The Ghanaian activist Efua Dorkenoo, author of “Cutting the Rose: Female Genital Mutilation, the Practice and its Prevention,” and Taina Bien-Aimé, executive director of Equality Now were in charge of showing the documentary “Africa Rising”. Equality Now is an international organization which since its founding in 1992 has become a reference in the struggle for the protection and promotion of human rights for women in the world.
This documentary depicts a number of African social movements and their struggle against this practice. The film takes us through several countries on the African continent, including Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Somalia and Tanzania.
Currently, more than 130 million young girls and women in the world suffer from Female Genital Mutilation [FGM]. This has been happening for 5,000 years throughout Africa and in some parts of the Middle East and Asia. FGM is the partial or complete removal of the clitoris. It is generally done without anaesthesia, by traditional ‘midwives’ or professional midwives. It is done for different reasons: sexual, sociological, hygiene, aesthetic, health, and religious. There are terrible consequences, such as excessive bleeding, chronic infection, severe pain, and exhaustion due to crying, among other irreparable damages.
Taina Bien-Aimé has got to know the work of Equality Now, whose main programs work with sexual violence, discrimination in the legal system, trafficking of women and female genital mutilation.
On this subject, she says that they have had to work very hard to get women’s rights recognized, including going against organizations like UNICEF. It has been difficult to convince these organizations that female genital mutilation goes against human rights, but “the good news is that 20 years later, in the United Nations as well as in other organizations that work to promote human rights, the rights of women are being considered as human rights. So, slowly but surely, women are being seen as human beings in a more complete way, as people who have inalienable rights, like right to dignity and a full realization as women.”
Regarding the documentary, the director of Equality Now says that “violence and discrimination against women is an individual and universal problem; I say universal because there is not a single country in the world in which women do not suffer violence, or in which violations against women do not exist.” In this sense, she adds that “in Africa female mutilation is a violation of women’s rights, but also we have to see what other forms of violations there are against women in other countries. We must do this in order to put an end to this barbarity which is carried out against one of the most vulnerable groups”. In this vein, she hopes that it will be possible to envision the great strength which the organization has to change this reality.
Similarly, Efua Dorkenoo, who narrates the documentary, is a tireless international activist who travels the world raising awareness on the topic of female mutilation. She is considered an indispensable source. She has been decorated with the Order of the British Empire for her work. About FGM she says: “I have worked on this campaign from the beginning, since 1979. You can’t imagine how happy we are to see all the changes which have been happening. While it’s true that there hasn’t been a change of 50%, but I’m telling you that what has been achieved in the last 30 years is nearly indescribable with words.”
Cultural relativism cannot justify the violation of human rights.
As Efua Dorkenoo has expressed, in the past the number of people who dared to speak out against FGM were few. Even at the level of the United Nations it has been very difficult to broach this topic, since it was considered as cultural relativism. She remembers that on the night before her address when she was to present before a working group, “a group of African experts arrived to oppose me, saying that the topic of female genital mutilation was not a question of human rights, but rather a cultural question and that additionally, the topic should not be discussed outside of Africa. And I’m not talking about just anyone, these were highly educated experts, including some lawyers. But the president of the commission said, inappropriately, that since you’re here, we’re going to listen to what you have to say. If, afterwards, we don’t feel that it is a human rights issue, we’ll drop the subject.”
More should be said about this admirable documentary “Africa Rising”, which takes us through five countries on the African continent. It shows the movement led by women with minimal resources, struggling each day to put an end to female genital mutilation. It gives testimonies, like that of the young girl Fanta Camara, subjected to genital mutilation at the age of five. In the process of the mutilation, her urethra was severely damaged, and she was left incontinent as a result.
Stories like this are examples of the injustice, pain, ignorance, discrimination, and terrible violence of men and women who continue violating the human rights of young men and women in the name of ancestral practices. This film attempts to condemn the practice and get people talking about it, in order to end the devastating tragedy that is female genital mutilation.
For more information about the film, go to www.africarisingthefilm.com, www.mundocooperante.org and www.equalitynow.org.
*Translation by Meghan Storey*
