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Parents take daughters home during Christmas for FGM rituals

FGM is practiced deeply among the Somalis, believing it is a religious obligation for Muslims. Paying $300 each, the practice is now considered a violation of the human rights of girls and women. Also known as female genital cutting and female circumcision, over 125 million girls and women have it done in 27 countries in Africa (especially northeast area), as well as in Yemen, Iraqi Kurdistan, Asia, the Middle East (where FGM is the most concentrated), Eritrea, Somalia and northern Sudan. In Somalia, the practice of FGM is universal.

The United States banned FGM in 1996 and has since made it illegal to take a girl abroad to be cut, while it is also illegal in the UK. “An estimated 65,000 girls in Britain are at risk of FGM which was outlawed in 1985. Since 2003 it has also been illegal to take a girl abroad for FGM.” If caught in Kenya, the circumciser can face a minimum of three years in jail or a fine, and life imprisonment if the young girl dies. Currently, 50 individuals are in the Kenya courts, plus two circumcisers are on trial for murder.

Female genital mutilations (FGM) are carried out on the female anatomy between infancy and 15-years-of-age — with most girls done before the age of five. The sacred ritual can involve partial or total external removal of the external female genitalia; what can occur are complications later on in childbirth, infertility, chronic pain, reoccurring infections, cysts, newborn deaths,problems urinating, hemorrhaging, fistula and death.

According to Wikipedia,

“When traditional circumcisers are involved, non-sterile cutting devices are likely to be used, including knives, razors, scissors, glass, sharpened rocks and fingernails.A nurse in Uganda, quoted in 2007 in The Lancet, said that a circumciser would use one knife to cut up to 30 girls at a time.”

Parents usually take their children to Kenya for this ritual during the Christmas holidays, as schools close for six weeks. “The government’s FGM prosecution unit took out newspaper adverts in November warning that it was monitoring communities that practice FGM.”

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