KENYA: Girl Dies after Trying to Perform Female Genital Mutilation on Herself

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[23 June 2006] - Pamela Kathambi did the procedure on her own because she was being teased by her friends for not being circumcised in the remote village of Irindi. Her mother told the BBC that she had refused to allow her 15-year-old to undergo female circumcision last year.

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is banned in Kenya, but remains common in some areas. In some communities it is believed that circumcision will maintain a girl's honour and is part of a girl's initiation into womanhood.

Julia Kanuu said she found her daughter lying in her bed on Sunday, complaining of a stomach-ache and she had asked for some tea. It was only after the tea had been made that Pamela admitted what she had done to herself. "She used to be called names by her age mates and friends - 'mukenye' - the name given to uncircumcised ladies," Mrs Kanuu said. "I realised that girls who are not circumcised have gone ahead with education and are doing well in life so I didn't want her to be circumcised." 

The BBC's Wanyama Chebusiri says scores of villagers were milling around the family's homestead discussing the issue in low tones a day after her burial on Wednesday. Pamela's death is a loss to the village because she was a very hard-working lady who would have studied and become someone in the future," one woman said. A local chief in Meru district, central Kenya, said this was the first instance of self circumcision he had heard about and the government had stepped its anti-FGM campaign.

The FGM operation involves the partial or total removal of the external genital organs. It is practised in 28 countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

[Source: BBC]

Facts about FGM

Number of girls and women who have undergone genital mutilation

Most of the girls and women who have undergone genital mutilation live in 28 African countries, although some live in Asia and the Middle East. They are also increasingly found in Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA, primarily among immigrants from these countries.

Today, the number of girls and women who have been undergone female genital mutilation is estimated at between 100 and 140 million. It is estimated that each year, a further 2 million girls are at risk of undergoing FGM.

Source: World Health Organisation 2001

Recent analysis reveals that some three million girls and women are cut each year on the African continent (Sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt and Sudan). Of these, nearly half are from two countries: Egypt and Ethiopia.

Source: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre: Changing a Harmful Social Convention: Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (December 2005), p. 3.

African countries in which FGM is practiced in some form:

Benin* Burkina Faso* Cameroon* Central African Republic* Chad* Cote d’Ivoire* Democratic Republic of Congo* Djibouti* Egypt* Eritrea* Ethiopia* Gambia* Ghana* Guinea* Guinea-Bissau* Kenya* Liberia* Mali* Mauritania* Niger* Nigeria* Senegal* Sierra Leone* Somalia* Sudan* Tanzania* Togo* Uganda

Amnesty International: http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/intcam/femgen/fgm9.htm

Other countries FGM has been reported

Yemen, FGM has also been reported but not confirmed among certain populations in Jordan, Oman, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the Kurdish population in Iraq, India, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Source: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre: Changing a Harmful Social Convention: Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (December 2005), p.3.

Further information

Country: 
Kenya
Issues: 
Harmful traditional practices
Violence: 
Harmful traditional practices

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