Plan International Ethiopia SEE OUR WORLD An essential part of Plan‟s work is to help create spaces for children and young people to discuss together the issues which affect their lives, then ensure adults respect their views so that children may be involved in community decision making. This communication has been prepared with and by children directly and is intended to give a general sense of the kinds of issues children discuss and how they work together.
Fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Dear Sponsor, We are a group of children living in Tiroafeta area. Our area is located in Jimma district which is found in the South West Part of Ethiopia. We are working with Plan on issues that affect our lives in our area. We are 11 in number (6 of us are girls) with age ranging from 11 to 17. We are members of a child protection club called ‘Serbo child right club’. Today, we would like to share with you an important issue that is affecting girls in our area. In our tradition, girls are forced to o through ‘ girizat’ or female genital
mutilation.
What „girizat‟ means ‘Girizat’’ (female genital mutilation-FGM) is a traditional practice of female genital cutting. Using a cutting edge, a part of female genital is removed. It is a traditional practice retained by our community over a long period of time. And every member of our community comply with this norm otherwise they face social outcast. Besides this social value, it is believed that genital cutting would make a girl very disciplined. Our farming community believes that uncircumcised girl misbehaves and breaks household items. So, she not allowed serving elders and community leaders as she may bring embarrassments to her family. It is also believed that uncircumcised girl is like ‘untouchable’. Everything that she touches is considered cursed or vile. It is also practiced to control women’s alleged uncontrolled sexuality and emotional nature. So circumcision makes a girl a good wife and faithful to her husband. The cutting is carried out by traditional practitioners (usually old women) under unhygienic conditions and without any medication and pain killer.
Drawing by a child illustrating the practice of „girizat‟
Keryia Z. age 14 says: “One morning I saw a traditional circumciser in my home. I learnt that my parents wanted me to get circumcised. I started running to escape. My mother caught me and put me in front of the old woman. They held my legs and hands tightly. The pain was immense when she circumcised me. There was blood gushing out and I was panicked. The pain lasts for days and becomes very sharp when I was trying to pee.” Kedija S., age 16, says: “We have been told that our mothers who have been circumcised are suffering a lot during delivery. Our fate will be the same tomorrow if we don‟t escape the cutting today. Thinking of unsafe cutting practice of sensitive organ without any pain killer and the associated sufferings are scaring us day and night.”
How we work to change the situation Children representatives of our area were given training on the negative effects of girizat by health professionals. Following the trainings, we organized ourselves into different child right clubs in schools and villages. With strong support from Plan and the local media, we held different awareness sessions on child rights and FGM for our community. The local community radio has particularly helped us reach many community members and our face to face discussion with community and religious leaders has helped us reach and influence the way of thinking of our community. Previously, we children and our families knew little about our rights, leave aside promoting them. DEC_ETH_FY12
Nejat S., 13-years-old girl,, “We children were given little chance to take part in issues affecting us like female genital mutilation”. Today we work through many child right clubs in our area. Child right clubs are established in all schools and villages of our area. Our teachers are trained on child rights/protection and assisting us with our effort to stop the practice. We have a committee elected from our child right clubs closely working with parents, police and women and children’s affairs office on issues affecting us. Plan also trained our police officers on child rights and child protection. Separate section has been established in our police offices to handle issues of child right violations. The local police officers are closely working with our child right clubs in reporting incidents of child right violations.
„Say NO to girizat‟
Children during FGM forum with their We have started to change the way we and our families think. Though community most of our area is rural where people stick to old traditions and customs, we realized positive changes and we are living witness for the changes. Tesfanesh E., age 15 and grade 8, says: “Some parents and members of our society started saying no to female genital cutting”. Our effort is changing the way of thinking of our communities about girizat. Our family members especially mothers, started realizing the bad effects of female genital cutting on themselves and their daughters. We children also started reporting the intentions and actual practices of female genital cutting to our child right clubs. Our clubs take the reports to the local child protection unit in police station. “We girls started saying no to girizat. We are courageous enough to report any act of community members move to get girls circumcised. We directly report to the local police office‟s child protection unit,” Rama S., 16-years-old girl and a member of child right club, says. Fatuma A. age 38 and a mother of 5, says: “A few years back, uncircumcised young girls are made victims of gossip and backbiting. It Members of child right clubs discuss was a big insult to be called „uncircumcised‟. Girls were not free to go to child right issues schools as their friend talk behind their backs. Now, the situation is improving as we are getting awareness raising education. Many mothers now do not get their daughters circumcised. But the education has to be continued to stop the practice in our area.”
Our future actions: Even though the progress so far is encouraging, we recognize that female genital cutting is a deep-rooted practice in our society which may take long time to totally avoid. Girizat is still practiced by many families behind closed doors. Thus, continuous efforts of awareness creation are required. One of our priority action of the future is to continue discussing the effects of FGM and increasing awareness of our community. So, parents, religious leaders, community figures and girls will have to say ‘NO’ to FGM practices. We will continue arranging discussion forums through drama, poetry and quiz show and other channels to convey strong message on the danger of the practice. We will realize our vision of making our areas free from FGM with the support of Plan, our parents, community leaders and local government.
Our hope: We hope that a day will come when everybody in our society say NO to female genital mutilation and we children enjoy our rights and are protected from harmful practices that threaten our wellbeing.
This communication was prepared by children from Tiroafeta Area -Serbo Village Child Right Club with the support from Plan staff. The document was reviewed and edited by Plan Staff
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