CAMEROUN
FGM In Cameroon
In Cameroon, the origin of Female genital mutilation or cutting is not definitive. However, there are certain regions which have seen the practice of female genital mutilation for a very long period of time. Amongst these regions we have: the extreme north, and the Arabe-Choa/Peulh/Maoussa/Kanuri depending on the location and major reason underlying the practice. It is usually performed individually but can be done in groups of girls or women.
The prevalence of FGM in the Extreme North and the South-West portion of the country are 5.4% and 2.4%, respectively. Among the Fulbe people and Arab-descended people who live in the extreme north, the prevalence rate is 12.7%. Report state that in the urban centers of Douala and Yaoundé the FGM prevalence rate is lower than 1%’, while there is continued presence of Female Genital Mutilation in the rural areas.
From an economic angle, Female Genital Mutilation serves as an income earner, for the practitioners and for some families it is used to improve the marriage prospects of young girls. In some societies, it is used as a kind of social stratification mechanism with those who have been circumcised perceived to be at a higher status than others and is a prerequisite for the right to inheritance. Most circumcisers or cutters collect modest remunerations which could be monetary or in form of gifts though some see it as a public service to their community. In Manyu and Far North, it is customary to compensate the circumcisers with gifts and share the food and meat sacrificed during the circumcision feasts with them. In other settings where health care providers perform FGM/C, they do it either due to the erroneous belief that the procedure is safer when medicalized or because of the economic benefits.
The person who performs the procedure is often called the circumciser or cutter. In most cases, this is an older woman who does it in the house of the girl or woman, or in circumcision centres. In some communities however, it is performed by males, usually barbers because of their skills in handling cutting tools. Razor blades, scissors, unsterilized kitchen knives, glass, sharpened rocks or even finger nails are common instruments used in performing FGM/C.
Unhygienic procedures are commoner among the traditional circumcisers with the report of repeated use of a single instrument in up to 30 girls. In some areas of Cameroon such as the South West and the Extreme North, and East regions, health professionals often perform the procedures and so it is termed, “medicalization” of FGM/C.
Anaesthesia is not used by traditional cutters but medical professionals may use local or general anaesthetic agents. When the procedure is performed by traditional cutters and especially in types II and III, the girl or woman’s
legs are usually bound together from the hip to the ankle so she remains immobile for approximately 40 days to allow for the formation of scar tissue.
FGM is generally more popular in the southwest of Cameroon within tribes such as the Ejagham community or particular Muslim groups like the Fulbe, Haoussas and Arapshouas in the north. Surveys have shown that up to 20% of women in the most affected communities have experienced FGM, and 85% of FGM in Cameroon is Type I or Type II.
This is improved from the country’s rates in the mid-1990s, which were closer to 40% of women. Meanwhile, surveys estimate that only about 1% of the national population now suffers the burden of this practice, which is similar to the estimated percentage roughly 20 years ago
Other Mutilation Practicies
The tradition of “breast ironing” has gone on for years in Cameroon, and appears to be spreading among parents who hope to keep their daughters out of the hands of Boko Haram’s brutal jihadists.
In 2014, ‘breast ironing’ became the most prevalent practice of female mutilation. The procedure involves the flattening of a young girl’s breast with hot stones, cast-iron pans, or bricks. Leaving both physical and psychological consequences; pains, cysts, abscesses, and psychological and physical scarring
The culture of breast ironing now affects 3.8 million women around the world. The local press in Cameroon has reported that up to 50% of girls undergo the very painful procedure on a daily basis.
Breast ironing was initially done by women with the thought of improving a mother’s breast milk. But the thought later changed when rape and teenage pregnancy became rampant. Mothers began to carry out the procedure on their girls as they believed that their daughters’ breasts would expose them to the risk of sexual harassment and early pregnancies.
Girls from rich families are made to wear a wide belt, which presses the breasts and is supposed to prevent them from growing. Findings from GIZ, the German state-owned development agency, revealed that 39% of Cameroonian women oppose breast ironing, while 41% support it.
Human rights activists say breast ironing affects women in all 10 of Cameroon’s provinces, and the tradition is practiced by all of Cameroon’s over 200 ethnic groups.
“The process of breast ironing requires the use of any metal, including wooden sticks, pestles, spatulas, spoons and rocks,” said Maryam, a Cameroonian hairdresser now based in Ikom, a home to thousands of Cameroonian migrants and a market place for traders from the Central Africa country. “The heat from these tools is expected to melt the fat on the breast, and stop it from projecting.”
