Female genital mutilation

Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female circumcision, is prohibited by law in Tanzania. The law is not effectively enforced, however, and the practice of FGM continues openly. In some parts of Tanzania, mass circumcisions are carried out in which thousands of girls are genitally cut at the same time, generally in December. In December 1996, according to reports, of the 5,000 girls who were cut in one such ceremony, twenty girls died from medical complications. Referring to a similar ceremony to be held in December 1998, circumciser Maria Magwaiga, was quoted in the Tanzanian Daily Mailas saying, "It is too late for the Government to stop us circumcising women this season. They should have done that earlier." Despite appeals from Equality Now and other non-governmental organizations in the country, as well as internationally, the Government of Tanzania has allowed these circumcision ceremonies to proceed, and despite the public defiance of circumcisers such as Maria Magwaiga, no action has been taken to hold them accountable under the law.

FGM is practiced in various parts of the country, including among the Gogo people in Central Tanzania. Recently, a 78 year-old Gogo circumciser from the Dodoma Rural District, Nyangadule Kodi, defended FGM publicly. In an interview posted on the internet in May 2001 by the African Church Information Service, she explained that the procedure took fifteen or twenty minutes, depending on the sharpness of the knife, and justified FGM as "a rite of passage for girls into womanhood, grooming and training of cultural values that maintain domestic stability within the community." Older women like Nyangadule Kodi reportedly maintain that they would not allow their male relatives to marry uncircumcised women because such women are "not polite and are over-sexed."

FGM is also practiced by the Maasai people in the Morogoro Region. According to the Tanzanian Legal and Human Rights Centre, local government officials have issued statements against FGM, but there is no government follow-up. The local church intervenes in some cases, but according to the local bishop, even in cases where children have bled to death no one is charged. The Legal and Human Rights Centre investigated one case in Morogoro, in which three girls ran away from their father in the summer of 1999, in a desperate effort to save themselves from the practice of FGM. They fled to a local church for protection, and several pastors took them to the nearest police station, in Matombo. Rather than protect the girls, the police arrested one of the pastors, as well as his wife, for having taken unlawful custody of minor children. The pastor was beaten severely in the presence of his wife and asked to confess that he had raped the girls. The three girls were taken to the hospital for an examination, where it was confirmed that they had not been raped. They were then turned over by the police to their father, who had them circumcised the next day and married within a month, one as a third wife. The three girls were aged 13 and 14 at the time. One of them is already a mother now. When the Legal and Human Rights Centre interviewed one of the girls, she told them how painful it was to her that even the police and the courts could not help them in their efforts to save themselves from genital mutilation. Subsequently, however, after the Legal and Human Rights Centre submitted its report on the incident to the authorities, the young girls changed their versions of events and said they did not want to pursue the prosecution of their father.

by Madauda Hannah