Female genital mutilation common in Egypt despite ban
Six years after female genital mutilation was banned in Egypt, the practice still persists, according to Mohamed Bedaiwy of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, who interviewed 3730 Egyptian girls aged 10 to 14 and found out that eighty five per cent of the girls had been subjected to FGM, almost two-thirds of them by non-medical personnel.
“Female genital cutting is a deep-rooted practice in Egyptian culture, and it will take more than a law to change it,” says Bedaiwy.
His colleagues in Egypt also interviewed the girls’ parents, who said they disobeyed the law to comply with religious and traditional beliefs and curb the sexual drive of their daughters.
The only way to eradicate female genital mutilation in Egypt is for entire communities to agree on abandoning this brutal practice, so that no particular girl or family is singled out. This collective decision can be achieved through counseling parents and religious leaders, according to Paul Van Look of the World Health Organization.
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