'The time has come to disarm. Lay down your weapons'

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'The time has come to disarm. Lay down your weapons'

 

Jan 26 2004 The Guardian - In the school hall in Berbera, a sweltering Somali port on the Gulf of Aden, the audience is jam-packed and sweating. Women swathed from head to foot in bright colours chatter noisily and wipe their faces with the ends of their scarves as they wait for the ceremony to begin. On the wall posters declare: "The time has come to disarm! Put down your weapons!"

 

The mayor takes his place on the platform and the hubbub subsides. His speech opens the occasion. "I want to make it clear that we, in the regional authority, are with you in this war." The war the mayor is referring to is not the type all too familiar in this part of the world, but the war on female genital mutilation.

 

The "weapons" to be laid down are not the guns that are so prolific in this society, but the scissors, knives, razor blades, needles and surgical thread used by those who, until now, have cut and stitched girls' genitalia as their profession. Military images carry over seamlessly.

 

A few years ago, for a man to stand on a platform anywhere in Somalia and talk about this subject would have been unthinkable. This is a land where the discussion of sexual issues - especially female ones - remains shrouded in taboo. Slowly, they are emerging from the shadows. Here, at the age of seven or eight, 95% of girls still endure a traditional surgical operation to excise their external sexual organs and almost completely close their vaginal aperture. The practice, mistakenly thought to be sanctioned in the Koran, is an extreme form of protection against male sexual predators in the desert, where the nomadic herding life is pursued. Today, women activists and many health workers know it is harmful and redundant - and not ordained in Islam.

 

The mayor sits next to colleagues from city hall, doctors and sheikhs, and is not the only man in the hall. But for him to have come and spoken out on the subject is important. He soon slips away, and there follows a theatrical display of speeches, witness statements, loud applause, laughter, songs, and mopping of brows. Sado, the local head of maternal and child health services, is the first to greet the six circumcisers of Berbera in whose honour the event is being held. Each carries a bag containing her instruments; each has volunteered to disarm.

 

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