Female Genital Mutilation

Baroness Rendell of Babergh Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rendell of Babergh (Lab)]

My Lords, female genital mutilation has been perpetrated on girls since ancient times. The first known instance of it was seen on an Egyptian mummy dating from 200 BC. The UN has recognised FGM as torture and in calling for its elimination describes it as cruel, inhumane and degrading to women. The first law criminalising FGM in the United Kingdom was passed in 1985, the second 18 years later. However, there have been no prosecutions to date, while prosecutions in France, for instance, are numerous. Since the passing of a law against FGM in Kuria East, in central Africa, eight people are awaiting prosecution and two are serving three years’ imprisonment for employing a circumciser to mutilate their 13 year-old daughter.

A key barrier to FGM prevention, according to the recently published joint statement by the Intercollegiate Group, Tackling FGM in the UK, is the failure of professionals to respond when presented with a child who may be at risk of FGM. Such children include a girl born to a woman who has undergone FGM and any female child whose elder sister has undergone FGM; she must be considered as at immediate risk. Girls living in the woman’s or child’s household should also be considered at risk. FGM is child abuse. It causes pain, haemorrhage, difficulty in urinating, complications in menstruation, considerable problems in sexual intercourse and childbirth, and can bring about fistula and, sometimes, death. We have a large number of child protection systems in the UK, particularly focused on FGM, but the systematic screening of girls through annual physical examinations, as is carried out in France, is seen here as too intrusive. Does the Minister agree with the findings of the joint statement that where there is a suspicion that a girl has undergone FGM, assessments and medicals are helpful and examinations should not be seen as abusive? Is she aware that, as part of a whole health assessment, the standing committee of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, children and their parents do not find such examinations traumatic?

In the UK, the number of children subjected to it is not known. Rather, the associations and groups that make assessments of numbers come up with varying figures: 66,000 women who have had FGM performed on them is a figure most agree on, but now many say that this is a gross underestimate. Knowing who and how many have suffered this abuse, however, is only half the battle. School teachers, GPs, midwives and nurses need to be aware of which children and young people in their care have suffered FGM, and report their findings to the police.

FGM has to be stopped. These words have repeatedly been uttered for the 29 years since the passing of the first Bill by those of us who are appalled by FGM. I ask the Minister whether 2014 can be the year that sees the beginning of the end of it.

Zoos

Baroness Rendell of Babergh Excerpts

Monday 8th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Rendell of Babergh]

My Lords, in congratulating my noble friend Lord Harrison on instituting this needful and interesting debate, I declare an interest as a vice-president of Chester Zoo. I believe that most of us carry in our heads a sad image of a tiger or bear miserably pacing up and down behind bars and being gawped at by a crowd of onlookers. In larger zoos in the Western world, this is becoming a thing of the past. It is less so in small zoos; this must change.

Chester Zoo was established nearly 80 years ago to be a zoo without bars, and now it cares for more than 8,000 animals representing 400 species in 110 acres of gardens. The aim of the zoo is to be a major force in conserving biodiversity worldwide, achieving this through a combination of field conservation, research, conservation breeding, animal welfare and education. It is an example of what zoos should be. In addition to this, it is a major local employer with over 310 permanent staff, rising to about 600 employees at peak season. Regional spending generated by the zoo equates to about £40 million per annum and nearly £3 million at a local level. Those who administer zoos, particularly zoos which are neither very successful for the animals nor for those who come to see them, would do well to emulate Chester and study what has made it so successful and how it raises its own funding.

Looking in particular at those projects and innovations that zoo purists may have had doubts about but which became major attractions there is, for instance, the exhibition of giant dinosaur figures in a special area that is immensely attractive to children, the overhead train that spans the zoo and refreshment outlets and shops that make a special appeal to child visitors. The zoo is an important education venue in the north-west, teaching around 28,000 pupils annually on site in dedicated classrooms, with a further 70,000 pupils visiting as part of self-education trips. Children and young people are particularly important, for it is they who will bring their own children in the future. Those who run Chester Zoo know what a part zoos have to play in showing children kindness to animals and daily care for them. Certain species particularly attract children, notably the reptiles that so many adults find repulsive. I remember taking my own grandsons to Chester when they were little and how much they loved hearing zoologists talk while they held a snake and a rat.