Maryam who said she had practiced breast ironing on two of her daughters, added that other methods can also be used in the practice.
“Most people prefer to wrap very tight elastic bandages around the chest of their daughters overnight, but that system usually keeps the girls very uncomfortable,” she said. “For my daughters, I used hot coconut shells or heated stones to flatten their breasts.”
Breast ironing is less common in Cameroon’s northern region where the population is primarily Muslim. As of 2011, less than one tenth of adolescent girls in the region had undergone the procedure, according to GEED statistics. But now that may be changing as the presence of jihadist group, Boko Haram in the far north seems to be creating an upsurge in the practice.
One Cameroonian mother, who recently began breast ironing procedures on her daughter, told me in Ikom, where she came to buy goods, that she was carrying out the practice in an attempt to make her child less attractive to Boko Haram members who have been abducting adolescent girls and forcing them into marriage.
“I live in Tiko in the southwest but my daughter schools in Maroua in the far north where terrible things happen, and I won’t take chances,” she said. “If they [Boko Haram] don’t see her breast, they won’t think she has come of age.”Another Cameroonian lady who was in Ikom for trade said she and her sister carried out breast ironing procedures on each of their two daughters, because militants were abducting girls in Maroua where they lived.
“We didn’t want our daughters to be taken to the Sambisa forest,” the lady who gave her name as Agathe said. “It wasn’t just us. Many women did it on their daughters for the same reason.”
In Nigeria’s northeastern Borno State, where Boko Haram was founded, a member of the state’s main vigilante group who spoke to The Daily Beast said some girls who fled the war in the far north of Cameroon into border towns in Borno told members of his group that the breast ironing procedure was carried out on them by their parents when the jihadists began to abduct adolescent girls in the region.
“We’ve spoken to a few girls who said their parents ironed their breasts so that they will appear less attractive to Boko Haram militants,” Abass Bashir of the Civilian Joint Task Force vigilante group, which works closely with government forces in Borno, said. “Some of them said they still feel terrible pain on their breasts and around the chest region.”
Parents in Cameroon’s far north region have grown increasingly scared of seeing their adolescent daughters develop breasts, especially since it was widely reported in February that eight girls between the ages of 11 and 14 were abducted close to the border with Nigeria, almost the same time rumors that the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls had been married off to Boko Haram militants spread like wild fire in far north Cameroon.
“Some girls said their parents kept reminding them of the eight kidnapped girls and the missing Chibok girls as a way of convincing them to undergo the procedure,” Bashir said. “Their parents told them that these girls would not have been abducted if they hadn’t developed breasts.”
Until Boko Haram began to create a base in the far north, breast ironing was hardly spoken about in the predominantly Muslim region, perhaps as a result of the high rate of early marriage, which eliminates the need to maintain illusions of a girl’s youth. Now, locals say parents are talking themselves into carrying out the practice on their daughters.
“I visited a compound in Mokolo where every girl had undergone the procedure,” said Musa Oumarou another of Cameroon’s hundreds of traders visiting Ikom daily. “A woman whose daughter narrowly escaped Boko Haram capture started the procedure on her lucky child and then convinced her neighbours to carry out the same act on their daughters.”
But just as parents try to prevent abductions and eventual marriages to deadly militants in far north Cameroon, many girls in the region, in an attempt to escape early marriage, try to flatten their own breasts so they can delay their sexual maturity and continue going to school.
Children’s rights activists in Cameroon have for a long time carried out nationwide awareness campaigns in schools, churches and across media outlets aimed at drawing attention to the harmful physical and psychological consequences of breast ironing, a practice which was done mainly in secret until it was exposed to the international community in 2006. But in spite of their efforts, millions of girls are still victims of the horrific tradition.
Health workers believe better hygiene, nutrition and healthcare means that girls are attaining puberty early. A 2011 social and demographic health survey conducted in Cameroon showed that between 20 to 30 percent of Cameroonian girls get pregnant before their 16th birthday, and a third abandon schooling.
Grace became pregnant at the age of 15, but sadly lost her child during childbirth.
She said breast ironing is even more painful than childbirth, and that it did nothing to prevent her from getting pregnant before marriage.
