Quote:
Originally posted by Larry_OHF:
The world Health Organization is quoted in my Health Textbook as saying that Africa is the worst country in the world for human rights violations, specifically to females.
In 1997, a woman escaped her homeland to come live in the US seeking assylum because her cultural heritage was one that requires women and girls to be mutilated in various ways...and the process and its aftermath are serious health hazards...as well as the aforementioned violation to human rights.
Upon learning this, the US declared that funds would be withheld from any country practicing this crazy ritual, and it was written down to be never allowed in the US. The groups that do this say it is their cultural right to do as they please in their own land, so the WHO cannot enforce human rights to protect the poor women, most not even realizing that they are being mistreated.
For more information on this:
http://www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact241.html
http://www.who.int/docstore/frh-whd/FGM/
http://www.who.int/docstore/frh-whd/...ons/p-fgm1.htm
http://www.who.int/archives/inf-pr-1997/en/pr97-29.html
http://www.emro.who.int/rhrn/part5.htm
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Just a few points Larry. Africa isn't a country it's a whole continent and contains scores of countries, only a couple of which practice female circumcism. The main country where this takes place is Senegal.
I have worked for a Muslim doctor in London who was approached on many occasions by young Senegalese girls to have this act performed. They weren't being coerced. It is illegal in the UK so he never agreed. The point is that however "crazy" we may feel the act is, it is the acceptable norm in Senegal. The same could be said about male circumcism for religious purposes.
I may be a cynic but it seems to me that any women from the Horn of Africa who want to emigrate to the US might use this for a reason.
BTW - I agree about the health hazards, but they mainly arise because the operation is done in some unhygenic back street room.
I'm afraid that connecting this practice with the actions of Martin Luther King doesn't really hold water.