FGM: two young women who woke up world and forced politicians to act

Alexandra Topping

• The Guardian, Friday 25 July 2014 13.58 http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/25/fgm-young-women-fahma-mohamed-jaha-dukureh
• Fahma Mohamed in UK and Jaha Dukureh in US have led global debate on female genital mutilation and movement to end it

Jaha Dukureh at the Girl Summit, hosted in London by the UK and Unicef to mobilise international efforts to end female genital mutilation and child marriage. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian

In February this year Fahma Mohamed was a 17-year-old student studying for her A-levels in Bristol. One of nine girls from a British Somali family she was, by her own account, not one for the spotlight. Over in Atlanta, Georgia, Jaha Dukureh, a 24-year-old woman originally from the Gambia, was juggling a full-time job in a bank with motherhood.

Six months later these two young women, who have led Guardian-backed campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic, have found themselves at the heart of the movement to end female genital mutilation (FGM) – a movement that in recent months has, astonishingly, put girls' issues at the very top of the political agenda.

At the historic Girl Summit in London this week, the prime minister, David Cameron, announced that the government would legally oblige teachers, doctors and social workers to report FGM, train professionals and criminalise parents if they failed to protect their children. Ministers from Somalia to Burkina Faso vowed to stamp out FGM – a traditional practice that involves the removal of a girl's outer sexual organs – while the Obama administration confirmed it would be carrying out the first study for 17 years into the number of girls and women living with FGM in the US.

So, how did the fight against FGM, described by Germaine Greer in the late 1990s as "an attack on cultural identity", become front page news, endorsed by the prime minister and acknowledged by the White House?

"I think there was a collective dawning that this was not a cultural issue to be tiptoed around – we were talking about girls having their genitals cut off," says Lib Dem international development minister Lynne Featherstone, a staunch campaigner in the government's ranks. "The sisterhood marched, the media marched with them, and the men joined in behind."

Fahma Mohamed became the face of the campaign against FGM in which the Guardian teamed up with Change.org. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian

On the wall of the Orchid project, a London charity dedicated to ending FGM, is a series of newspaper cuttings that reveal how the movement to stamp out the practice – which affects more than 130,000 women in England and Wales, according to new figures – has gained momentum. "On the UN's international day against FGM in 2011 we got one story in the Observer, and that was it," says Ruthie Taylor. "This year, it was everywhere, including the front page of the Guardian. It's unbelievable how things have changed."

Mohamed, who found herself on that front page as the face of a ground-breaking campaign in which the Guardian teamed up with Change.org, says it took on a life of its own. The petition became Change.org's fastest growing UK petition and within days had gathered more than 230,000 signatures. "I was just in awe of how many people supported us," she says. "In the past it was such a slog fighting against something that people didn't even know existed. Lots of people denied it was happening – they didn't like girls speaking up for one another. Now finally people were listening."

Within days of the launch the then education secretary Michael Gove had agreed to a meeting, and soon met demands to write to all teachers in England and Wales about FGM. Then Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who called Fahma her sister in a fight for girls' rights, backed the petition, and Fahma received a call to meet UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, who called her an inspiration.

Appearing this week with fellow members of Integrate Bristol at the Girl Summit was a "beautiful moment", she adds. "It really made me feel like we are part of something, and together we can do it."

Keen to enhance the success of the UK campaign, the Guardian contacted Dukureh, a survivor of FGM in Atlanta who had started her own petition in the US with Equality Now, calling for action on FGM from the Obama administration. When the petition was relaunched on May 12the impact was immediate.

"Before the Guardian got on board we were getting maybe 10 signatures a day, then suddenly it was 1,000, " says Dukureh. "It was exactly what we needed." Within a month more than 50 members of Congress joined the campaign and Dukureh met with officials at the departments of justice and education. This week, while Dukureh was in London for theGirl Summit, the Obama administration quietly announced that it would carry out a study into FGM and had set up a working group – a key demand of her campaign. Fellow campaigner Mohamed was one of the first to fly into her arms. "I went crazy with her," says the teenager. "As soon as we met it was like there was a bond between us, like we were part of the same sisterhood."

