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An End to Female Genital Cutting in Iraqi
Kurdistan?
6.1.2008
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January 6, 2008
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan Region 'Iraq', --
These are busy times for Pakhshan Zangana. Head of
the women's caucus in the Iraqi Kurdish parliament
in Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdistan's capital, she is on
the verge of pushing through a piece of legislation
that is the first of its kind in the Middle East — a
law criminalizing female genital mutilation (FGM).
"Sixty-eight out of 120 deputies signed our bill, so
we could have got it passed by ministerial decree,"
Zangana says. "But law-making is the job of
parliament, and we want everybody to debate this
issue openly." The bill received its first reading
on Dec. 3 and is likely to be passed by February.
Affecting up to 90% of women in Egypt, Sudan and
Somalia, FGM is widely seen as an African
phenomenon. But it also happens to a lesser extent
throughout the Middle East, particularly in Yemen,
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq. |
Pakhshan Zangana, head of the women's caucus in the
Iraqi Kurdish parliament |
If the Iraqi Kurds are
leading the way today, it is partially thanks to a
handful of local women's organizations that have
struggled for greater awareness of the issue since
the early 1990s. But the real breakthrough came in
2005 when WADI, a German non-governmental
organization, published the results of its survey of
39 villages in the Germian region, east of Kirkuk.
Of 1,554 women and girls aged older than 10
interviewed by WADI's local medical team, over 60%
said they had undergone the operation. Larger
surveys completed since show the practice is
prevalent among local Arabs and Turkmen, as well as
Kurds. The surveys provide the first solid
statistics on a tradition which — while practiced
relatively openly in parts of Africa — is so veiled
in secrecy here that brothers are often unaware
their own sisters are affected.
A farmer's wife in Zurkan, a remote village close to
the Iranian border in northeastern Iraqi Kurdistan,
Amina Khidir began performing the operation when her
mother became too old to carry on. Her first patient
was her own daughter. "I didn't feel nervous,
because I had spent years watching how the cut was
done," Khidir remembers. "And my daughter was a baby
at the time, too small to understand what was
happening. That's the best age to do it."
Matter-of-factly, Khidir describes dealing with the
aftermath of her work.www.ekurd.net
She applies oak charcoal
to reduce pain, cold water and antiseptic solution
to reduce the risk of infection. Asked about the
specifics of the procedure, she covers her face with
her loosely worn headscarf. "I cut about a quarter
off," she says. It's a reference to the so-called 'Sunna'
circumcision, the removal of prepuce and sometimes
clitoris that some Muslims attribute to a tradition
taught by the Prophet Mohammed.
"According to the Shafi'i school [of Islamic law] to
which we Kurds belong, circumcision is obligatory
for both men and women," explains Mohamed Ahmed
Gaznei, chief cleric in the city of Sulaimaniyah,
Iraqi Kurdistan's second city. "The Hanbali [school]
says it is obligatory only for men." Personally
opposed to female circumcision, Gaznei in 2002
issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for
imitation of Hanbali practice. He has since appeared
on a short film about FGM shot by a Kurdish
filmmaker that WADI medical teams now take with them
when visiting villages.
"Look, they even got Osama bin Laden to talk," quips
Gula Hama Amin, one of 30 women watching the film in
Nura, a village 100 miles north of Sulaimaniyah,
referring to Gaznei's luxuriant beard. The others
tell her to quiet down. All have been circumcised
for reasons hovering somewhere between religious
belief and tradition: locals say the food an
uncircumcised woman cooks is unclean, or that the
operation makes a girl more affectionate to her
family.
So great was the taboo surrounding FGM until
recently that even the Iraqi Kurdish authorities,
largely supportive of campaigns against it, have
sometimes been tentative in their resolve to take
action. Since 14,000 people signed an April 2007
petition for a law against FGM, though, the mood has
changed radically. Both the region's main parties
have given their blessing to the law,www.ekurd.net
and FGM is now openly
discussed by the local media. Back in parliament,
Pakhshan Zangana knows the law represents only the
end of the beginning of this struggle. Her aim now,
she says, is to end FGM in Iraqi Kurdistan within
five years. "A law on its own can't do that,"
Zangana says. "What can is full cooperation between
government departments, and people like me, in
parliament, making sure the law is enforced."
time com
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