Note: The Muses’ prayers are being answered by Kenyan Agnes Pareyio, Director of the Safe House for African Girls (see poem for Agnes Pareyio, Section II). She was named United Nations in Kenya Person of the Year 2014. Agnes Pareyio was awarded U.N. Person of the Year in 2005, heading a Kenyan Safe House Center, Tasaru Ntomonok, for girls who escape (or are thrown out of) their homes in Africa for refusing traditional cutting and/or removal of their genitals (FGC/FGM). Although declared a crime in Kenya in 2001, it continues.
Ms. Pareyio’s Center is funded by UNFPA, United Nations Population Fund (working with governments and organizations in a global effort to eliminate forced child marriage and FGM/FGC). The Center provides temporary shelter, education for the girls, their families, and communities, as well as skills training. The Center also provides an alternative, intensive coming-of-age ritual for the girls; demonstrating respect for cultural tradition, but without violence.
To Resist - See One Billion Rising (to end FGM). https://www.onebillionrising.org/27-many-also-sign-revolution-agnes-pareyio
Within the U.S., Jaha Durureh, from Gambia, has founded Safe Hands for Girls in Atlanta, Georgia https://safehandsforgirls.org/ in an effort to eliminate FMG and child marriage.
According to the World Health Organization:
“… between 100 and 140 million girls and women worldwide have been subjected to one of the first three types of female genital mutilation. Estimates based on the most recent prevalence data indicate that 91.5 million girls and women above 9 years old in Africa are currently living with the consequences of female genital mutilation. There are an estimated 3 million girls in Africa at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation every year.”
“Key facts
Female genital mutilation (FGM) includes procedures that intentionally alter or cause injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
The procedure has no health benefits for girls and women.
Procedures can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications in childbirth and increased risk of newborn deaths.
More than 125 million girls and women alive today have been cut in the 29 countries in Africa and Middle East where FGM is concentrated (1).
FGM is mostly carried out on young girls sometime between infancy and age 15.
FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women.” World Health Organization
“Infibulation as practiced in the bush is carried out on one child at a time by a ‘gedda’ or matron of the village. Only women are allowed to be present at the ceremony. The matron squats on the floor of the family hut while the child is held in a lithotomy position by female relatives and friends. The clitoris and labia are excised, but no anesthesia is used. Instead of sutures, thorns from an acacia bush are often used to close the wounds, and in addition, the girl’s legs are tied together with rope.” Infibulation in the Horn of Africa, Guy Pieters, M.D., Albert B. Lowenfels, M.D.
Julie Turkewitz article, June 10, 2014, Atlanta – “Last summer, an American-born teenager of Somali descent fled her parents’ home in a suburb here after she discovered that a coming vacation to Somalia would include a sacred rite of passage: the cutting of her genitalia. In Guinea, a New Yorker escaped to the American Embassy after an aunt told her that her family trip would involve genital cutting. And in Seattle, at least one physician said parents had sent girls back to Somalia to undergo cutting …”
UNICEF. Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: a statistical overview and exploration of the dynamics of change, 2013.