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undeterred

(34,658 posts)
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 11:43 PM Jun 2014

A Fight as U.S. Girls Face Genital Cutting Abroad

By JULIE TURKEWITZ JUNE 10, 2014

ATLANTA — Last summer, an American-born teenager of Somali descent fled her parents’ home in a suburb here after she discovered that a coming vacation to Somalia would include a sacred rite of passage: the cutting of her genitalia. In Guinea, a New Yorker escaped to the American Embassy after an aunt told her that her family trip would involve genital cutting. And in Seattle, at least one physician said parents had sent girls back to Somalia to undergo cutting.

Immigrant parents from African and other nations have long sent their daughters back to their ancestral homes for the summer, a trip intended to help them connect with their families and traditions. During their stays, some girls are swept into bedrooms or backwoods and subjected to genital cutting in the belief that it will prevent promiscuity, ready them for marriage or otherwise align them with the ideals of their culture.

“Vacation cutting,” as the practice is deemed by those who oppose it, has existed in immigrant enclaves around the world for decades. Federal law has banned genital cutting in the United States since 1996, and last year it became illegal to transport girls for that purpose. But some are concerned that such cutting could be on the rise. The number of African immigrants in the United States has more than quadrupled in the past two decades to almost 1.7 million, according to the Census Bureau. The growing numbers have brought new attention to the issue, and have spurred a small Internet-age, app-enabled support network of girls and women who have been victims of cutting, or believe they will be. About 228,000 women and girls in the United States have been cut or are at risk of it, according to an analysis that uses 14-year-old census data.

At the center of this new network is Jaha Dukureh, 24, a Gambian immigrant who was cut twice, once as an infant in Gambia and again at age 15 in New York. A former Wells Fargo banker and a mother of three, she lives here in Atlanta. In February, she filed an online petition, urging President Obama to conduct a study of the issue. She now fields hundreds of text messages, phone calls and social media messages a week from immigrants who want to talk about cutting but have never been able to do so. Ms. Dukureh, who is college-educated and drives — unlike many of her immigrant friends — switches easily among the roles she has adopted in the past few months: caseworker, health educator, political strategist, media coordinator.


Jaha Dukureh, 24, a Gambian immigrant in Atlanta, was cut twice. She has filed an online petition urging President Obama to have a study of the issue done.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/us/a-fight-as-us-girls-face-genital-cutting-abroad.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0

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A Fight as U.S. Girls Face Genital Cutting Abroad (Original Post) undeterred Jun 2014 OP
I can't imagine what that would be like... TreasonousBastard Jun 2014 #1
That would be 2naSalit Jun 2014 #3
"Vacation Cutting" ohhellno. eom littlemissmartypants Jun 2014 #2
This needs more exposure. Please rec this to the greatest page or xpost. thanks. K&R Tuesday Afternoon Jun 2014 #4
Her petition has done well: Petition to end FGM in US nears 200,000 signatures undeterred Jun 2014 #5

TreasonousBastard

(43,049 posts)
1. I can't imagine what that would be like...
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 11:49 PM
Jun 2014

but if the daughters must be sent back I would rather see them sent back to stop the cutting.

2naSalit

(86,061 posts)
3. That would be
Wed Jun 11, 2014, 12:25 AM
Jun 2014

a pretty tough row to hoe for those girls since they have few rights to begin with in those countries. Like our religio-ignorants it's an ideological issue that has deep roots. They should be able to report that they are being sent there for that purpose and given sanctuary of some kind. The way it happens is often like a surprise rape attack, you don't know what's up until it's happening... and usually it's other women who do the cutting.

It sucks.

undeterred

(34,658 posts)
5. Her petition has done well: Petition to end FGM in US nears 200,000 signatures
Wed Jun 11, 2014, 12:27 AM
Jun 2014

A petition that calls on the Obama administration to tackle the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the United States has been signed by nearly 200,000 people.

Chavala Madlena
theguardian.com, Tuesday 10 June 2014 11.26 EDT

Jaha Dukureh, a victim of FGM who has spearheaded the Change.org petition, will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet some of the more than 50 members of Congress who have lent their support to Dukureh's petition, which calls on Barack Obama and the Department of Health and Human Services to commission research into the scale and severity of the problem in the US. Dukureh launched her campaign at the Guardian’s New York office last month with UN representative Nafissatou Diop, US congressman Joe Crowley and Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger.

Doctors treating women and girls with FGM say the research is badly needed. “We would know, we’d have a better sense of it nationally … The challenge that I’ve faced over my entire career has been that often times we do not have data,” said Dr Crista Johnson-Agbakwu, who treats women from 43 countries at the Refugee Women’s Health Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, where a “staggering amount” of her patients have been cut. FGM is a 5,000-year-old practice that takes place across large parts of Africa, the Middle East and south-east Asia.

While there are varying types of severity, it essentially involves the partial or entire removal of the external female genitalia. Type III FGM, the most severe, requires the girl to be sewn closed until her wedding night. While there are grassroots movements in some African countries to phase out the practice, many diaspora communities still require a girl to be cut. The United States has a patchy track record in tackling FGM. It was outlawed in 1996 with the Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation Act, then last year a bill was passed outlawing "vacation cutting". Twenty states have their own similar laws banning FGM.

But so far there has only been one conviction in the US due to the difficulties in policing and enforcing the law. Dr Terry Dunn, an obstetrician gynaecologist in Denver, Colorado, says he frequently sees the medical effects of female genital mutilation which follow women through their lifetime. “Recurrent urinary tract infections, terrible periods –you can imagine if you had your vagina closed and you had your period and you could only get little drops of blood out and you were constantly bleeding - that makes you at risk for infections and problems all throughout your life," he said. "Plus it’s very difficult to do cervical cancer screenings on these patients, because you can’t get a speculum in.”

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/10/end-fgm-us-petition-signatures


Dukureh launched her campaign at the Guardian’s New York office last month.

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