Author: The Guardian

Criminalisation will not stop FGM in East Africa

Since female genital mutilation (FGM) has been outlawed in Ethiopia, some rural families have been holding clandestine circumcisions, said parents at confidential focus group discussions in Ethiopia for Oxford University’s Young Lives study. Often, the ritual takes place at night in order to evade prosecution, with girls at even greater risk due to poor lighting or the use of less experienced practitioners.

As a 10-year-old, Ayu, who lives in the rural Oromia region, wanted to complete her education and become a teacher instead of getting married young. But at the age of 14 she underwent FGM and by 16 she had left school and got married.

Ayu’s mother explained that the cutting was done at Ayu’s request. “After she heard a girl insulting another who was not circumcised, my daughter came home and asked me to organise her circumcision. She told me she does not want to be insulted in the same way.” And while her mother thought Ayu was not ready for marriage at 16 she was much more concerned about the risks her daughter would face as a young woman without the protection of a husband. “We live in corrupt and dangerous times,” she said. “It is better that she is married early.”

In Somaliland, the health messages about the risks associated with FGM (sometimes referred to as FGC, female genital cutting) have led to more girls undergoing clitoridectomy (the removal of the clitoris) instead of the more extreme infibulation (which involves the removal of the clitoris as well as the narrowing of the vaginal opening by creating a covering seal). But a World Vision study, “Examining the links between the practices of FGM/C and early marriage”, found that since the pressure to stop infibulation has increased, the pressure on girls to marry young has intensified because they fear being perceived as more open to premarital sex if they have not had the procedure. As 15-year-old Faiza explained: “It is better for my dignity to have a husband and children now.”

Kenyan teenage Maasai girls attend an alternative right of passage at Kilgoris, Trans Mara district, at a ceremony organised by an anti-female genital mutilation, campaign, Cherish Others Organisation. (Pic: AFP)

Martha Tureti, World Vision’s gender and development co-ordinator in Kenya, believes criminalisation has failed to eradicate the practice in the country. And stand-alone interventions, such as setting up rescue centres or introducing alternative rites of passage, have not been enough to alter deeply imbedded attitudes that put a high premium on girls’ sexual reputations and premarital virginity.

“If you only focus on the girls, the community still go ahead with the cutting anyway,” Martha told us. “We realised the importance of including boys so that they understand the dangers of FGM because otherwise they still demand to marry girls who have been cut.”

In northern Kenya, World Vision has sponsored the development of rites of passage that retain traditions like teaching the girls about their future adult roles, but replace FGM with reproductive health education that includes knowledge about the effects of genital cutting. One key to success has been persuading communities to identify their own adaptations to old traditions instead of trying to impose change from outside; holding ceremonies that include public endorsements from community leaders; and offering alternative income sources to the cutters. For example, a World Vision-sponsored ceremony involving 10-year-old girls in the northern district of Naivasha included the public endorsement of a local politician, as well as pledges from former cutters that they would abandon the practice in return for the gift of some goats that would provide them with alternative means of earning a livelihood.

A clear message from both the Young Lives and the World Vision research is that legal prohibition and intensive advocacy campaigns have not been enough to eradicate FGM. This is often because families feel unable to take the social consequences of making changes that go against the norm in close-knit traditional communities. So work towards the abandonment of FGM and early marriage must engage with the whole community and address the social norms that underpin the practices.

It is difficult for outsiders to predict what unintended consequences might arise in each circumstance as every community responds to change in different ways. But the Young Lives’ focus group findings demonstrate the importance of understanding from community members why some continue practicing FGM despite prohibition. World Vision’s experience has been that change is more likely if all the different interest groups in a community are involved in a non-judgmental dialogue about which solutions will work for them.

Ultimately, strategies to prevent FGM need to engage with the root causes of both FGM and early marriage: namely the unequal status of women and men, the desire to control female sexual activity and limited economic opportunities for women and girls.

Names have been changed at the request of World Vision.

Kirrily Pells is policy officer at Oxford University’s Young Lives study of childhood poverty, and Lorriann Robinson is senior child rights policy adviser at World Vision UK.

11 years ago

Meet Super Sisi, Egypt’s new game hero

On Egyptian streets Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – the top general who ousted ex-president Mohamed Morsi last summer – reached superhuman status months ago. Now the digital world has caught up: developers have released a Sisi-themed arcade-style game for Android users, billing the strongman as an Egyptian superhero.

Super Sisi sees a two-dimensional version of Egypt’s likely next president fly through a cartoon Cairo, attempting to save the country. In real life, Sisi’s picture looms over most main roads in Cairo, with many seeing his leadership as the answer to three years of political instability. In the game, Sisi’s avatar flies over the pyramids and the river Nile dodging bombs and explosives – a plotline that might remind some of a real-life wave of militant attacks aimed at soldiers and policemen.

