Fighting female genital mutilation is tough in Sierra Leone, where 90 percent of women have been cut and the current election season has shown the political clout of practitioners. Second in a series on African women and the rule of law.
Female genital mutilation and the feminization of HIV-AIDS are slowly being linked, especially in the three African countries-Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan-where the most extreme FGM is predominant.
Oumou Toure narrowly escaped deportation from Canada to her native Guinea because of the threat of genital mutilation that loomed over her 2-year-old daughter. The case illustrates difficulties women fleeing violence face when they seek asylum.
The international fight against female genital mutilation pushes African activists to a new juncture. After the ratification of an important African Union protocol, gritty local politics lie ahead.
Pamela Izevbekhai fled her native Nigeria for Ireland, hoping to save her two daughters from sexual mutilation, which killed a third daughter. Now she is struggling for asylum.
Djibouti has just ratified the African Union's Maputo Protocol banning female genital mutilation. But activists in Kenya, which outlawed FGM in 2001, warn that the engrained cultural practice is easier to outlaw than to eradicate.
Traditional practitioners of FGM in Africa have begun to back out of the business. That doesn't mean it is over. Now many female teens are checked into hospitals under the pretext of an illness and a doctor performs the illegal procedure.
Some 2 million women around the world are subject to female genital mutilation every year. Now, a program is set to eradicate the custom in Senegal and is likely to be replicated elsewhere in Africa.