Breaking Through Tradition (word document, 102 KB)
To report on a radically different approach to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Africa we look the international NGO Tostan (
www.tostan.org (New window)) whose work in Senegal has let 1600 villages to abandon this practice in the last 5 years - representing more than 30 per cent of the country's practicing population.UNICEF has identified the Tostan model as the most promising in ending FGM in Africa as it is very different from other anti-FGM projects. This strategy is not about anti-FGM laws, police raids or walking into villages with plastic vaginas to demonstrate the effects of FMG.
In fact its starting point is not even about female genital mutilation. When Tostan staff meet with men and women who are practicing FGM in their community, they offer information about human rights, new knowledge about health and development - communities respond well to this approach and are drawn into a process of reflection and analysis of their own behavior. When it comes to choosing an issue to apply this learning to, they almost always choose their practice of FGM.
Molly Merching, director of Tostan says: "The religious leaders are extremely important in this movement. Sometimes they had not understood the dangers of this practice because the women were not talking about it. They were hiding it because it was a taboo subject, it was never discussed. When the leaders hear for the first time the women describe all the problems they have related to this practice, as children, and as women when they got married, the men start to change and they say, we just didn't know."
The Tostan education empowers men and women to speak out and demand their human rights be respected. This includes not only abandoning FGC and child marriage, but also assuring regular village clean ups, timely vaccination, registering and maintaining girls in school, pre and post-natal consultations and conflict resolution. The whole community is affected; even women excisors who previously made their living by cutting girls are included in this process and in the best case become peer educators.
Once Tostan commences its program in a village, it typically takes three years before citizens decide that they want to abandon FGM. Public declarations in villages to stop carrying out FGM take place amid vibrant celebrations with music, dancing, and speeches from elders and prominent citizens. Religious leaders are always part of the ceremonies, and the national press is invited to give the event even more cloud. Often people from other villages attend and carry the message back to their own communities, starting discussion for change.