Super Sisi is available in the Android App store. (Screenshot)

The game is the latest in a string of unlikely memorabilia aimed at cashing in on Sisi’s cult status. Elsewhere, Sisi’s face adorns tat ranging from underpants, fast-food packaging and, most famously, chocolates – at least until police raided the patissiers who made them last month.

But popular culture has not all been favourable to the man many expect to be elected Egypt’s next president in late May. In late March hundreds of thousands took to social media to express disgust at the general. Using the slogan “vote for the pimp”, it was a reminder that many Egyptians revile Sisi for his role in a crackdown that has seen at least 16 000 political dissidents arrested since regime change last July, and thousands killed.

After months of speculation as to whether he would stand for the presidency, Sisi resigned from the military in March, paving the way for a return to strongman leadership for Egypt.

Sisi had been spoken of as a potential head of state after he removed Morsi last July, following days of mass protests against the Islamist-slanted government.

A poll from late March by Egypt’s leading pollsters, Baseera, suggested that 39% of Egyptians would vote for Sisi in an election. This dwarfs support for the two other well-known candidates currently in the race – the rightwing football club chairman Mortada Mansour and leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi, who moulds himself in the image of Egypt’s 60s autocrat, Gamal Abdel Nasser. But it is a marked drop from Baseera’s February poll, which gave Sisi 51%. Most voters say they are yet to decide, but their choice is already limited by the withdrawal of two leading candidates who say that the race will be neither free nor fair.

Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

11 years ago

Egypt’s pork farmers get their sizzle back

The overthrow of Mohamed Morsi last year did little to help Egypt’s economy. But for the butchers and pig breeders of the slums around Cairo, it has been an unexpected fillip.

Five months ago, pork was so scarce in Cairo that a butcher like Bishoy Samir sold pig meat just twice a month. Now Samir reckons he sells an entire pig’s worth of pork every day.

Five years ago, the Egyptian government culled most of Egypt’s pig population, leaving Samir’s family with nothing to serve. “It was very rare to find something to cook,” Samir says. “We used to work one week on, one week off.” But five months ago things started to pick up, and “now we’re preparing one pig a day – and others are doing two or three.”

Pork’s comeback began slowly after the 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, when some farmers began to breed tiny herds of pigs again and hid them in their basements. But the revival was limited until the fall of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood last July. Pig farming is still illegal, but here and there smaller-scale breeders say they are now more brazenly rebuilding a process that was decimated in 2009.

“Under Morsi, everyone was afraid – people hid the fact we had pigs as they feared the government would come to kill them,” says Sayeed, another pork butcher in Cairo, who rears a now-expanding herd on the roof of his house in the east Cairo slum of Manshiyet Nasr.

“But after Morsi left, that was that – it was freedom,” says Sayeed. “Now the government is happy acting like they don’t know there are pigs here.”

Pigs piled up in the back of a truck before getting culled and buried on the outskirts of Cairo on May 14 2009. (Pic: AFP)

Today, there are 50 000 to 80 000 pigs in Manshiyet Nasr, estimates Ezzat Naem, the head of the local workers’ union – far fewer than the 350 000 in 2009, but double or triple last year’s figure. A year ago, Samir’s family was one of just two or three butchers who secretly grilled pork in Manshiyet Nasr, known internationally as Garbage City. Now locals say there are a dozen or so, as more residents again turn parts of their homes into makeshift pig sties. Outside space is limited, so the swine live on the roof, or in converted bedrooms.

In 2009, government workers killed Egypt’s pigs in brutal fashion – many of them buried alive in the desert, and covered in acid. Ostensibly, it was to ward off swine flu, then considered a major threat. But World Health Organisation officials said the pigs had nothing to do with the spread of the disease, leading many of Egypt’s Coptic Christians – who form about 10% of the population and who run the pork industry – to view the cull as another bid to marginalise their minority.

They felt victimised for economic as well as social reasons. The Christians of Manshiyet Nasr and half-a-dozen other Cairo slums are collectively known as the Zabaleen, or “garbage people”. They collect and recycle about two-thirds of the 15 000 tonnes of rubbish that Cairo generates daily – and once fed the organic waste to their pigs. But that ended with the cull.

“It was revenge on the Christians of Egypt,” claims Father Barsoum Barsoum, a Coptic priest. This feeling of alienation rose under Morsi, when policemen and vigilantes besieged Egypt’s largest cathedral and fired teargas over the walls.

It was felt the president had done little to condemn the violence. “Morsi didn’t care about the country – he just cared about his group,” argues Abu John, who used to own one of the largest pig herds in Manshiyet Nasr, as well as a chain of butchers. “As Christians, we felt like we couldn’t live in Egypt.”

