights or Human Rights Violations?

 

 … A Maasai girl said she wanted to be circumcised because "if you are not cut, no one will talk to you. No man will marry you if you are not cut." This was during an anti-FGM campaign in Kilgoris, North Eastern Kenya.
The East African Standard, Wednesday, 2 May 2007

 

In Kenya and other 28 countries in Africa and the Middle East, the practice commonly referred to as female genital mutilation (FGM) or “female circumcision” continues to take place in spite of more than 25 years of efforts by African governments and the international community to bring an end to this practice.

 

FGM, defined by WHO and the UN Children`s Fund (UNICEF), as “the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for cultural or other non-therapeutic reasons,” is still a deeply rooted tradition in Africa.

 

While it may be assumed that this practice is unique to African and Middle East communities, evidence from Egyptian mummies suggests that a form of female circumcision was routinely practised some 5000 years ago. In ancient Rome, metal rings were passed through the labia minora of women slaves to prevent them from procreating while in 19th century UK the surgical removal of the clitoris was an accepted technique for the management of epilepsy, sterility and masturbation.(1). In Africa and the Middle East, it is not known when FGM took root although there are some countries where the practice began relatively recently. Yemen for example, adopted FGM as a result of contacts with communities in the Horn of Africa, where the practice had long been ingrained in the local culture. Most surprisingly, this practice still continues even among families that agree it should be abandoned. 

 

Communities practising FGM in Africa span the continent from Senegal on the west coast to Ethiopia and Somalia in the east, and from Egypt to the north to Kenya and the United Republic of Tanzania, and extending further to the south. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that there are 100 to 140 million girls and women who have been subjected to the practice and about three million girls, the majority of whom are under 15 years of age, who undergo the procedure every year. Nearly half of the total number of women and girls who have had FGM live in Egypt and Ethiopia
While trying to eradicate this harmful practice,(2) which has defined the women and the peoples in the communities that still practice it, it may be argued that international and civil society organisations continue to be faced with tough resistance for two reasons. First, it is perhaps the result of a lack of understanding of the origins of the practice and the purpose circumcision and other practices in traditional communities served. Second, and perhaps most importantly, it is because no alternative practices or rites of passage that would signify graduation from childhood to adulthood are offered by groups advocating its abolition.

 

The author is in no way arguing for the continuation of FGM or other forms of harmful practice that continue to subjugate and put women at risk of early death and the contraction of HIV/AIDS. It is argued, however, that it is crucial from an African traditional perspective, to replace these practices with alternative significant rites of passage in order to preserve norms that define these communities if the war against FGM and other harmful practices is to be won.

 

The fact that there is no alternative – less harmful practice – makes FGM resistant to change. As incredulous as it may sound to some, FGM endows a girl with cultural identity as a woman in her community, bringing honour to her family, and serving as a visible marker in her life and her community of her passage from girlhood to womanhood, which includes signifying her readiness for marriage. A girl who does not go through the rite is branded as an outcast and her chances of finding a husband are drastically reduced.

 

These are seemingly trivial consequences to one looking in from the outside, but they do define the Maasai girl who has to live with the shame of being an outcast or an unmarried and childless woman in her community.

 

FGM has been termed a violation of human rights and been defined as a persecution under the Geneva Convention. Arguably, this may not to take into account African traditions and practices and may also ignore African concepts of human rights. Is there an African and a Western concept of human rights? The right to traditional values for both individual and African family (community) is provided for in Articles 17 and 18 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Additionally, Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights provides for the right to enjoy cultural life. However, the overarching proviso is that no practice shall be in violation of any human rights as provided in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

 

It is clear that issues of culture, cultural values and rights are highly complex and difficult as communities practising FGM may use these two provisions of the ACHPR and IESCR as the basis for carrying out such a cultural practice. The issue of ‘cultural specificity’ has been extremely contentious in many political and other arenas, sustained by the seeming contradiction among various provisions in international human rights law. One set of provisions guarantees to each group the right to ‘enjoy its own culture’ while another guarantees the universality of human rights, based on the principle of equality and non-discrimination. A potential conflict lies in the fact that some practices in different cultures contradict or seem to contradict provisions in international law. Thus, does an objection of these practices, on the basis that they violate human rights, in turn not violate the right of all peoples to enjoy their own culture?

 

The resistance to the eradication of FGM may further be attributed to the fact that its objection is sometimes articulated as a reason for some Western countries to pressure communities, nations and states to abandon certain traditional notions that they view as barbaric and primitive in African traditions. In addition, it may also be the reason for the denial of basic human rights by authoritarian regimes that seek to suppress opposition struggles in nations and societies.

 

Cultural practices and values define the African people. As the Kiswahili proverb aptly states, Mwacha Mila ni Mtumwa (loosely translated to mean one that abandons his culture is a slave). Many cultural practices, such as FGM, ought to be discarded or criminalised, and reformed and replaced by alternative rites through the education of communities on the evolution of cultural relativism and what defines communities as African or indigenous people.

 

While it behoves the international and civil society organisations working with communities to ensure the eradication of all forms of discrimination against women and other vulnerable groups, thereby defending their human rights, it is critical to facilitate the reform or abolition of moribund cultural practices that steep women further in discrimination. Replacing them with other less harmful but significant symbolic practices will ensure that the traditions and culture that define a people are kept alive. Leaving a void by criminalising these harmful practices without providing alternatives may remove one form of discrimination while replacing it with another.

 

Carole Njoki,  Senior Reseracher,Training for Peace Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)