David Cameron, Burkina Faso's first lady, Chantal Compaoré, PM of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, and education activist Malala Yousafzai. Photograph: Oli Scarff/PA

That youthful energy – palpable at the Girl Summit when Malala was welcomed on stage like a rock star – has played a critical role in getting politicians to listen, said Equality Now's Efua Dorkenoo, a long-time campaigner. "A lot of strategic work has been done for many years behind the scenes," she says. "But I think it is that second generation requesting to be protected that has pushed it on to a higher agenda and emboldened the politicians to take action." News organisations that have campaigned on the issue, including the Guardian and the London Evening Standard, as well as broader media coverage, has also caught the attention of the public and politicians, she said.

One such second-generation campaigner is Nimko Ali, a co-founder of charity Daughters of Eve. She also credits female politicians, such asFeatherstone and Justine Greening at Dfid at DfID and Jane Ellison in the Department of Health, who have passionately taken up the cause. "Those gutsy women have made a difference," she says. "At the Girl Summit Nick Clegg and David Cameron just came along and announced the policies they'd fought for. People said it was just a political move getting more women into the cabinet, but it does make a difference."

While the push to end FGM has been welcomed by campaigners, some have urged caution at rushing through well-intentioned but potentially ill-thought out policies. The Royal College of General Practitioners wrote to the Guardian this week warning that legal sanctions against health professionals who fail to report FGM could be counterproductive, and may discourage women who have been cut from seeing a doctor. "FGM is a terrible crime, but we must think about the unintended consequences and whether this could be driven underground," said Nigel Mathers, secretary of the RCGP. Sarah McCulloch, who runs a grassroots FGM support service in Sheffield, has already received worried calls from professionals. "What worries me is that after the hard work of encouraging young people to challenge the issues, they may be driven them back into silence if they feel that they may put their parents at risk or arrest," she says.

But campaigners are confident that, while huge challenges remain – more than 130m women are living with FGM around the world and another three million every year are at risk – the global community as a whole is moving in the right direction. Campaigning from grassroots organisations, agencies such as Unicef, and larger NGOs such as Equality Now and Plan International are getting results throughout the world.

A UN resolution banned FGM in December 2012, and by the time of its Status of Women conference in March 2013, 25 African countries had outlawed cutting. Mohamed, who will continue to push for FGM awareness to be taught in UK schools, is optimistic about the future. "I know great things are going to come after this," she says. "It's like being on a rollercoaster, but we just keep on going up. There's no going back down for us now."

Fahma Mohamed

Fahma Mohamed was born in Bristol in 1996, the eldest of nine girls born to Somali parents. The 17-year-old student at City Academy Bristol (CAB) is a trustee of Integrate Bristol, a Bristol-based charity set up by teacher Lisa Zimmermann. She was not cut herself, but comes from an affected community. Fahma agreed to becoming the face of the Guardian's campaign, because she wanted people to take more notice of FGM. "I don't think any of us realised how big it would be," she says. "We were just so happy that people were finally listening." Since starting the campaign Mohamed has spoken to press around the world, has met Michael Gove and other senior politicians and was recently invited to Buckingham Palace to meet princes William and Harry. "A few months ago I would have fainted," she says. "But now I'm not intimidated by anyone and, if it's possible, I'm even more passionate than before."

Jaha Dukureh

Jaha Dukureh was born in Gambia, and went through the most severe form of FGM as a baby. Her clitoris and labia were removed, and she was sewn up so that only a small hole remained. The 24-year-old mother of three was pushed into an arranged marriage at 15 and moved to New York, where she was "re-opened" so that her husband could have sex with her. She fled the marriage and moved to Atlanta, where she remarried, put herself through college, and set up her own NGO,Safe Hands for Girls. She recently gave up her job as a banking adviser, after receiving her first grant of $20,000, but does not yet receive enough funding to pay herself. "The day after the campaign launch I went home and blasted Beyoncé's I Was Here," she remembers. "I felt like my whole life was out there but it was worth it – suddenly people were talking about this. I could see the impact it was having, not only in the US but with people in Africa and back in Gambia. I felt fortunate to make a difference. You know – I was here."

