Prisons are failing to protect vulnerable children: The death of Jake Hardy is one that we cannot ignore

Note, October 2014

Earlier this year, I represented the family of Jake Hardy at the inquest into his death.  They are, without question, some of the most courageous people I’ve had the privilege of acting for.  The sheer scale of the institutional and individual failures in the safeguarding of this young person creates an overwhelming case for a systematic public examination of how we treat detained children.  With my close colleague Deb Coles, the co-director of social justice charity INQUEST, I published the piece below in the Independent.  Unless urgent action is taken, more children will be harmed, and more are likely to die.

 

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Prisons are failing to protect vulnerable children – we urgently need a public inquiry

Independent, 2014

Who protected Jake Hardy, a highly vulnerable 17 year-old suffering from ADHD and dyslexia and needing mental health support? Certainly not those prison officers at Hindley Young Offenders Institution who failed to listen to his anguished pleas for help from constant bullying. Certainly not the prison that an inquest jury last week found responsible for 12 critical failures that contributed to Jake hanging himself with a bedsheet. And certainly not a youth justice system that imprisons children in institutions in which bullying, serious self-harm and suicide are worryingly prevalent.

There are two ways to view what happened to Jake Hardy. First, that it was an aberration. However, the sheer extent of the safeguarding failures that emerged during the six-week inquest dispels the complacent notion that Jake’s treatment was unique.

An alarming pattern of failure
Second, therefore, we need to evaluate this deeply troubling case in its proper context: a youth justice system in which there have been 33 deaths of children since 1990. A system where the mechanisms to safeguard young people from self-harm and bullying miserably fail, as evidenced by a succession of critical jury findings and coroner reports, revealing a pattern of systemic failures that repeat with alarming regularity.

In a warning last Sunday, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons urged Ministers to investigate why in 2013-14 there was a sudden rise in self-inflicted deaths across the prison estate to 89 – the highest figure for 10 years. Further, INQUEST’s figures reveal that deaths in 2014 are thus far double the previous year’s. Something is going badly wrong in our prisons.

Jake’s case cautions us that it’s inadequate to speak of rotten apples and lack of resources, of demoralised staff and officers unqualified to care for vulnerable children. All these certainly play a part.

But we must never lose sight of the kind of prisons we have created. Prisons are intrinsically complex and problematic institutions. That is inevitable. What is not inevitable is the brutal and brutalising nature of our prisons, a picture that shockingly emerged during the Hardy inquest.

Governmental vindictiveness
And what about beyond the prison walls? What is not inevitable is the unnecessarily vindictive way in which parts of this Government speak about prisons and prisoners. Such messages seep into the culture. They are irresponsible and damaging. They impede efforts to make custody more humane. They make prisons more dangerous.

What is particularly tragic about Jake Hardy’s death is its sheer preventability. In 2007 an inquest was held into the death of Gareth Myatt, a 15 year-old child who died when physically restrained by three prison officers at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre. One of the chief lessons the presiding judge brought to the attention of the Justice Secretary was the urgent need to ‘listen to voice of the child’. Yet five years later, this is what Jake Hardy wrote about the bullying he was suffering shortly before he hanged himself: ‘I told the staff and they did not do nothing about the problem. So Mum if you’re reading this, I’m not alive because I can’t cope with people giving me shit, even the staff.’

It is too late for us to protect Jake Hardy. But we must do much more to protect the hundreds of highly vulnerable young people in custody, whose lives are blighted by mental health problems, addiction, abuse and trauma. The proper protective measures – and the humane institutional culture needed to breathe life into them – cannot any longer be left to the state to determine. Time and again the state has shown itself incapable of adequately protecting young people and children.

Exploding the myth
In February Lord Toby Harris was commissioned to hold an independent review into the custodial deaths of young adults aged 18 to 24. That is welcome. What is less welcome – and utterly incomprehensible – is the arbitrary exclusion of children from the Harris Inquiry remit. The Youth Justice Board claims to be ‘learning the lessons’ from the deaths of detained children. But recent history tell us that we can have little confidence in the state marking its own homework. As the parents of some of the 33 children poignantly argue, it is inconceivable that similar deaths in any other childcare setting would not have triggered an exhaustive independent review. Consequently, there is an urgent need for a public inquiry now.

Jake Hardy’s case explodes the myth that children in custody are safeguarded in a way that those aged 18 and over are not. He was a 17 year-old in the care of the state. Every warning sign about his vulnerability starkly evident. He was systematically failed. He killed himself. The inquiry must be independent and in depth and examine what is being done to detained children in our name. We need to rethink how we treat children in conflict with the law. We need to invest in alternatives to custody that combat the reasons for offending. And for once, the next step is clear and within our grasp.

The death of Jake Hardy is a warning. One we cannot ignore.

Fight FGM the way we fight Forced Marriage

Update, Monday 20 October 2014

As the new FGM legislation goes to its second reading in the House of Lords in the next week or so, here’s the New Statesman article I co-authored about the necessity for FGM Protection Orders – building on proposals we made to the Parliamentary Inquiry on behalf of the Bar Human Rights Committee.  It appears that the government has now accept our proposal for Protection Orders tailored to the specific characteristics of FGM as a harmful social practice.  A definite step in the right direction – but much more work to do.

Dexter

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PUBLISHED 22 JULY, 2014 – 10:01

Instead of immediately implementing protective measures to fight female genital mutilation, the government has called for further “consultation”. But it’s time for action, not more talking.

Today’s Girl Summit on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and child and forced marriage has been convened by the Prime Minister to “empower girls by ending harmful cultural practices.” This important event closely follows this month’s publication of the much-awaited report on FGM by the Home Affairs Committee (HAC) of the House of Commons. In it FGM was, quite correctly, described as an “ongoing national scandal.” As International Development Secretary Justine Greening has frankly stated, this mutilation of the genitalia of young women and girls is a subject we have historically “backed away from.”

So while the parliamentary report is to be welcomed, it does not go far enough. There are two obvious measures that the government should immediately implement to protect at-risk girls more effectively.

Because what emerged with clarity during the parliamentary inquiry was the sheer scale of the FGM problem in the UK right now. There are 170,000 young women and girls living with the legacy of mutilation. A further 65,000 aged 13 and under at immediate risk of having their genitals mutilated. This is not someone else’s problem. It is a problem in Britain and for Britain. Yet although FGM was made a criminal offence in 1985, there has not been a single successful prosecution. In other words, the state has stood back while perpetrators have abused girls with impunity.

It was this continuing governmental failure to tackle FGM that triggered the report we co-wrote for the parliamentary inquiry with the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales. The subsequent HAC press release states that “a number of successful prosecutions would send a clear message to those involved that FGM is taken with the utmost seriousness in the UK and will be punished accordingly.” However, while prosecutions are necessary, it will be impossible to prosecute FGM into extinction.