“The whole practice was useless after all,” she said. “Rather than teach, breast ironing kills. My mother should have taught me sex education, rather she let this evil practice devastate me.”
Philip Obaji Jr. is the founder of 1 GAME, an advocacy and campaigning organization that fights for the right to education for disadvantaged children in Nigeria, especially in northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram forbids western education. Follow him @PhilipObaji
Analysts say breast ironing was initially done by women with the thought of improving a mother’s breast milk. But the thought later changed when rape and teenage pregnancy became rampant. Mothers began to carry out the procedure on their girls as they believed that their daughters’ breasts would expose them to the risk of sexual harassment and early pregnancies.
Girls from rich families are made to wear a wide belt, which presses the breasts and is supposed to prevent them from growing.
While the tradition is widespread in Cameroon, similar practices have been documented in Nigeria, Togo, Republic of Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa.
The United Nations Population Fund has named breast ironing as one of five under-reported crimes related to gender-based violence.
Findings from GIZ, the German state-owned development agency, revealed that 39 percent of Cameroonian women oppose breast ironing, while 41 percent support it.
Human rights activists say breast ironing affects women in all 10 of Cameroon’s provinces, and the tradition is practiced by all of Cameroon’s over 200 ethnic groups.
“The process of breast ironing requires the use of any metal, including wooden sticks, pestles, spatulas, spoons and rocks,” said Maryam, a Cameroonian hairdresser now based in Ikom, a home to thousands of Cameroonian migrants and a market place for traders from the Central Africa country. “The heat from these tools is expected to melt the fat on the breast, and stop it from projecting.”
Maryam who said she had practiced breast ironing on two of her daughters, added that other methods can also be used in the practice.
“Most people prefer to wrap very tight elastic bandages around the chest of their daughters overnight, but that system usually keeps the girls very uncomfortable,” she said. “For my daughters, I used hot coconut shells or heated stones to flatten their breasts.”
Breast ironing is less common in Cameroon’s northern region where the population is primarily Muslim. As of 2011, less than one tenth of adolescent girls in the region had undergone the procedure, according to GEED statistics. But now that may be changing as the presence of jihadist group, Boko Haram in the far north seems to be creating an upsurge in the practice.
FGM And HEALTH
When FGM is carried out by these traditional curcumcisers with poor surgical skills, the absence of antiseptic techniques and non-use of anaesthetic agents, the procedures are associated with several complications. These upshot may occur during or immediately after the operation, while others manifest in the medium and long-term to cause poor quality of life for the patient or result in mortality or both. The immediate complications include excruciating pain (when anaesthetic agents are not used), haemorrhage, shock, acute urinary retention, injury to adjacent tissues and death.
For those who survive, medium term complications are infections of the reproductive tract following use of unsterilized or poorly sterilized instruments, septic techniques and septic environment and raw wound surfaces. All these result in urinary tract infection, pelvic inflammatory disease, chronic pelvic pain, infertility and ectopic pregnancy. Others are tetanus infection, infections with hepatitis and human immunodeficiency virus and also abscess formation.
Among the few who survive the acute and medium term consequences, many long-term morbidities noted are psychological disturbances, low libido, apareunia (Inability to achieve vaginal insertion) or dyspareunia (a recurrent or persistent pain with sexual intercourse that causes distress), chronic pain, dysmenorrhoea, gynaetresia, cryptomenorrhoea, vaginal fistulae, labial
agglutination, hypertrophic scar/keloids, clitoridal retention cysts, dermoid cysts, vaginal lacerations during coitus, straining at micturition, genital tract lacerations, especially during vaginal delivery, obstructed labour, increased rate of caesarean delivery and postpartum haemorrhage.
The chances of mortality occurring after these complications of labour and the postpartum. For the babies conceived by such women, there is increased
risk of stillbirth, early neonatal death or babies with neurologic deficits from severe birth
asphyxia.
FGM AND LAW
In 2012, Cameroon established the National Action Plan to combat FGM in 2011 and founded the Department for the Promotion and Protection of the Family and Children’s Rights. This also instigated the 2016 passage of the civil, “Penal Codes of the Republic of Cameroon.” However, neither mandate nor legislation exists to truly stop the practice of FGM. NGOs, international pressure and awareness campaigns, as well as natural human development, have driven initiatives against FGM.
https://www.refworld.org/reference/countryrep/ukho/2017/en/116179