Bristol West MP and Communities Minister Stephen Williams has announced that the frontline community project Integrate Bristol, would receive £20,000 to help end female genital mutilation (FGM), as part of a network of community organisations across the country.
FGM involves the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or any other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
Although the practice is illegal in this country, it still continues and those who carry out the practice in this country are known as ‘cutters’. FGM is commonly carried out on young girls before they reach puberty and is often and carried out using knives, scissors, scalpels and razor blades.
This additional funding will enable Integrate Bristol projects to train ten young people from FGM affected communities, who will travel to schools and colleges across the country delivering quality education about the practice.
The project aims to deliver sixty sessions and reach more than 1,200 students across Britain and Integrate Bristol will also use the funds to host a national conference about FGM, which will train 250 to 300 students and teachers on how to protect girls at risk.
Young girls are often taken to their countries of origin where the ‘cutting’ can be carried out during the summer holidays, allowing time for the girls to “heal” before the new term starts. If the perpetrators are caught in this country, offenders can face a prison sentence of up to fourteen years.
Bristol East MP Kerry McCarthy told The Bristol Post she is worried girls might not come forward if they think their parents are going to go to jail, “it’s exactly the same as the issue of forced marriage, as prosecution can act as a deterrent for girls coming forward.”
However the Labour MP does feel prosecutions send out the message that this is not to be tolerated, but that it’s a difficult job to gather the evidence that you need. “Prosecutions aren’t the be-all and end-all, you want there to be recognition that it’s utterly unacceptable and the parents of young girls to lead that charge.”
Steven Williams believes it’s going to take a concerted effort by the health services, schools, the police and prosecution services, to actually eradicate the practice. He believes this is something we can stop in a relatively short space of time, certainly within our generation.
The Liberal Democrat MP told The Bristol Post, “In the not so distant past, it was customary for women to obey their husbands and to have this in their marriage vows; domestic violence was not to be interfered with by the authorities, who obviously have a very different attitude on that now.”
We also have a different attitude towards beating children in schools, “I’m old enough to have seen children being whipped every day in my school. We think that it’s barbaric that teachers used to beat children with sticks, so just because something has gone on for a while, it doesn’t mean we can’t take a more civilised attitude now.”
Mr Williams says it would be a major failure by government and other authorities, “if they didn’t back up the girls who have been brave enough to stick their own heads above the parapet and speak out against it.”
Thornbury & Yate MP Steve Webb believes, “there is no religious or cultural justification for what is essentially just an act of cruelty and it’s about making it clear that this practice is just wholly unacceptable and to try and change the culture that somehow this is something that you do.”
Sami Ullah, an 18 year old Junior Trustee of Integrate Bristol said, “It is great that the government has taken steps to protect the young girls of our country from a frankly barbaric process. I think PSHE this should be a statuary subjects in schools, I know there’s lots of debate about it, but its still just a debate. I would like the government to take this a bit more seriously.”
Mr Williams’ message to the parent or grandparent who is planning on carrying out the procedure on their daughter is, “although this may have been something that was done to you when you were young, there’s no need to do this to your child now.
“It’s a practice that you really ought not to inflict on your child, for the sake of your child. In Britain this is a criminal offence and it really out to be something that is buried in the past.”