It is for this reason we argued that the UK should prioritise prevention over punitive approaches. Prevention not only avoids the pain of mutilation, but avoids the great expense and distress of prosecutions. In moral and monetary terms, it’s the right course. To that end, we recommended the urgent introduction of two preventative measures.

The first is the creation of a range of tailored “FGM Protection Orders.” These are legal powers that equip a civil court with tools to intervene proactively to prevent genital mutilation. The court could prevent the removal abroad of an at-risk child. This is crucial because there is a wealth of evidence of children being taken back to countries of family origin to be mutilated. This particularly occurs during the long holidays – what is macabrely called the “cutting season.”

We recommended Protection Orders to parliament because we know they work. We modelled them on an identical range of legal powers already used in forced marriage cases more than 600 times since their inception in 2007. They have saved significant numbers of women and girls from a life of sexual exploitation and servitude.

The second recommendation is that the government set up an Anti-FGM Unit. This would be a government-run centre providing expertise and a helpline for at-risk young women and frontline professionals. Beyond this, such a unit could liaise with consular staff abroad to rescue and repatriate girls taken overseas to be mutilated. This proposal is once again closely modelled on what works.

In January 2005 a Forced Marriage Unit was set up and is jointly run by the FCO and the Home Office. The unit has frequently rescued British women taken abroad to be forced into marriage. Its remit could be usefully extended to encompass FGM. This is because an obvious overlap exists between FGM and Forced Marriage as evidenced by the twin themes of the Girl Summit itself.

Both are fundamental human rights violations inflicted on some of the most vulnerable young women and girls. Both intervene in the sexuality of young women. Both remove autonomy and seek to control. Sometimes (not always) FGM and Forced Marriage go hand in hand: the marriageability secured by mutilation can be a necessary step before early marriage. Thus it would make sense for the practical expertise gleaned by the Forced Marriage Unit to be used in the fight against FGM. We therefore propose one unit tackling two (connected) targets.

To see how the two recommendations we’ve made would work in practice, consider the case of Ubah.

Ubah lives in London. Her elder sisters were taken back to Somalia and “cut” after their 10th birthday. Ubah has just had her 10th birthday and her family has planned a summer holiday. It is to Somalia. She’s overheard conversations among family members that it’s become too risky to have her cut in the UK, but they can take her “back home”.

For the last year she has been haunted by her sisters’ mutilations. She recalls how her family quietly gathered in their grandmother’s house in Mogadishu. How her sisters were taken into a room. She remembers the silence. Then the screams. And then another kind of silence after that ­– how no one would talk about what had happened. But Ubah has learned more about FGM at school. So she plucks up the courage and tells her form teacher Chris.

Chris at first doesn’t know what to do. But he recalls how the behaviour of Ubah’s older sisters changed after they returned from Somalia. Little things: not just being more withdrawn, but frequently visiting the lavatory. Coming to school and then saying they were unwell without being able to explain why. Chris contacts the government’s Anti-FGM Unit. The adviser puts the school in touch with child protection lawyers.

Ubah goes home that evening and breaks down. She tells her mother what she’s done. But her mother is also distraught and distressed. She doesn’t want Ubah to be mutilated. But there’s huge pressure from the wider family. She wants Ubah to be protected but doesn’t want anyone to know. Her marriage may fall apart; the community would look down on the whole family.

The very next day lawyers go to court and apply for an FGM Protection Order. The court makes an order preventing Ubah from being taken out of the country. It also orders Ubah to be medically examined by a doctor on a regular basis since she is deemed to be at high risk. The judge makes it clear to both of her parents that they are responsible for ensuring that their daughter is not mutilated. Ubah is protected. Her mother gets her wish. No one in the community knows her true feelings.

But what if Ubah only emails Chris once she is in Somalia? It still might not be too late. The Anti-FGM Unit would come into its own. Lawyers could still apply to the court in the UK. Armed with a Protection Order, the Anti-FGM Unit could liaise with consular staff in Mogadishu to locate and return Ubah to the UK intact.

These are just two examples of how these protective measures could work – if they are given the chance. These changes are straightforward. But instead of implementing them immediately, the government has called for further “consultation” on Protection Orders. However, we need action, not more talking. And despite the obvious need for an Anti-FGM Unit, the government did not even acknowledge this recommendation.

Today’s Girl Summit will no doubt be used to advance David Cameron’s claim that the UK will take a global lead in the “empowerment of girls and women.” But this laudable ambition will have more credibility if such rhetoric is matched with real action. The immediate focus should be on what is known to work.

Future generations will gaze back in disbelief that for three decades this nation did nothing next to nothing while some of our most vulnerable young women and girls were genitally mutilated. The time has come to stop “backing away” from FGM. The time is ripe for the government to commit to pushing through FGM Protection Orders and establishing an Anti-FGM Unit. For the sake of the thousands of girls like Ubah, we cannot afford to wait.

 

Dexter Dias QC was Chair of the of the Bar Human Rights Committee’s working group on FGM that submitted a report to the Parliamentary Inquiry on FGM. He and Charlotte Proudman were two of the co-authors of the report, but write here in a personal capacity.

Our FGM Report to UN Human Rights Commissioner

Here is the report I chaired and co-authored for the UK Bar Human Rights Committee to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  As ever with the BHRC, I worked with a dedicated and distinguished team of lawyers deeply concerned about human rights and particularly the protection of the vulnerable. My hope is that the report will add to the international conversation about the most effective way to eradicate FGM – and help create a global network of preventative powers to protect at-risk young women and girls in the interim.

We can – and will – drastically reduce the incidence of FGM.  But we must find better ways to protect at-risk girls in the meantime.

 

Dexter Dias QC

16 October 2014

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Report of the Bar Human Rights Committee

of England and Wales

 

To the Office of the High Commissioner

for Human Rights

 

3 October 2014

 

SCOPE

The Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC) is delighted to respond to the call by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for information on the main challenges related to the mobilization, allocation and spending of resources for children. The OHCHR specifically invites examples of good practice in child-focused sectors, including health, education, social protection, child protection and child rights.

BHRC

The BHRC is the international human rights arm of the Bar of England and Wales. Established in 1991, it is an independent committee of the General Council of the Bar of England & Wales. The Committee functions as an independent, legally qualified observer, critic and advisor, with internationally accepted rule of law principles at the heart of its agenda. The BHRC’s objectives include upholding the rule of law and internationally recognised human rights norms and standards, and supporting practicing lawyers, judges and human rights defenders.