Nigeria reports arrest of female recruiters for Boko Haram

BY ROBYN DIXON

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80720563/

Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group that has kidnapped schoolgirls and turned northeastern Nigeria into a war zone, has a female recruitment wing, Nigerian defense officials said Friday as they released photographs of three women alleged to be members of the group.

Nigeria’s military headquarters said in Twitter message that three women had been arrested on suspicion of enticing women and girls to join the terrorist group. It said they were promising women husbands, mainly Boko Haram fighters, if they joined.

Boko Haram has been waging an insurgency for more than a decade in its effort to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria, a nation deeply divided between the mainly Islamic north and predominantly Christian south. The group opposes secular education, democracy, taxation, banking and all aspects of Western culture.

In photos released by the military, a woman in a blue hijabidentified as Aisha Abubakar cradled prayer beads in her hands. She and two other suspects, Hafsat Usman Bako and Zainab Idris, were arrested traveling to Madagali, south of the city of Maiduguri, the Defense Ministry said.

The arrests follow a suicide bombing by a woman near a military barracks in the city of Gombe last month. The attacker killed herself and a soldier.

According to defense officials, the three arrested women were planning to go to the forest outside Madagali to meet up with members of Boko Haram.

“Investigations reveal that the suspects, led by Hafsat Bako, have the mission to recruit members into the female wing as well as conduct espionage for the group,” a ministry statement said. It said Bako was the widow of a Boko Haram fighter.

Nigerian authorities have arrested and jailed the wives and children of Boko Haram leaders and members in the past. The group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, has cited the arrest of his wife as one reason for the group’s kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls from the town of Chibok in April, 219 of whom remain in captivity.

Dozens more women, children and schoolboys were kidnapped by extremists in attacks on villages in the region last month.

Nigeria’s military has ruled out a rescue mission to recover the schoolgirls, saying many probably would be killed. Some analysts believe the only option for recovering them is a prisoner swap, but Nigerian authorities have ruled out negotiations.

Boko Haram was driven out of Maiduguri last year, but it set up camp in the hills in a vast region south of the city. It has been launching attacks on villages, killing hundreds of people.

The group is also suspected in bomb attacks on civilians in urban areas that have targeted markets, hotels, bars and crowds gathered to watch the World Cup soccer games.

Nigeria’s military has faced intense criticism for its failure to rescue the Chibok girls, protect villages and restore overall security.

For more news from Africa, follow @latimesdixon on Twitter.

New Amazon Review!

5.0 out of 5 stars The genius of this book is that the familiar is also the fantastic. We're hurled immediately into an astonishing action scene July 23, 2014

By gridprice

Format:Kindle Edition

Although the story is set in the future, one wouldn't have to search far to find parallels in the present-day world... or in the past. The genius of this book is that the familiar is also the fantastic. We're hurled immediately into an astonishing action scene, written with gorgeous cinematic vividness, and plunged instantly into a universe of great peril and even greater heroism. It is a wild ride. Plan to stay up all night with this one; it is difficult to put it down.

Comment | 

click to go to amazon

MELISSA LEO'S REVIEW OF IT'S A NIGHTMARE

what a journey I have gone on!....swallowing in great greedy gulps like one of your demon types all your long hard work!....wow!....fun fascinating and informative!......really well done ...like things that have big play in the world ...and yet deeper and better....and what happens beyond plunging into disbelief?.???......I know you are headed there now!....so very proud to know you!....thank you..and I indeed adore deedee....what a chance to teach the lessons she teaches...I will hope for the day!

Prologue

Listen to the prologue here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcsFXA0mhrU

The girl stops running, wild-eyed, hunted, her breathing the rattle of old machines, of gears grinding without grease.  Her head swivels, a bird trapped in the coils of a snake.  In the near stillness she hears the beat of her own heart.  The pounding fills her ribcage, it swells inside her throat, it pulses afterbirth down the tender skin of her inner thighs.  She’s woozy, she sways and then steadies.

