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Rule of Law

My Lords, I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Park, for instituting this debate on subjects which are both timely and urgent and which gives me an opportunity to speak once more about that great wrong that has been done and is being done to womankind worldwide. It is being done to young United Kingdom citizens by those who flout the law, usually through ignorance of it but sometimes with contempt for it. I have spoken about it many times before but I know it is a subject that meets with great sympathy in your Lordships’ House and is not, I hope and believe, something with which listeners lose patience. But this afternoon I would like to say something also about the history of female genital mutilation and the traditions and rituals which surround it. Deeply entrenched in social, economic and political structures, it is a blatant example of gender inequality and like the practice of dowry and child marriage and the now abandoned foot-binding in China, represents society’s control over women. In Africa it is an ancient procedure first observed, it is said, by the Crusaders. But it is older than that and may well predate the coming of Islam and even of Christianity. The explorer Richard Burton probably mentioned it in the vast work he wrote on sexual practices in the Middle East but we shall never know. His prudish wife Isabel read it after his death and, shocked to the core, burnt it lest such a work came to damage his reputation. Here, incidentally, may be the place to point out how a mealy-mouthed recoil from speaking about genital mutilation, and when it must be referred to, alluding to it by the euphemism ““female circumcision””, has done much to maintain it. In 1929 the Church of Scotland mission to the Kikuyu in Kenya attempted to break down the custom of clitoridectomy by demanding that all their followers and those who wanted their children to attend mission schools should pledge themselves not to support this initiation rite. Teachers too were asked to denounce the custom. The question was first raised here in another place and a committee of MPs, including the Duchess of Atholl, was appointed as early as 1930 to investigate. However, it was agreed that the best solution was to leave it to the people concerned to choose what custom most suited their changing conditions. Some European delegates to a conference in Geneva in 1931, held under the auspices of the Save the Children Fund, urged the abandonment of this, of what they called ““a heathen custom””. But the general opinion was for the people to be left to choose. In the main they chose to retain it. Unfortunately, it is these decisions to adhere to a custom generally deplored that have contributed to widespread genital mutilation in Africa today. So began respect for a culture which includes an appalling practice. Women suffer a lifetime of pain and degradation without ever speaking of what has caused their suffering. There can be no other procedure on earth, therapeutic or cosmetic, not only so harmful but so entirely pointless as FGM. How deformative it is may be deduced from the reaction of midwives in the 1970s when, on first seeing the results of FGM in African immigrants, believed that they were looking at a congenital malformation of the genitalia. Many African countries have passed laws to ban it but making female genital mutilation illegal seems to have little effect. It is often practised in parts of Africa even when it is known to inflict harm on girls because the social benefits deriving from it are considered to be higher than its disadvantages. In spite of laws forbidding it and its disabling, painful and disfiguring results, in these societies FGM is thought necessary for the correct upbringing of a girl and as part of her preparation for adulthood and marriage. The practice may be part of coming-of-age rituals and the girls themselves may wish to undergo the procedure as a result of social pressure from peers and because of fear of stigmatisation and rejection. Girls are given rewards, take part in celebrations and receive gifts. So, however painful, however likely to store up pain and the disturbance of gynaecological function, it may confer a sense of pride and a feeling of community membership. Even here in London, among Horn of Africa communities, girls have been heard to ask each other, ““Have you been cut yet?””. Those with enlightened parents absorbed into a United Kingdom culture may feel left out Among the Kikuyu it was taboo for a man to have sexual relations with women who had not undergone FGM. And it is a desire for a good and successful marriage which may account for its persistence. It is believed that the practice ensures and preserves a woman’s virginity and, without going into anatomical details that would be inappropriate here, it probably does. Strangely, it is also thought to make girls ““clean”” and beautiful. No holy text prescribes it, yet most women who have suffered it are Muslim because Islam is the prevailing faith in the countries from which they or their parents have come. Many who have suffered it are Christian; so much for those Save the Children delegates who called it a ““heathen custom””. Some are animists. Its practice is upheld by local structures of power and authority. Some doctors of medicine, and older women who have themselves been mutilated, support it and see efforts to combat it as an attack upon their culture and way of life. Strong support for the protection of the rights of women to abandon FGM is found in international treaties including the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; the Convention on Civil and Political Rights; the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women; and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Female genital mutilation violates many human rights principles, including the right to life when the procedure results in death—as it does in 10 per cent of cases in certain parts of the Horn of Africa—and the right to freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Parents who decide to have their daughters genitally mutilated believe that the benefits outweigh the risks, but this perception cannot justify an irreversible and life-changing practice that violates a girl's human rights. Even when a girl herself desires the procedure, her decision is in fact the result of social pressures and community expectations. In this country, the culture embedded in our own culture supports this attitude in spite of all efforts to end it and in spite of two Acts of Parliament making it an offence punishable with up to 14 years’ imprisonment. I do not think that FGM has ever been mentioned in your Lordships’ House without some noble Lord asking if there have yet been any prosecutions under the 2003 Act. The answer is always no. Though we may respect a culture, we must first respect human beings. People are of greater importance than tradition. More valuable than any custom or tradition, however enshrined in history and general acceptance, is one single small girl who is at risk of having her life and body ruined by this practice. The number of women calculated to have undergone female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom is almost 270,000, and 15,000 children living here are estimated to be at risk of joining them.