Government officials, health workers and advocates say female genital mutilation cases rose alarmingly during the pandemic as lockdowns kept girls out of school, making them vulnerable to 'cutters.'
HARGEISA, Somalia — Safia Ibrahim's business was in trouble. COVID-19 had taken hold in Somaliland, in the Horn of Africa. The 50-year-old widow with 10 children to support set out door to door on the capital's outskirts, a razor at hand, taking advantage of the lockdown to seek work with a question: Have your daughters been cut?
Government officials, health workers and advocates say instances of FGM rose alarmingly during the pandemic in Somaliland and other parts of Africa as lockdowns kept girls out of school, making them vulnerable to"cutters" like Ibrahim, and economic pressures led impoverished parents to give their daughters in marriage, for which FGM often remains a cultural expectation, if not a demand.
"I asked her what she wanted to do with the girls. She said, 'I want to cut them,' and that was the shock of my life," Allin said."I did not expect that something like that can happen in this age and time, because of the awareness and the work that we have been doing." Then, with a razor blade, she swiped at where the girl's clitoris would be. Further slashes and the labia were gone. Finally, with needles and thread, she pretended to sew up the girl's opening, leaving a small hole for urine and the menstrual blood that would begin in the years to come.
The work has never been easy. Somaliland's president, Muse Bihi Abdi, has said he wants to make the practice illegal. But many religious authorities, along with others in the conservative society, have pushed back. His comment reflected the thinking of many in Somaliland's powerful religious community, who feel they are making a concession to anti-FGM efforts.
One young nurse in Hargeisa, 23-year-old Hana Ismail, was moved to write a poem about it. At the zero-tolerance event, she recited it:"I have a mark that can never be erased," she began, later describing how a knife had to be used to make way for childbirth, a life"that managed to get in." They hope an anti-FGM law will follow, but another challenge presents itself, one unique in Africa: Every lawmaker in Somaliland is a man.
"It is not legislation that will stop it," she said."Because if legislation would stop it, it would have stopped it in Sudan, and it has not. It would have stopped it in Djibouti, and it has not.
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