FGM in the UK

The question of effective resource mobilization to protect children has arisen with pressing urgency in the UK in respect of a group of highly vulnerable young people. The UK’s historic failure to protect young women and girls from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is part of a wider global problem.[1] Although figures vary (and must be considered with caution) the latest research indicates that in the UK 170,000 females are living with the legacy of genital mutilation and 65,000 girls under the age of 13 are at risk of mutilation.[2] The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that worldwide 125 million women have suffered FGM and 3 million more a year are mutilated.[3]

FGM was criminalised in the UK in 1985. Since that date there has not been a single successful prosecution.[4] This disturbing fact exacerbated growing concerns about girls resident in the UK being at severe risk of mutilation, whether inflicted in the UK itself, or when taken back to country of origin to be mutilated abroad before being returned to the UK. These factors led to a Parliamentary Inquiry into FGM to which the BHRC submitted a report. Indeed in its consequent Inquiry report, the Home Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament described the FGM situation in the UK as an ‘ongoing national scandal.’

Changes need to be made. The question at stake is how best to mobilise limited resources (financial, informational, social and cultural) to most effectively protect children from mutilation. It is for these reasons that the BHRC makes this written submission to the OHCHR, since we believe the optimal response to FGM is directly relevant to the issues raised in the UN’s ‘Towards a better investment in the rights of the child’ initiative.

The BHRC considers FGM to be a child rights issue engaging cross-cutting questions around the right to health, security and physical integrity, the right to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, discrimination and violence and, when – as sometimes happens – the procedure results in death, the right to life. FGM is a serious crime, gender violence, a fundamental breach of human rights and child abuse.

BHRC REPORT

In its report to the UK Parliament, the BHRC provided a critique of the UK’s compliance with international law and other treaty obligations, and made a number of recommendations for (a) more effective child protection, and (b) greater state compliance with international treaty obligations. The recommendations are appended to this submission. [5]

Under International Human Rights law, states are under obligations (including positive obligations) to prevent, protect and investigate incidents of FGM. These obligations are reinforced by calls from international and regional human rights bodies, which highlight the need for state actions to be effective in practice. They also require that adequate resources must be allocated to combat FGM. ^[6]

Following its analysis of the UK’s compliance with its international law obligations, the BHRC reached three key conclusions (1) that the UK has been in breach of its international law obligations to protect women and children from genital mutilation; (2) that the UK will continue to be in breach until an anti-mutilation mechanism that is comprehensive and cohesive is securely in place; (3) that during the period the UK has been in breach, thousands[7] of British national girls have been mutilated since FGM was criminalised in 1985; some of them could – and should – have been saved and their mutilation evidences a serious breach of the state’s duty of care.

Further, the lack of FGM prosecutions – a crucial impetus to the Parliamentary Inquiry – is just one instance of a pattern of systemic failure to protect young women and girls. Taken together, these failures have unnecessarily exposed females in the UK to the risk of genital mutilation. This situation cannot continue. Action must be taken immediately.

For the purposes of the present submissions, we focus on two of our recommendations. These are (1) the introduction of Female Genital Mutilation Protection Orders (FGMPOs), which we suggest should be modelled on the UK’s existing Forced Marriage Protection Orders; and (2) the establishment of an FGM Unit, a central coordinating institution for the UK’s anti-FGM response.

PREVENTATIVE POWERS

We recommended to the UK Parliament – and urge the OHCHR to recommend now – that the state should create a raft of preventative powers broadly equivalent to those available in the UK in Forced Marriage cases. The powers proposed include:

 

1. Applying to the court where it is suspected on clear and compelling evidence that a child is at risk of mutilation, and getting an order prohibiting any interference with the bodily integrity of the child;
2. Orders requiring relatives of a child overseas (and who has been in the UK) and is on clear evidence at risk of mutilation to reveal the location of the child so UK Consular staff abroad can intervene;
3. Power to prevent an at-risk child being removed from the UK;
4. (We would add that there should be a power to repatriate mutilation survivors to ensure they obtain immediate medical and psychological support.)

These civil powers would provide a range of injunctive remedies to courts and would have the virtues of being (1) ‘victim’-centric, directed at (rather than prosecution) prevention and protection of the child, and thus embodying the paramount principle of the Children’s Act 1989;[8] (2) flexible and capable of being tailored to the specific facts of the case; (3) nevertheless backed by criminal sanction for breach in a way that is likely to focus the child’s carers on their duty to protect.

It is the professional experience of members of the Committee that in respect of family law cases involving so-called ‘honour crime’, those vulnerable to threat have been more prepared to come forward when such an approach is adopted. In appropriate cases, the police can apply to the court for disclosure of the judgment and, certainly in child sex abuse cases, this has led to prosecution.

Equally in relation to Forced Marriage powers, it is the experience of this Committee that injunctive relief specifically developed for a social problem (such as Forced Marriage) proved effective in a number of respects. The powers have the virtue of being focused on a particular social ill; are easily understood by judges, lawyers and (crucially) those at risk of abuse; and have been subject of specific judicial training in areas of high prevalence. Similar considerations obviously apply to FGM.

The creation of a Forced Marriage Unit in the UK has provided an invaluable resource and centre of accumulating specialist knowledge and expertise.[9] The Unit has intervened in over 600 cases since its inception in 2005.[10] An obvious overlap exists between FGM and Forced (and Early) Marriage. Both are human rights violations inflicted on some of the most vulnerable girls. Both intervene in the sexuality of young women. Both remove autonomy and seek to control. Sometimes FGM and Forced and Early Marriage go hand in hand: the marriageability secured by FGM is a necessary step before the early marriage of an at-risk young girl.

It should be noted that proposals for the creation of FGM Protection Orders are presently going through the process of Parliamentary consultation.[11]

CONCLUSION

In our submissions to the UK Parliament, the BHRC stressed that effective national policy around child-focused issues must place great emphasis on harm prevention. The policy interventions that we recommended further that objective.

The prosecution of individuals genitally mutilating children, or who are complicit in its infliction, is an important step in terms of social justice. Not only does resolute state action of this kind possess significant symbolic value, but it constitutes a graphic demonstration of the state’s solidarity with survivors and those at-risk. Further, it marks the nation’s collective deprecation of the damaging practice. Consequently, we support prosecutions. But there is a risk. The reality is that it will prove impossible to prosecute FGM into extinction. Such resources as are available for combating such genital mutilation need to be most effectively deployed. Therefore we fully endorse the UN’s approach of devoting resources and institutional efforts to working with practising communities to achieve the ‘collective abandonment’ of genital mutilation.[12] In the meantime, however, girls remain at severe risk of mutilation.

