Encouraging sign of progress on FGM

[DMB]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/04/15/niger.mutilation/index.html

"We have decided to definitively put an end to female genital mutilation in our villages and to continue sensitizing neighboring villages so they also give up the practice," said N. Babobou Pana, leader of one of the villages.

Heading the call was Kompoa Tamkpa, a former traditional practitioner.

"I have given up the bad work, because it does not bring anything to our village," she said. "We thought it was good for women, that it was going to bring them success. But we found out that it does not bring anything."

The numbers involved are tiny, but this is really good news. It shows that the message is getting across in some places.

[Celsus]

Heh prepare for a mini-rant because this is something I had disagreements with working in Uganda on strategy...

I grew up in Niger, the "western" part of the country is basically desert and very very sparsely populated. It's those regions that are most rural and also the most traditional.

The problem with FGM is that even senior women of the societies that practice it consider it appropriate and proper for young girls to go through it. It's this group that needs to be convinced of the pointlessness and unnecessary suffering it causes.

And the problem with convincing them, is it tends to come from western (or western-backed, or western-educated) "outside" voices which immediately creates an us vs them environment that is easily manipulated by local traditionalists. Considering how the Islamic women's resistance to concerns about wearing the hijab go, it's pretty much a similar outcome.

So anti-FGM proponents then swing toward emphasising the health risks - but really in a country where male circumcision is just as risky and yet reduces vectors for HIV, those warnings tend to go unheeded - an unquantifiable health risk (no worse than many of the other health risks faced in a country with extremely low life expectancy) vs a lifetime of rejection from suitors which means struggling through life for an unmarried woman in a deeply patriarchal society?

Personally, I think western-led activism in developing countries based on human rights principles, while worthy, doesn't work well. What needs to be the emphasis of campaigns is treating aspirational figures or societies that then demonstrate what the people need to do to reach them.

I'm Singaporean, and Singapore has nearly zero links with the continent. Yet everywhere I go, people have heard of this small little speck. They claim they've seen it on TV, and other stories that are clearly confusions with other Asian countries. :) But they get the core story correct: that it's an economic success story, that pulled itself out of a position that was no different from their own countries.

On the other hand, I see Singapore as a very rigid, authoritarian society that has deep-rooted problems with its values. But they don't care a wit.

All they see is the Asian "Tigers" propounded in every UN report, newspaper story, TV documentary, and want to get there. Without an iota of propaganda effort from Singapore's part. For my part, I do try to gently dissuade them and point out many flaws in Singapore (like if I tell them about authoritarian leadership, they don't mind and even like it and say, "at least he brought wealth to everyone, even if he was a dictator" which though not stated as outrightly, is a similar sentiment here in Singapore that the West (capital "W") just doesn't get).

There's something to be learnt from this. Personally, I've found the most effective ways of communicating with people to be finding out what their aspirational figures are, and then using stories to like parables (ok this sounds Jesus-ish :p). So I can tell them about the dangers of corruption, of gender inequality, of racial intolerance, and the need to take the steps themselves, embedded in stories that Singapore or other aspirational societies faced.

How well it works, I don't know, but I sense they always leave with a greater understanding of both their own societies and mine. It's this power of aspirational figures like Obama, Mandela, even Singapore-the-mythic-version that when used in the right way, can affect a cascade of change in values. It may be slower than blanket bans, but it's the way to get the communities on board, instead of further marginalising them.

Public statements from within, like that in the article, are an encouraging sign indeed.