They are 200 million women to be circumcised. And every six minutes, another little girl comes to inflate this figure. On the occasion of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, RFI takes stock of prevention. In France, they would be 125,000 to be concerned. As in a majority of nations, excision is nevertheless prohibited and punishable by law.
Some communities continue to practice this “ custom », taking advantage of a trip to the country, during the school holidays which will change the lives of these young girls forever. ” When I went on vacation to Senegal, one day, they woke me up, they pretended to have a party. I had to go to such a place to help with preparations. And arrived at this place, I learn that I was going to undergo excision. »
It took nine years for Fatoumata to tell this story out loud. She was 16 when she had herself circumcised: “I had already heard of it, but I didn’t feel concerned at all. I thought, “It was done years ago and I am French”adds the young woman. If I had been aware, I could, perhaps, not have been caught off guard “.
This television spot broadcast at the approach of the summer holidays by the Association Excision, let’s talk about it, could, for example, have put a flea in Fatoumata’s ear. When she was a teenager”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VtnMBd34ww
On his website alert-excision.org, a free and anonymous chat has also been set up so that young girls can report imminent danger and ask for help. The public prosecutor can then be seized to issue a ban on leaving the territory.
Associations are organized with young girls and their mothers
It is precisely on this lever that the association that Fatoumata has joined intends to play. baptized At the heart of our children, it was founded in Lyon by Habib Sy. Among other solutions, it offers, for example, immediate help to undocumented mothers who fear for their child:
” As long as they have a little girl, our association undertakes to pay a lawyer, so that this woman is not excluded from French territory, because there is a risk that her little girl will undergo excision once that his mother is sent back to his country. »
It is precisely with mothers, at the time of childbirth, that Ghada Hatem prefers to raise the subject. She is an obstetrician-gynecologist at the Maison des femmes de Saint-Denis, north of Paris.
” You have to talk to her : “You have been circumcised, you come from a region where this custom is still alive. You have a little girl, do you want to circumcise her?” Of course, most women answer no, they know that’s not the right answer, but for us it allows us to say “Be careful because in France, we are very protective, even if your little girl is not French, but she lives in France, she has the same rights as a little French girl, she must be protected in the same way” “.
The reminder to the law works rather well according to her. In France, excision is punishable by 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment and a heavy fine, even if it was not carried out on French soil.
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