The thrust of our submissions to the OHCHR (and indeed previously to the UK Parliament) is that greater state resources must be devoted to providing more robust preventative mechanisms that equip the state with tools to intervene proactively before at-risk girls are mutilated.

The UK’s experience is that a specific unit dedicated to Forced Marriage has proved to be a success and has undoubtedly enhanced the protection vulnerable girls are afforded by the state against that form of sexual and social exploitation. The unit devoted to FGM that we have recommended would provide a similar level of preventative protection. We foresee that such units would be of great advantage in other jurisdictions.

But beyond this, we envisage that a network of such specialist units across the globe and working in close coordination would result in a more robust shield against genital mutilation. This network could be strengthened further by regular liaison with a central point of reference within the UN’s human rights programme. FGM is a highly fluid, mobile and transnational form of social harm directed against girls and young women. The preventative mechanisms need to be similarly transnational and flexible.

Viewed thus, the creation of a range of specifically tailored civil preventative powers (FGMPOs) provides an additional piece in the protective matrix and would furnish the FGM unit with an array of legal remedies permitting a proactive state approach.

The BHRC offers these suggestions in the hope – and expectation, should they be adopted – that carefully calibrated policy interventions of the kind outlined above will in a concrete and durable way prevent at-risk girls from being genitally mutilated. There can be few greater priorities in the mobilization and deployment of valuable national and international resources.

 

 

APPENDIX

 

The BHRC’s Recommendations to the UK Parliament

(as at February 2014)

  

1. Introduce ‘FGM Protection Orders’ (FGMPOs) modeled on Forced Marriage Protection Orders and Sexual Offences Prevention Orders. FGMPOs would prohibit respondents from carrying out FGM, prevent children at risk of FGM from being removed from the jurisdiction, and ensure the repatriation of survivors from abroad.[13]
2. Criminalise FGM for all children taken out of UK to be mutilated, irrespective of whether ‘settled’ or not: the UK’s legal obligations extend to all children within its jurisdiction – therefore UK organisers of such mutilations should face prosecution, irrespective of the child’s status.[14]
3. Establish an Anti-FGM Unit. There should be a central institution for the UK’s anti-FGM response, equivalent to the Forced Marriage Unit in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.[15]
4. Pass a legal requirement for mandatory training and reporting for frontline professionals in regulated services (health, social care, education).
5. Increase resources for combating FGM in accordance with the UN resolution that state responses to the elimination of FGM should be properly resourced.
6. Provide medical and emotional support for survivors. The UK’s international obligations require that effective remedial support for survivors is available, such as reconstructive (reversal) surgery and emotional/psychological support.
7. Challenge cultural justifications for FGM wherever they arise; be clear that this (i) accords with international consensus; (ii) is the stance of the United Nations; and (iii) forms part of the UK’s international obligation to modify cultural or traditional practices that are harmful to women and girls.
8. Launch national awareness-raising campaign which must emphasise that FGM is (i) a gross human rights violation; (ii) a crime and child abuse; (iii) a problem in and for British society, which we have a moral and legal duty to combat.
9. Introduce FGM into the National Curriculum. Education about FGM is required for boys and girls to foster empowerment and personal autonomy among girls and respect for women’s rights and bodies among boys.
10. Create community engagement programmes. Develop a programme of sensitive, properly resourced community engagement projects to change attitudes about FGM. Community members should be encouraged to help run such initiatives.
11. Deprecate the marginalisation of migrant communities. Racially demeaning depictions, whether in press, public or political debate, or through governmental action, further isolate migrant communities and act to perpetuate FGM as a form of social solidarity and identity.
12. Monitor FGM and collect data to fill the knowledge gap about the incidence and distribution of FGM and monitor the effectiveness of the UK’s interventions.

[1] The World Health Organisation defines female genital mutilation (FGM) as ‘all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons’:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/

[2] An Unpunished Crime: The lack of prosecutions for Female Genital Mutilation in the UK. Report by Bindel J. for the New Culture Forum: http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk/home/?q=node/920

[3] WHO fact sheet on FGM: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/

[4] Two men presently await trial for FGM-related offences. For the ineffectiveness of FGM law in the UK, see article by Dexter Dias QC, Felicity Gerry and Hilary Burrage detailing 10 reasons and 10 solutions: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/07/fgm-female-genital-mutilation-prosecutions-law-failed

[5] The BHRC report (dated February 2014) can be accessed here: http://www.barhumanrights.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/news/bhrc_fgm_submission_12_feb_2014.pdf

[6] Commission on the Status of Women (2010) http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/ ; European Parliament (2012) http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P7-TA-2012-0261&language=EN&ring=B7-2012-0304; 2011 the Council of Europe (2011) http://www.conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/treaties/html/210.htm

[7] http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk/home/?q=node/920

[8] See section 1(1): http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/41/section/1

[9] https://www.gov.uk/stop-forced-marriage

[10] The Forced Marriage Unit is jointly run by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Home Office. It has frequently rescued British women taken abroad to be forced into marriage.

[11] BHRC members have been invited to advise qua barristers on the drafting of new legislation.

[12] Third sector organisations such as Tostan provide community empowerment programmes in Africa, supporting the elimination of FGM through education. Many programmes are funded by the UN and have been effective in reducing the prevalence of FGM. Over 7,000 communities in Africa have publicly announced their abandonment of FGM and child/forced marriage: www.tostan.org/female-genital-cutting. Space prevents our developing the argument further, but it is our judgment that resources allocated to emancipatory education will crucially contribute to fighting FGM.

[13] Now going through Parliamentary consultation process.

[14] We submitted that the exclusion from protection of non-settled children was ‘morally indefensible.’ In the Queen’s Speech, the government committed to extending protection to children ‘habitually resident’ in the UK.

[15] There are intimations that the government will reconsider its position and may implement this proposal.

The first FGM prosecutions: A time of progress and peril

By Dexter Dias QC, for Counsel Magazine, June 2014

 

And so it begins. In April we finally witnessed something that activists who have been campaigning against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) for years began to doubt would ever happen: the first defendants in a UK court facing criminal prosecution.

The controversy around FGM, the mutilation of the genitals of young women and girls for non-medical reasons, has attained an unprecedented public prominence. There is an ongoing Parliamentary Inquiry. Eminent politicians profess profound concern. National newspapers launch petitions; television stations air documentaries. Yet for all the exposure, two simple stories ram home the brutal reality of FGM.

The first happened in the Kajiado district of Kenya and coincided with the first UK court appearances. Most major news outlets here missed it. It was a short report, starkly stated. A 13 year-old girl was genitally mutilated. She bled to death.

