Still bleeding

摘要

"Inearly bled to death," says Boga-letch Gebre, a women's rights campaigner who suffered female genital mutilation (fgm) at the age of 12. Her organisation, Kembatti Mentti Gezzima, is credited with reducing the practice in Ethiopia, her home country. She does not tell people to stop, she says. She just explains that the procedure-which ranges from a symbolic nick, to the removal of all or part of a girl's clitoris, to infibulation (sewing up the labia)-is not in the Bible, nor the Koran; nor do culture or law require it. Such "community conversations", based on African traditions and involving young and old, men and women, may help explain the startling discrepancy, highlighted in a new report by unicef, between the number of Ethiopian women who have undergone fgm, and those who think it should continue (see chart).