It was a sound that startled her, a screech, and it wasn’t human.  There it is again!  Monsters rampaging off the walkways, she thinks, her fear rising.  Phlegm beasts, or hammerheads, those slimy thickskulled creatures seen on the screens, hunting on the public walkways.  

No, be sensible, the girl thinks again, these are different sounds, smaller shrieks, less fearful growls, than the sound of the dogs on her scent, or the creatures who filet their food before eating.  This must be the noise of the hyenas, known to forage at the river’s edge, the girl decides.   

“Don’t cry, please don’t cry,” she murmurs to the bundle clutched in her stiffening arm.  She’s heard that hyenas eat babies.

The girl wears a dirty, ill-fitting, public-herd uniform.  A pink tease of ruffles and sleaze, meant to advertise her, haunch and teat.  She crouches low, preparing to sprint from her hiding place, in the shadows cast by the tall windowless buildings of the city’s Breederhood.  

A negative of moonlight etches the city skyline into a jagged silhouette across the riverbank.  It’s just the look of a creepy snaggletooth grin, as if even the shadows were having a laugh at her feeble attempt to die free.  The girl laughs too.  Why not?  What’s she got to lose but her life.  That end is nigh anyway.    

She takes off, running through shadow, then moonlight, now shadow again.  The smell of sulphur, from off the river, grows stronger.  It’s the smell of escape, from Winkin City.  It’s the only home she’s ever known.

She scrambles low over scrub-brush vegetation, dotted like an obstacle course across the eroded dirt.  She stubs the clubbed toe, of her rag bound foot, hard against a thistle root.  She totters forward, contorting her body, to keep from crushing the struggling yellow bundle, clutched now in both of her arms.  

She stops moving, panting until the baby settles, until the stabbing pain in her right foot ebbs back to the dull ache she considers normal.  She watches the slow seep of red spread across the grungy brown rags where her toes once were.  

She’d tried to escape the city before, when the baby was new inside her.  She’d been caught that time, and sentenced to binding.  

The girl-policeman, the one charged to execute her sentence, had a brown ooze bubbling at the corners of his mouth.  He’d taken her foot in his hand, and fondled it as if it weren’t attached to the rest of her.  Then he folded her foot, just like he was tearing at a loaf of bread, at the joints, where phalanges were connected to metatarsals.  Heedless of her howling, and the cracking of her bones, he repeated the action on her other foot.  He bandaged each mangled appendage up tight, to keep them folded this way.  

       “To make them dainty and petite,” the man muttered, now fondling her flaming stubs.  

Everyone knows that binding is meant to prevent escape from Winkin City, but even now, the girl’s running toward the Bridge of Tears on her government-deformed feet.  She’s ducking the searchlights that scour the Night Mare’s land seeking someone to kill.

She scrambles up the cracked and narrow slats of the rotting ladder to a rickety bridge, cobbled of driftwood, rope, and desperation.  The official seal of Blinkin undulates atop the blue screen at the ladder’s summit.  The seal is an animate coat-of-arms, a frolicsome bas-relief of busily rutting characters.  A demon rear mounts a human, who’s already bent over to fornicate his sow.  It’s the Night Mare’s chain of command, a visual haiku to her world order.  The same image is branded upon the escaping girl, in a tramp stamp of welts and ridges, across her lower back. 

This screen, at the top of the ladder, is the last of the government checkpoints before she gains the bridge.  Red words loop in ominous silence across the blue screen: 

Warning!  You are now leaving Winkin City, followed by, It’s not a good idea, and finally, Good luck.

The girl stares at the rolling words, her eyes vacant, her thoughts already on the thing she must do.  She steps past the glowing blue rectangle, cautiously, fearfully, as if it might explode, and now everything is swaying.  She sprints over wide wooden planks, laid across gaping gaps, to the whitewater below.  The girl hesitates.  She waits for the searchlight to pass over the center of the wavering span.  Then she hurtles forward again, heedless of her numbing feet, of the new blood chafing the old between her childlike thighs.

She stops at the sudden crunch underfoot.  She’d been expecting this path of bones, femurs and coccyx, mandibles crushed into sphenoids, illiums mixed with phalanges, maxillas, patellas, sternums, sacrums -- all that remains of the others who have made this journey before her.  Those who have not made it to the Off-grid, all the world on the other side of the Bridge of Tears. 