I heard the second story when sharing a platform during a human rights lecture with one of the UK’s most prominent FGM activists, Leyla Hussein. While fewer and fewer people now dispute that FGM is an affront to human rights, an act of gender violence and child abuse, what do these words actually mean? Leyla Hussein told us.

It was, she said, a party where no one takes pictures. Her family quietly gathered and she was taken into a room. Suddenly she was pinned down. Her legs were forced apart. She was fighting so much someone put a hand in her mouth to silence her. She was fighting because her sister had been mutilated minutes before. She’d heard her sister screaming. The cutter told her to stop struggling and ‘behave’ as her genitals were mutilated. She was told she was spoilt. As punishment for disgracing the family by making a ‘fuss’, she was not allowed any sweets. She was given a watch, but she didn’t want a watch. She wanted sweets. Leyla Hussein was 7 years old.

FGM is a social practice that is unnecessary, irreversibly damaging and potentially deadly. Therefore the mere bringing of the first UK prosecutions denotes significant progress (I do not comment on their substantive merits). Yet there are perils as well. For we are at a point fraught with danger and the steps we take from this juncture will significantly affect the eradication or reinforcement of FGM in the UK.

 

Astonishing institutional indifference

How widespread is FGM? United Nations figures indicate that 140 million women and girls around the world are living with its legacy. Every year 3 million more are mutilated. That startling fact needs restating: three million more are unnecessarily mutilated. As for the UK, in their recent report An Unpunished Crime Julie Bindel and her team conclude that we have seriously underestimated the extent of the problem domestically. Bindel’s analysis suggests that 170,000 women and girls in the UK have undergone FGM. Further, 65,000 girls under the age of 13 are presently at risk of mutilation. By any standard, this represents a very significant safeguarding problem.

Given the scale of problem, the worrying lack of prosecutions led to the Parliamentary Inquiry being conducted by the Home Affairs Committee. The Committee called for evidence and the Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC) responded. We submitted a report to Parliament critiquing the UK’s international law obligations and the efficacy of its response. We made 12 recommendations for positive change.

Overall the position is that by its ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international instruments, the UK has a series of positive obligations to ensure that children are not subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and women are not subject to discrimination. FGM is an unquestionable violation of both these standards. It was in fact specifically criminalised in the UK in 1985.

But in the subsequent 29 years, thousands of British girls have been mutilated. Not all of them (or even most of them, it must be emphasised) were mutilated within these shores. Many are taken back to the country of family origin and mutilated there, often during school holidays, a practice called ‘vacation cutting’. Nonetheless, the BHRC argued that if this issue had been given the priority it unquestionably merited, some of these many children could – and should – have been saved. It has been an astonishing act of institutional indifference.

 

What prevents prevention?

So what has roused this nation out of (what Immanuel Kant once termed) its dogmatic slumber? Partly FGM’s current salience derives from the weight of numbers. As the UN points out, three out of the 10 largest citizenship groups applying for asylum in the European Union come from African countries where FGM is practiced: Nigeria, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Further, migrant groups from these and other nations with a high incidence of FGM (such as Kenya, Sierra Leone and Uganda) have settled in significant numbers in the UK.

But the present prominence is also due to a small group of survivors who have spoken out, often at great peril. To protect the next generation of girls, they have risked their standing within their communities and their personal safety. Many have received threats of the most odious and malicious kind. And still they continue to protest. They remind us that in FGM a part of your body is taken away which can never be retrieved. And through their efforts FGM is – at long last – being viewed one of the most pressing child safeguarding problems facing this nation.

Thus prosecutions are necessary and desirable. But they are not enough. They are no substitute for effective prevention. And it is here that serious remedial work needs to be done because to this point the UK’s preventative measures have been miserably meagre. So what has prevented prevention? What has stood in the way?

First, the at-risk girls come from marginalised migrant communities. Their plight has been afforded little political priority. Next, there have been confusions about ‘culture’. Frontline professionals in regulated services such has healthcare, welfare and education have been reluctant to intervene because of concerns about accusations of racism and intolerance of cultural ‘traditions’.

This in turn is linked to poor training, and a lack of clarity about the true status of FGM. For an overwhelming international consensus, originating in Africa itself, exists. It unreservedly deprecates the practice. Yet in the recent Parliamentary debate, it was reported that 18 per cent of UK teachers did not even know it was a crime. It is, and as the UN reminds us, we have a right and a duty to intervene and change traditional practices that inflict harm on women and children. This is not cultural imperialism. It is the protection of universally valid human rights.

Now, however, a new risk looms. With the bringing of the first prosecutions there is the risk that the wider public may feel that ‘something is being done’. Paradoxically, however, an over-reliance on a punitive paradigm when combined with the demonisation and denigration of practising communities may act to perpetuate the very practices we are seeking to eradicate. Such an approach may intensify the marginalisation and social isolation of practising migrant communities. Members may seek solidarity and a sense of identity in traditional practices like FGM.

Finally, effective prevention has been marred by a simplistic understanding of this complex social phenomenon. FGM would not have endured for over two thousand years without it serving some social function. It is an act of gender violence. But it is not simply that. It is violence in service of a purpose – or more precisely, purposes. These vary subtly between practising communities and it is vital to be alive to the nuanced differences. However, we can clearly see a thick common line: the control of women, the securing of marriageability, the preservation of familial honour, the avoidance of social stigma, the protection of kinship status – often overlaid with the misconception that mutilation is prescribed by religion (it is not authorised by any religion).

So if we want to end the mutilations, what works? In its eradication fight, the UN has placed great emphasis on community engagement. It emphasises that effective elimination requires ‘collective abandonment’ on a communal level. And this needs cultural sensitivity and an approach grounded in human rights. In advancing such a stance, the UN draws upon its success with programmes from Egypt to Kenya to Mauritania, where 10,000 communities representing 8 million people in 15 countries have come together. Working in a multi-level way, incorporating civic and religious leaders, men and women and at-risk girls themselves, communities have made public declarations that in their village, town or region FGM is no longer acceptable. It’s a start.

 

An end to inaction

When he made his imperishable oration in Athens, Pericles reminded his audience that the strongest hearted were those with the clearest vision not only of the good but also the bad in any situation. Prosecutions are a necessary step in the right direction. In this sense, they are a ‘good’. But we must assiduously avoid two things: a sense of triumphalism and a dangerous overreliance on punishment at the expense of prevention.

Future generations will gaze back in disbelief that for almost 30 years we did virtually nothing to protect girls from being genitally mutilated. It has been an act of paralysis and apathy on a calamitous scale. Our determination now must be to prove that such inaction is behind us. Of course, as survivors are right to remind us, FGM can never be behind the mutilated child. Like the shadow trailing in their wake, it pursues them for the rest of their lives. It never goes away.