Now Abu John feels more at ease and is breeding more pigs again – 10 times more than last year, he says.

The local price of pork reflects this rise. A kilogram of pork at a nearby butchers costs about 50 Egyptian pounds (£4.30) down from E£70 last year (though still higher than the £20 it would have cost five years ago). “In the past four to six months, people have realised that it’s more profitable again,” says Ezzat Naem, the union leader and head of the Spirit of Youth, a local non-governmental organisation.

But for the moment, the renaissance remains limited to subsistence farmers in districts such as Manshiyet Nasr, where the influence of the government is weak. Egypt’s two pig slaughterhouses remain closed, and the men who once bred the country’s largest herds of pigs have refused to reopen their farms – and thereby spark a larger revival – while the practice is still illegal.

“If the government want to check on anyone, we’re the first on the list – so we don’t want to take the risk,” says Ihab Israil, whose family once owned Egypt’s largest pork business, but who are now reduced to importing mortadella. “I’m not going to start unless I get official documentation from the government. What we need is the slaughterhouses back.”

In other Zabaleen slums people are reluctant to talk about the pigs’ return. “No one here is slaughtering pigs,” says Barsoum, whose parish is on the other side of Cairo. “And of course I miss it. There’s nothing like barbecued pork.”

Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

11 years ago

Cairo University chief blames woman’s dress for sexual harassment

The head of Egypt’s leading state university has provoked furious condemnation for claiming that an on-campus sexual harassment case was the fault of its female victim, and saying that she may be punished.

The Cairo University student was surrounded on Monday by a group of male students who sexually harassed her as she walked across a busy campus. The woman was later escorted from the university by campus security, and the incident was filmed by bystanders – many of whom appear unconcerned, or eager to join in – and uploaded to social media.

One male student can be heard saying: “Guys, I’m going to upload it on Facebook – whoever wants to watch this video, come to my page.”

The university’s president, Dr Nasser Gaber, added to public outcry when he told a television talkshow the incident had resulted in part from the woman wearing colourful clothes, instead of a more conservative cloak, or “abaya”‘. He also said that she may face punishment for the incident along with her harassers, and possibly expulsion.

Gaber told OnTV, a private Egyptian network: “The girl took off her abaya inside the university and appeared with those clothes – which was a reason for what happened … we don’t require a uniform here but clothes should be within the tradition of our society.”

He added: “The girl’s mistake doesn’t justify what happened to her at the hands of those students. We referred the whole incident to an investigation and everything is recorded by the university cameras. We will find out who is guilty – whether the girl or the [other] students – and we are going to punish them with the proper punishment, which might be expulsion from the university.”

‘Insanely appalling’
Women’s rights activists reacted furiously to Gaber’s remarks. Soraya Bahgat, the founder of Tahrir Bodyguards, a group that rescues women from mob sexual assaults during protests, said: “I find it insanely appalling that the head of arguably the most important university in Egypt said that her clothes were to blame. It was very alarming – but part of me is glad that this has come out, because it highlights one of the things that is wrong with this society, which is to blame the victim [of sexual harassment] for what happened.”

Following criticism of his remarks, Gaber said he had been misunderstood. “It is clear that a false perception has been generated among some people that I placed the responsibility for what happened on the student,” he told the website of the official state newspaper. “I assure you that this is not true and I apologise for the misunderstanding.

An Egyptian protester holds up a knife during a demonstration to demand an end to sexual violence against women on February 6 2013 in the Egyptian capital of Cairo. (Pic: AFP)

Although Gaber said that the incident was a one-off, sexual harassment is endemic throughout Egyptian society. In the past 18 months many more people have begun to mobilise against it, but sexual harassment still remains an accepted part of Egyptian life. According to a UN survey, 99.3% of Egyptian women reported being sexually harassed, with 91% saying they felt insecure in the street as a result.

Women are frequently blamed for harassment, while the crime is not properly defined under Egyptian law, which makes prosecuting perpetrators difficult. When women try to file complaints under more general harassment and assault laws, their cases are not taken seriously by police, and only there have only been a handful of convictions.

Read Sexual violence in Egypt: ‘The target is a woman’

11 years ago

I, too, am Oxford: Being othered at university

Inspired by black students at Harvard, who were in turn inspired by the final ringing line – “I, too, am America” – of a 1926 civil liberties poem, a group of black and minority ethnic students at Oxford has launched the website I, too, am Oxford.

Nearly 70 students have so far posed for photographs holding up a sample of some of the attitudes they have met at the university (“How did you get in to Oxford? Jamaicans don’t study;” “So do you like speak Nigerian?”; “Yes my hair is real!”).

While more “students of colour” are now studying at Oxford than ever before, the site says: “Students in their daily encounters in Oxford are made to feel different and othered from the Oxford community.” There are still “issues to be discussed”.

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