To eradicate FGM, we must understand its history
Sada Mire
This year marks 100 years of official campaigning against female genital mutilation (FGM), a movement which began with an international conference in Egypt in 1920.
Yet the practice is still going strong: according to Unicef, 200 million women today are affected by it and FGM is still practised in almost 30 African countries. After so much campaigning, we have to ask: why is the practice not eradicated?
Over the last century, there have been numerous global resolutions, and FGM is now acknowledged internationally as a human rights violation.
It has been criminalised in several western nations, including the UK, and in 19 African countries, FGM carries some sort of penalty. Media campaigns have helped.
Grassroots organisations in the west, in Africa and in other affected countries are fighting the practice incessantly.
But as an archaeologist, I have been researching the history of FGM, and found it to be far more deep-rooted in cultural traditions than most campaigners—and those who practise it—realise.
These roots are long forgotten, even within the northeastern African societies where it began. And this lack of knowledge has hampered efforts to tackle the issue.
Campaigners often claim the tradition is mainly about virginity, chastity, paternity confidence or control of women’s sexuality.
I have found that FGM began instead as an act of sacrifice to the divine. In other words, the initial intention was not about relations between humans but rather between humans and the gods: an act of self-preservation related to sacred blood, existence itself, and reproduction.
In many East African societies, there is a cycle of rituals that male and female children go through, from birth to childhood to adulthood and death.
The history of these rituals can be uncovered in archaeological sites and fertility stones.
Some stones are carved with symbols; landscape features include sacred trees, wells, springs and mountains.
In studying them I discovered that FGM was just one part of this cycle, some of whose rituals still continue.
Hence, far from being an isolated practice, FGM was part of a collection of sacrificial rituals. The issues of sexual control, virginity and virtue are secondary, more recent additions.
Although I am a survivor of the practice, having spent the early part of my life in Somalia, FGM was not uppermost in my mind when I began surveying archaeological sites in Somaliland. I had just one main question: why do certain cultural beliefs continue?
By studying rituals, sacred landscapes and associated material at a pilgrimage centre in the ancient city of Aw-Barkhadle, I learned how the notion of sacred fertility was critical to the social order.
FGM is part of this indigenous cultural system. It is not an oddity against women: men have also been harmed through the rituals that take place ahead of a hunt.
An animal killed during a ritual hunt, which takes weeks of preparation and seclusion, is considered a pure divine sacrifice.
As with all these rituals, FGM was most likely originally meant as a collective human sacrifice to the gods to avoid a curse from the ancestors.
This is why many who would themselves like FGM to be abolished still infibulate their daughters: they do not want to be the ones who bring “shame” and dishonour, they tell me.
Though often long-forgotten, the tradition of communal sacrifice still leads people to believe an ancestors’ curse will materialise in a lack of rain, failed crops, droughts, dead livestock and illness.
Who wants to risk that? Indeed, many people in north-east Africa still blame droughts on those who have abandoned their beliefs.
These beliefs were strong and deep-rooted enough to survive first Christianity and then Islam – religions which disown the practice.
The fear of not being blessed helps continue the practice.
Given this, it’s also clear that a way to end FGM could be by creating new rituals that maintain the blessing element without requiring FGM.
We have seen some introduced recently: alternative rites of passage in countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Burkina Faso are having positive impact.
The benefit of this is that it acknowledges the genuine fears that keep the practice going but also shows that, with a proper understanding of the history, it need not take another century to finally eradicate this global problem. —The writer is a Swedish-Somali archaeologist. The article first appeared on theguardian.com