We can – and must – do more to stop this. For the sake of thousands of girls in Britain today, girls little different to the 7 year-old Leyla Hussein and the mutilated child in Kajiado, Kenya, we cannot afford to fail.

 

 

 

Dexter Dias QC practises from Garden Court Chambers, London, is a Researcher at Harvard and a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge. He chaired and co-wrote the BHRC report on FGM to the Parliamentary Inquiry and has provided a briefing to the UN Special Rapporteur.

FGM campaigners reach 100,000 signatures needed for Parliamentary debate

When the moment finally arrived, Leyla Hussein was asleep.  Since July last year, along with her anti-FGM colleagues, she’s been tirelessly campaigning to secure the 100,000 signatures necessary to qualify her petition for a Parliamentary debate on Female Genital Mutilation.  Then at about 4am on Friday morning, the campaign finally crossed that particular finishing line.

‘I tried staying up but it got really late and when I woke Twitter was going crazy with people saying congratulations,’ Hussein says.  ‘It’s been incredibly emotional. I’ve cried a lot.  I meet with survivors every week and we discuss how we can live with the scars of FGM.  Because you can’t get rid of them, they’re always there.  You just have to learn how to live with it.  But we won’t let it take control of our lives. That’s part of what the petition’s about – claiming back control.’

FGM is the mutilation of the genitalia of young women and girls for non-medical reasons.  It is a practice condemned by the UN and virtually every major international human rights organisation.  It has been a crime in the UK since 1985.  However, despite the fact that many thousands of girls in the UK have been mutilated, there has not been a single prosecution.  This glaring failure is one of the central drivers of Hussein’s campaign.

‘We started a petition because it’s all very well people, activists, running around trying to publicise this issue, but we also need the people in power to take notice.  We need the decision-makers to make it a priority.’

Support for Hussein’s campaign has come from many quarters.  The petition has been promoted by Richard Dawkins, Kirsty Allsopp from Location, Location, Location and Dr Christian Jessen from Embarrassing Bodies.  But in addition what has particularly touched Hussein is the support from ten of thousands of ordinary people from all over the country, ‘People I’ve never met face to face,’ she says.  ‘We came together as human beings. Our differences of race, gender, class were not an issue.  Everyone came together to stop this practice and protect children who have no say in being violated.’

More girls at risk than suspected

This groundswell of public support could not have arrived at a more opportune moment.  The report ‘The Unpunished Crime’, launched this week by journalist and researcher Julie Bindel,  reached the conclusion that the previous estimate that there were 24,000 UK girls at risk of FGM is a serious underestimate.

Bindel and her team have analysed the most recent statistical and population data and have concluded that there are 65,000 girls under the age of 13 at risk of FGM in the UK.  It is Hussein’s intention to find better ways to protect this group of vulnerable girls and young women.

Her campaign targets four prime objectives.  She is determined to highlight the abject lack of prosecutions; demand mandatory training for frontline professionals working with women and children; create a legal requirement of mandatory reporting where there is a well-founded suspicion of risk of FGM; and develop specialist support services for FGM survivors.

Human Rights violations

The practice Hussein and her colleagues aim to eradicate is a complex, deeply embedded one.  It is a traditional practice dating back many hundreds of years (and possibly millennia), but is not explicitly prescribed by any religious text.  It constitutes an act of gender violence inflicted on young women and girls that disfigures them physically and mentally for the rest of their lives.

However, one of the problems presented by FGM is that it is a highly elusive crime. It occurs in communities that are mobile and often marginalised.  Girls may be mutilated in the UK or taken back to the countries of their family origin, a practice known as ‘vacation cutting’.  All this makes prevention and detection more difficult, particularly with the shroud of secrecy that has historically surrounded this cultural practice.

But we need to be clear about what FGM actually is.  It is a fundamental violation of the human rights of the child. That is the stance of the United Nations, UNESCO and UNICEF. This conclusion is, frankly, unarguable. But the question of FGM’s elimination is a problem of a wholly different order.

Asserting that a right exists is one thing; protecting and enforcing that right another.  Criminal prosecutions of mutilators and those who collude in the violation of the child will unquestionably be a step forward. Not only will such a stance have some deterrent effect, but it is a potent and public symbolic act.  It expresses a collective determination to oppose this unnecessary damage to children. It is an act of communal solidarity with FGM’s survivors.

As Hussein, who was mutilated when she was 7 years old, says, ‘The petition has helped.  It’s acknowledged to me and other survivors that we are not alone, that we were violated as children.  It’s acknowledged our pain.’ The purpose of the growing campaign against FGM in the UK is to ensure that of those 65,000 girls at risk, as many as possible are protected.

It is premature – and unduly complacent – to conclude that a deeply entrenched traditional practice like FGM can be eradicated instantly.  But with every signature, petition, tweet, blog, email and article, the momentum grows and more girls are likely to be protected.

So the 100,000 signature target is only the first in a series of finishing lines in the fight against FGM.  However, for Leyla Hussein and her colleagues is an extraordinary accomplishment and one that should not be underestimated.  Every steps counts; every advance is makes it more that likely one more girl will be saved.

Dexter Dias QC is a barrister practising in Human Rights law in London, a Researcher at Harvard University and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge.

Follow @DexterDiasQC and www.justicebrief.com

(photo of Leyla Hussein copyright Leyla Hussein)

• The NSPCC’s free 24-hour FGM helpline can be contacted at 0800 028 3550.
• The intercollegiate group of Royal Colleges report Tackling FGM in the UK can be found at http://www.rcm.org.uk/college/policy-practice/joint-statements-and-reports/
• The government multi-agency FGM practice guidelines can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/female-genital-mutilation-multi-agency-practice-guidelines
• Julie Bindel’s report The Unpunished Crime can be found at http://www.justiceforfgmvictims.co.uk

Social justice review 2013: @DexterDiasQC for OpenDemocracy.net

Thoughts on 2013 – the turning point on female genital mutilation?

by Dexter Dias QC

2013 was an appalling year in most respects, including the disastrous Immigration Bill and the continuing rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric. Yet on FGM we may come to see 2013 as the year when progress really began.

Flickr/BlatantWorld.com

What kind of a year has 2013 been for social justice? If you were to ask social justice itself, ‘How was it for you?’, that much invoked but poorly understood concept might have some justifiable causes for complaint. But where does one begin the roll of dishonour when we’re so spoiled for choice? Perhaps by going back to basics.  At this time of year, one can of course reliably turn to Fox News for a sprinkling of festive horrendousness.

