Human rights barrister calls on men to speak out against FGM

A human rights barrister says men have a duty to speak out against female genital mutilation because without them the practice will not end.

Dexter Dias QC said FGM is not simply a “women’s problem”. He warned that many men from FGM-practising communities pretend they do not know anything about it — even though it is carried out to please them.

At an FGM conference in Tower Hamlets he said: “It is done by older women on younger women for men. If we want to fight a social practice that is so harmful and is grounded in patriarchy there is little better you can do than to enlist some of the patriarchs.”

Some 103,000 women and girls living in the UK are estimated to have had FGM, which in its most extreme form involves cutting off the clitoris and sewing the vagina shut.

Mr Dias said: “FGM is fundamentally about patriarchy, but that doesn’t mean much to people. What it means is controlling the sexuality of women by mutilating their genitals.”

Campaigner and FGM survivor Leyla Hussein said it was hard to believe that men who are married to women with extreme forms of FGM do not know anything is wrong.

She added that fathers have a duty to protect their daughters from having the same procedure as their mothers, and can refuse to pay for it.

“FGM is done for you [men] so you need to speak up,” she said. “You decide the name of your child and the school she will go to and who she will marry but somehow you weren’t available when her genitals were cut off?”

Mr Dias said: “Why I am so interested in FGM is it is a human rights issue. It doesn’t matter that I am not a woman, that I am not from a practising community and that I am not from a particular religious group. We share a common humanity.”

The Cruel Cut conference took place before a major fundraising event which raised £40,000 for London charity Manor Gardens, which provides support for survivors of FGM.

Comedians Sara Pascoe and Kate Smurthwaite, pianist Kate Whitley and poet Sabrina Mahfouz were among the performers at the event. A major auction including a signed Tracey Emin print helped to raise £40,000.

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