ORgni year four million of girls in the world risk suffering the mutilation of the external genitals, A practice made mostly without anesthetics, without sterile or antibiotic materialsometimes with fatal consequences, always with physical, psychic and sexual damage that will mark them throughout their lives. Those girls and their violated bodies are much closer to us than we think, why We are among the countries that host the highest numbers of mutilated women in the areas of origin.
Think that boys and girls with migratory backgrounds can Try to break the cycle of this secular violence and protect the 4600 girls who in our country are at risk of suffering it every year It is the enormous challenge that Amref Italy launched with the Y-ACT project, supported by the European Union.
Amrefthe largest African health non -profit organization, has selected and formed about thirty young people who then met the different communities in four Italian cities: they have like this Open a conversation at all obvious, certainly complex, necessarily determined but delicatewhich aimed to question the acceptance of a practice with a strong identity and cultural power, but which is built on a distorted idea of control of the female body, which is gender violence, a violation of human rights.
The Y-Act project against genital mutilations involved thirty young people in four Italian cities. The project is co-financed by the European Union (Cerv-Daphne) and sees Amref Italia as the leader and as a partner the Associazione Le Réseau, the national coordination of new Italian generations (Conngi) and the University of Milan-Bicocca (Amref Health Africa)
We met four protagonists of the project, which ended a few days ago with the presentation to the European Parliament of the Manifesto for the abandonment of women’s genital mutilations. All four with a reason in the lead: those girls.
Genital mutilations: “I suffered it and I don’t want it to happen more”
Rania, 28 years old, in Italy for ten: She is married, she is the mother of two males. Ambassador of the Y-ACT project, he exposes herself “because the girls are free to grow without suffering”
I too, like the others, had taken it as something that happens and therefore had to happen to me too. In my country, at eight, nine years old girls do it. That day there, the families organize a big party, invite many people to eat, the girl is put the henna and the new dress.
The neighbors, when they know it happened, come home and put money under the pillow. What has been done to me, that is, a mutilation that causes very serious consequences on health, I understood it at 20, when I gave birth to my first child. I could not give birththey had to make me cesarean. It was all very difficult.
A little girl cannot understand what is done to her. Not even afterwards he talks about it with his mother, who in turn suffered him and has not spoken to his. None of them will ever talk about it again with anyone. As a big one will hear that relationships with her husband are complicated and menstruation is difficult and if even the trauma of the thought of that day will no longer go away, it will not think it is because they mutilated it.
Instead, I now clearly say that I was born healthy, but that then they mutilated me. Someone says modified: I say no, mutilated. I became a Y-Act leader because I don’t want it to happen more to a single child. The girls must be free to grow without trauma, without fears, without suffering. The Sunna was made to me: it is the partial cut, with the partial seam, while the older ones cut them completely and sought completely. When they tell me “thank goodness that the Sunna has been made to you”, I say that there is no better.
There is a large part of men who, when he discovers that you are not mutilated, refers to you at homebut to a girl I met In Italy the opposite happened: it was left as soon as he understood that she was insteadbecause he knew the damage that mutilation had led to life for his mother. Telling these stories is painful, but it is necessary ».
“We were respectful, persevents, kind”
Laura Gentile41 years old, Y-Act coordinator of Amref Italia. “It has moved something strong that will survive the project itself”
“Female genital mutilations are a harmful practice of the rights of girls and girls, because they are practiced in evolutionary age, in some communities also neonatal: they involve partial or total removal of the external genitalia for non -therapeutic reasons”.
This is the definition that is given by the WHO, which identified them as A harmful practice that concerns women in at least 30 countries around the world, many of them in Africathe rest between the Middle East and other areas of Asia, including some small communities of South America. Mutilations range from type one, the least invasive, to type three, which provides not only removal interventions, but also the closure of the large lips, apart from a small hole for the exit of urine and menstrual blood. There is a fourth type, which contemplates different procedures, like burns and engravings. 230 million women in the world are mutilatedfour million girls are at risk every year.
Y-Act against female genital mutilations
The Y-Act project started in March 2023co-financed by the EU, with Amref Italia leader and, among the partners, the Le Réseau Association, the national coordination of new Italian generations and the University of Milan-Bicocca. Four cities involved- Rome, Milan, Turin and Padua-about thirty young people, including 5 males, which at all obvious, 1800 people achieved in the various communities, almost twice as much as we had foreseen. In the first year, young people followed a training course and Empowerment, following which they entered the communities by opening dialogues and performing actions on a topic that many adults did not think it would be possible to discuss. They were extraordinary bridges. They have set in motion something strong that will survive the project itself, and they did it with an intense, determined but respectful attitude, which we call kind perseverance ».
«Women born in Italy do not want to expose their daughters to practice
Patrizia Farinaprofessor of demography at the Milan-Bicocca University: she is the author of a research on female genital mutilations in Italy conducted in 2019 and promoted by the Department for Equal Opportunities
“In Italy there are 87,600 women who excised, including 7600 minors. The largest group is that of the Nigerian, followed by the Egyptian, while in percentage terms the largest number – exceed 80 percent – are among the Somali women, the Maliane, the Egyptians, the Sudanese and the Burkinabé.
In Italy the rite of mutilation is, fortunately, in gradual remission, as in the rest of the world, apart from Somalia and Sudan. It is interesting that among the not mutilated women, 100 percent do not intend to submit their daughters to practice: It means that a chain of intact women begins to grow from each girl.
I want to highlight a further positive data: regardless of having been mutilated or not, women born in Italy do not consider exposing their daughters to this practice, which is also prohibited here.
In our country, these mothers get away more easily from the identity pressures that motivate families: in the research it emerges at the top of Motivations respect for cultural traditions and social acceptance, therefore having better marriage perspectives, preserving virginitytransmit discipline and values, ensure greater male sexual pleasure, receive religious approval. Another point, which perhaps will not be pleased: research notes that as the level of education increases the opposition of women to practice increases. And this is predictable, but it is less the fact that if we consider the Women in favor of the genital mutilation of the daughters performed in the hospital – And not, however, by the woman to whom the assignment is conferred in the community we register that the majority is educated: these are women who protect the health of the daughters but, at the same time, the perpetuation of tradition.
It is a phenomenon that tells us that The education confers yes the power to choose consciously, but it is not said that the choice goes in the direction that we Westerners hope for».
“Men have to do their part”
David Osarbo Agbonifo, 22 years old, born in Nigeria, is a student at the University of Rome La Sapienza: “Now men have to act”
It is important that men do their part, first becoming aware. The great majority, in fact, ignores the pain inflicted on girls and the terrible consequences that will suffer all their lives. And then, it is crucial to involve them because they are the ones who, in very patriarchal contexts, direct the social and cultural norms of the communities on which female genital mutilation rest. Yet men do not believe they have a role. Slowly, but decisively, through the Y-Act project we have started communicating them how urgent it is that they act.
We understand that they are very afraid of talking about the topic in the presence of other men; Even more they are afraid to publicly express opposition to practice, because they fear the judgment of the community to which they belong. It also depends on the widespread belief that European movements oppose the mutilations, when, on the contrary, activism against mutilations was born in Africa and there is also strengthening there.
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