Racism

Last week Fox presenter Megyn Kelly told viewers that it was a ‘verifiable fact’ that both Jesus Christ and Santa Claus were white.  After all, as Kelly argues, ‘Why change it just because it makes you uncomfortable?’  One is tempted to observe that we can of course simply change the channel. But if we dismiss Fox News (and our own purveyors of lurid tabloid inanities) as mere ghoulish ‘entertainment’, we do so at our peril.  For such a stance underestimates their social impact in shaping not just what counts for ‘news’, but in circulating narratives that shape – and disfigure – the culture.  Take the question of racism.

In the year that the unmatched and magisterial Nelson Mandela died, and we had the 58th anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to get out of her seat on a bus in Alabama, racial injustice, racial disparity – and just plain racism – remain far from eradicated. For particular lowlights we can marvel at the sheer appallingness of the Daily Express’s crassly named ‘Crusade’ to ban new migration. Then there was the Daily Star’s hysterical prophesy of war: alerting us that an ‘army’ of 200,000 Roma migrants had already ‘infiltrated’ our borders and a further invasion force was on the way.  Contrast this with some inconveniently sobering facts, elucidated by former diplomat Sir David Warren.

In his piece in the Independent, Warren pointed out that ‘All the evidence is that migrants put more into the economy than they take out.  Only a tiny minority – around 6 per cent – claim benefits.’ These competing claims must be seen in the context of the fractious debate that raged around theImmigration Bill (and still does).  But where to start with this misconceived, shamelessly opportunistic, affront to social cohesion?

What is especially contemptible about this piece of legislation is that it both panders to base populist instincts towards outgroups and foments social disharmony – all in one neat legislative package. Disastrous. And around the same time, we were treated to the Bill’s dangerous corollaries: vans driving around London displaying messages that people illegally in the UK should go home; and unsolicited text messages such as this sent by the UK Border Agency: ‘In the UK illegally?  Go home or face arrest.  Text HOME to 78070’ – never mind that messages were also sent to legally resident minority ethnic people. Finally on this, it would be a serious omission to forget the woefully inappropriate tweet from Guildford police, after a joint ‘operation’ with the UKBA: “Officers 1 Immigrants 0!! #WeWillCatchUpWithYou.”  One hopes that the officers in question have now been informed that not all migration to the UK is illegal.

Social suffering

Overall 2013 has been marked by yet more neoliberal damage to the social fabric. The structural weaknesses of this ideology, with the creeping marketisation of social life at its centre, have marred the economy, education and criminal justice, to name but three.  Along with this process has been the intensification of what French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘social suffering’.

It is, for example, dispiriting to see foodbanks in Britain in the 21st century; regrettable to see a Minister of State (Danny Alexander) smiling for the camera at a foodbank in Inverness.  But beyond deprecating this PR faux pas, what is required is a cool analysis of the structural drivers that produce and reproduce the conditions for foodbank flourishing (which I will come to). It appears that the situation is set to deteriorate. The Trussell Trust reports the biggest ever rise in the use of their foodbanks, with 350,000 people receiving at least three days’ emergency food (a 170 percent increase in the year). As the organisation reports, these alarming numbers predate April’s welfare reforms, so the figure is bound to rise.

To contextualise such unwelcome news, we need to understand how neoliberalism produces vast inequalities of wealth.  How its attack on social welfare, and the associated demonisation of benefit claimants, must be viewed with the same lens as we examine its over-reliance on incarceration. The structural logic of the ideology creates enrichment at the top of social space and deleterious consequences at the other end: the production of insecurity and the reliance on punitivism and incarceration.

In England and Wales the prison population hovers around 85,000, near its historic high. At the same time, as the Howard League points out, there is chronic overcrowding with almost one quarter of the people incarcerated doubling up in cells designed for one person. Simultaneously, another part of the criminal justice system teeters on the brink of meltdown due to myopic and misconceived governmental plans to mangle Legal Aid.

The all-party Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has warned Justice Secretary Chris Grayling that his proposed cuts may breach human rights.  And in an unprecedented step, barristers will engage in a day ofprotest meetings in January. It is not without a sense of very real trepidation that one wonders what will be left of adequate access to justice for those who cannot afford their own lawyers – not just in five years, but by this time next year.

Female Genital Mutilation

Nevertheless in a world of bitter (and frequently futile) party political posturing, one would have imagined that one issue around which a respectful truce would have coalesced is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). But no. Four Conservative MEPs voted against the motion in the European Parliament condemning FGM, a course of action that provoked International Development Minister Lynne Featherstone to criticise their ‘undermining’ of Britain’s role in combating FGM.  If you haven’t had the opportunity to follow the intensifying campaign against FGM, let me outline the dispiriting aspects of the present situation along with a hope for 2014.

Recently an intercollegiate group of Royal Colleges reported that approximately 24,000 young women and girls in the UK were at serious risk of genital mutilation this year or would in fact be mutilated. The practice takes a number of different forms, but essentially amounts to the mutilation of the genitalia for non-medical reasons. Although there were recent arrests in the UK for the suspected mutilation of a baby a number of weeks old, more typically the ‘cutting’ is inflicted on pre-pubescent girls aged between 5 and 10. (It is sometimes also inflicted on older girls.) The practice has been a criminal offence in Britain since 1985, and carries a maximum sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment, but there has not been a single successful prosecution in the UK.

Tackling FGM presents a formidable problem, since it requires a clear-sighted challenge to deeply entrenched cultural traditions among marginalised migrant communities, principally from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. Frontline professionals have been unclear about their duties and wary of being accused of cultural insensitivity. To this end, this month the government issued new practitioner guidelines, but more than that, announced that in 2014 there will be the UK’s first Parliamentary Inquiry into FGM, to be chaired by Keith Vaz, MP.  With suggestions from the new Director of Public Prosecutions that criminal cases are in the offing, there is some prospect that 2014 will see the first successful prosecution for FGM.

However, I would caution against any tendency towards triumphalism about such a development. The purpose is not to demonise migrant communities already subjected to social exclusion and discrimination – although we cannot ignore the fact that unsavoury extremist groups have deployed the issue as supposed evidence of the inherent ‘barbarism’ of Islam. (This is erroneous for two reasons. Firstly, the practice is not prescribed by Islam. Secondly, it is also practised by adherents of Christianity, Judaism and animist religions.) So we must guard against any successful prosecution being strategically utilised to deepen communal divides.

On the other hand, we are entitled to welcome a criminal prosecution as an important symbolic marker, a statement of collective intent, that a crime that has for too long proliferated behind a veil of silence will now be pursued with determination. Of course, legal sanctions are not enough. Real change must come from within practising communities, and it would be fanciful to think otherwise.  But there needs to be a greater realisation that FGM, for all its cultural underpinnings, is inescapably and fundamentally an egregious violation of the bodily integrity of young women and girls.