Everyone knows this boneyard is here.  Images of it are broadcast routinely upon the screens.  What she hadn’t expected was the sound.  It never occurred to her that it would be so visceral, the rattle and the snap of the brittle bones.  She closes her eyes, using the ossified percussion, she lurches forward, moving now to the rhythm of the clicks and the clacks.  

She stops in the middle of the bridge, faint and unsteady.  She opens her eyes and stumbles the few steps to the rope rail on the downriver side.  

She sees the monolithic buildings of the Night Mare’s Winkin City, glowing blue and breathing, looming like asthmatic giants set to hunt her.  She turns away, her focus on the other end of the wobbling bridge, inky night.  That way is freedom, they say.  

No, not the Off-grid for me.  She decides again.  The middle is the best place for it to end.  She chuckles, liking the play on words, liking that her thoughts are still not owned by the Night Mare’s government-church.  She’s relieved to be dying here, with the wet sulphur wind on her face, and not surrounded by the screens, in the confined squalor that is home.  Where one is always watched, and always watching.  

The girl leans over the frayed rope rail, drawn to the turbulent orange-brown swirl below.  She breathes in the smell of rotting eggs rising off the yellow foam.  She imagines the water reaching up to her with greedy hands.  

Then the twitching starts, heralding the end of her short life’s journey.  The contractions, nascent in her hemorrhaging womb, travel outward, racking her frail frame in a sweat of tremors, as whole clumps of life heave from inside her.  Blood gushes down her inner thighs, just the way the water did before the baby came.  

Maybe that’s what life is, she muses, a burst of warm liquid to come in, and another on the way out.  The girl closes her eyes, ready to welcome the end.

Wait!  She thinks, her eyes gaping wide in panic.  She’s shivering now, the world rigid and then slack.  There’s something left to do.  It’s the reason for coming all this long way.  

The girl casts frantically about the growing shadows of her thoughts, searching for the vital memory.  

Then the bundle, inside the crook of her cramping arm, begins to squirm.  Yes, the baby, she sighs with relief, that’s it, I must get rid of the baby.  

She tugs the bundle from inside her shawl.  It’s swaddled mummy-like, in saffron cloth.  All of its yellow points are kicking.  It makes a sound like a wounded cat.  

She named the baby, Lily, after a flower she once saw.  It was just a fleeting image, on a random screen, instantly stomped under a monster’s claw, but the lily was something to think about, to travel away from the horrors of everyday.

The young mother’s vision blurs.  She brushes her lips across the place she thinks Lily’s soft round cheek might be.  Then she raises the squalling baby overhead.  

The sudden glare of a searchlight traps her in its beam, hollow eyed, in stasis, the yellow bundle flailing.  The wind whips at the girl’s hair, her brown face is wet.  

Then she hurls the wriggling bundle of Lily with all of her might.  

Lily sails out a long way before hitting the whitewater.  Then she arcs and skitters from crest to wave, rushed along on the yellow foam, so that her mother needn’t watch her drown.  

But Lily’s mother is already dead, another lump of cloth up on the Bridge of Tears.  Her body is destined to be picked clean by the carrion eaters, who’ve claimed this span as buffet.  Leaving behind naught but bleached bones, and shards of cloth, mingled in with the others to remember her by.

Some nights, they say, when the wind blows right from the Left lands toward Winkin City, a sound of wailing comes in that wind.  It’s a howl made up of sobbing and shrieking and mournful high pitched cries.  Some say it’s the noise of the hyenas feasting; others are certain it’s the dead mothers shrieking; still others say it’s the colicky cries of the drowned babies.  No matter its cause, this wind chills all Winkins down to the bone, when it comes.

It’s said of those mothers, the ones whose babies vanish in the arms of the white water’s foam, that they believe their girls are rescued.  They imagine them living fruitful lives in the wilds of Off-grid.  If the truth be known, there are those who have survived flight off the Bridge of Tears, and baby Lily is one of them.