We must resist the already circulating arguments that contesting FGM is the imperialistic imposition of external values. It is not. It is the protection and vindication of universally valid human rights that attach to all. Either young women and girls from practising communities possess these rights or they do not. If they do, then they are entitled to have them protected. Due to their very obvious vulnerability, that protection may have to be collective as well as community-specific. As has been frequently pointed out, it is inconceivable that if the mutilated victims were young white women and children there would not have been a deafening outcry. It is highly probable that thus far little has been done about these numerous mutilations largely because they have been seen as someone else’s problem. Therefore our resolve to eradicate the practice should not be affected by the ethnicity of the victims.

And so to 2014 …

Convention dictates that one ends a review such as this on a note of optimism.  But when one thinks about the resumed Parliamentary passage of the Immigration Bill and the anti-migrant hostility that will accompany it, or the deepening immiseration of the most vulnerable in our society from the relentless programme of welfare vandalism and public spending cuts, it becomes disrespectful to paint an unrealistically rosy picture. The bald truth is that many metrics and social suffering scales will deteriorate. But hand in hand with that process – a natural consequence of neoliberalism – there is the opportunity for those who find this bifurcation of society morally abhorrent to work together to oppose it.  The present administration may not be long for this world, but a change of government will little affect things if the servility to the myth of the market is not roundly rejected.

I would like to end on FGM because I sense that here credible hope exists. My wish for 2014 is that in the UK it becomes generally recognised that FGM is our problem. I hope that we come to acknowledge a common duty to challenge, publicise and oppose it. I believe that as the year turns we may be on the brink of a tipping point in the understanding of FGM in Britain. But with the plethora of deeply entrenched problems affecting society – those listed above are just a few – once FGM’s moment in the public spotlight fades the impetus for change may well weaken. We cannot let this happen.

For the sake of the many thousands of girls in the UK who are genitally mutilated every year, we must not let this happen. This above all is my hope for 2014. That we mark the year with a growing determination to stop this woeful practice. For every step in the right direction helps save another girl from mutilation.

About the author

Dexter Dias QC(@DexterDiasQC) is a barrister at Garden Court Chambers in London, a Researcher at Harvard University and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge.

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FGM: understanding it; challenging it

This weekend I am putting together an article I’ve been commissioned to write on the challenge of properly understanding the acute risk that FGM poses.  Here are some of my thoughts as I work through the material for publication.

FGM is not prescribed by any religion, but is a long-standing cultural tradition, and that fact can obscure the true impact of the practice.  Consequently, it seems to me that one of our greatest challenges is to show FGM for what it actually is: the infliction of unnecessary physical and psychological gender violence. We need to identify and refute one by one each of the 13 reasons commonly given to justify it (for more see here).

The myths circulating about health ‘risks’ of unmutilated female genitalia, the claims of the aesthetic preferability of mutilated genitalia, simply mask the essential fact that FGM is ultimately and unavoidably a form of social control. Therefore being sensitive to cultural traditions must never come at the cost of being insensitive to the suffering and abuse of young women and girls.

So we must forcefully make the argument that the opposition to FGM is not the imposition of external values, but the protection of universally valid human rights. Either young girls have the right not to be genitally mutilated or they do not.  If they do, then those rights must be protected.

The mutilation of the genitalia of young women and girls is a form of physical abuse.  This conclusion is inescapable.  It is such a fundamental violation of the rights of women and children that no section of society should be excluded from challenging it. Whether you are male or female, from a practising community or not, you have the right to work with others towards ending this deeply damaging practice.

FGM is opposed by Amnesty International.  It is opposed by UNICEF and the WHO. It is opposed by the United Nations more generally.  It is also opposed by a growing number of intrepid and resolute community groups, propelled by FGM survivors.

The mutilation of female genitalia for non-medical reasons is a criminal offence.  It is also morally wrong.  As such, I believe we have a duty to express our opposition to it.  As Victor Hugo once memorably wrote, ‘You ask what forces me to speak.  A strange thing – my conscience.’

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The Duane Buck death sentence: 8 facts you should know

More detail about the Duane Buck death sentence imposed by Texas:

• In 2000, then Texas Attorney General John Cornyn admitted that the United States Constitution was violated by the introduction of Dr. Walter Quijano’s expert testimony linking race to future dangerousness.
• This happened in seven death penalty cases.  Rehearings have been granted in six.  It’s only Duane Buck’s case that a rehearing has not been granted.
• The racist evidence that Black people are more dangerous was elicited in cross-examination by the prosecution at the sentencing hearing.  The ‘expert’ who provided the evidence – called by the defence, it should be noted – was relied upon by the prosecution in their closing speech.
• Harris County DA’s office in Texas, which dealt with the Duane Buck case, were three times more likely to seek the death penalty in cases involving Black people.
• Linda Geffin, one of the trial prosecutors, is urging a rehearing for Duane Buck, acknowledging that there was a serious irregularity in the evidence used to sentence him to death.
• In granting the last stay of execution, the US Supreme Court stated that the proceedings were “marred by racial overtones”.
• In 2000, the then Texas Attorney General John Cornyn promised that a rehearing would be granted for the group of cases in which the racist evidence was adduced.  Cornyn is now a US Senator.
• There is still no explanation as to why no rehearing has been granted in Duane Buck’s case.

For more do go to the NAACP LDF website –>> here

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Lest we forget: The imperishable speech of Nelson Mandela

Instead of testifying in the racist Apartheid court proceedings, Nelson Mandela delivered a heroically defiant speech – one that will never perish:

“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

You can read the full text of this historic speech –>> here

How FGM silences the suffering of women

By the act of genital mutilation, a young woman or girl is silenced in two senses.

Firstly, by having inflicted upon her this act of  physical and symbolic domination, she has confirmed a subservient position in the social hierarchy, whereby her voice does not count as much as men.  Her subordinate position entails a disempowerment, a relative social silence.

Secondly, her pain and suffering (which is deemed to be in the natural order of things) is something it would be shameful to verbalise, let alone protest about.  Harrowing accounts from young girls speak of their attempts to remain silent, to ‘uphold the family honour’, even as they are cut without anaesthetic.  Instead what is expected it that women and girls endure, absorb, internalise, live with the pain. Even their suffering is silenced.

This is how it has been.  It is not how it has to be any longer.  For too long there has been a wall of silence around FGM.  If things are finally changing, let’s make them change more quickly.  We too can make our voices heard along with FGM’s survivors.

Please find your occasion, your platform, your opportunity, and speak out against FGM – as I am determined to do.

FGM is the abuse of women and the abuse of children.  Let’s stop it.

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