Chester Zoo has 10 major field programmes working on a variety of species and habitats worldwide and covering 150 projects over 50 countries. It spent more than £1 million in 2011 to support these field conservation projects. It has a master plan with its first phase due to open in spring 2015. Entitled “Islands”, it is a scheme focused on the fragile biodiversity of south-east Asia. It awaits planning consent and should lead to: an increase of 150,000 visitors on delivery of the project; additional revenue of £2.8 million per annum for the zoo; 45 full-time jobs on the site plus an additional 35 from the related construction work; and an anticipated 31 long-term jobs within the wider business community.

The zoo is lovely. All the animals have plenty of space. The tigers have a wooded park; three cubs were born this year. The Indian elephants have a wide plain with a lake and waterfall; three elephants are currently pregnant. I have been honoured by being asked to name two calves, a male and a much prized female, Tunga, the powerful chieftain and Jamilah, the beautiful one. The bat house is dark and mysterious, populated by these beautiful fluttering creatures. The jaguars have a huge home, which is provided by the car company and divided into segments. Each has a house of its own. Jaguars are solitary creatures that like to live alone. They meet when going to the stream to bathe and drink. Red pandas live in the tops of tall trees and are free to move away if they wish, but they do not wish to. This should become a general standard, not a particular one, of wildlife care in captivity, a far cry from those pacing creatures of what we must hope are former times.

Female Genital Mutilation

Baroness Rendell of Babergh Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Rendell of Babergh]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to increase public awareness of female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom and to bring prosecutions under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I respectfully remind noble Lords that Back-Bench contributions to the debate initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, are limited to four minutes.

[Baroness Rendell of Babergh]

My Lords, I begin by declaring an interest as a patron of the National Clinical Group against female genital mutilation and as a participant and narrator in the DVD made by that group.

Female genital mutilation is an African practice, common to many of the countries of Africa since time immemorial—not Muslim or tied to any particular religious faith, but cultural and often tribal. It began to take place in this country when immigrants from Somalia and Sudan, as well as Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone began coming to live in the United Kingdom. FGM was brought here but did not diminish in its countries of origin where, in Somalia, for instance, 100 per cent of the female population has suffered this procedure. In parts of that country death from loss of blood and infection is as high as 10 per cent. FORWARD, the Foundation for Women’s Health Research and Development, puts the figure of women at risk from FGM each year as 3 million in Africa alone. When we see on our televisions mothers and children in drought-stricken Somalia at starvation point, suffering the effects of famine, we should remember that these women will all have been mutilated, and some crippled by mutilation.

In some communities the practice is embedded in coming-of-age rituals, sometimes for entry into women’s secret societies. In spite of the intense pain caused by performing surgery by an untrained person without use of anaesthetic or sterile instruments, and in spite of this operation permanently denying them pleasure in sexual intercourse and making childbirth more painful and hazardous than it would otherwise be, girls themselves may desire to undergo it as a result of social pressure from peers and family. Those who have not undergone it may not be allowed to milk the cows or go to certain parts of the farm. Such women believe that they can never become a real wife, and parents are convinced that they are doing the best for their daughters in insisting on it, having a good marriage in view. In parts of northern Kenya young men will not marry an uncircumcised girl. FGM is thought to make a girl clean and beautiful and to preserve virginity. In fact, it is unhygienic and damaging to fertility, leading to infection, bladder disease and fistula.

As I have said, FGM was brought here 40 years ago and more; a practice which in African countries was, and is, so common that talking about it was no more necessary than discussing the age-old preparation of certain kinds of food or some system of making clothes. This was the way it was done, so women who came here saw no need to speak of a practice that was accepted and taken for granted. It became, and still is, a secret. It is this secrecy in families and communities, not to mention contact with the outside world, which has made changing the attitude of immigrants and the children and grandchildren of immigrants so difficult and near-impossible. People will not speak of it. They will not talk to their non-African neighbours about it, still less to doctors or the police. It is only when a woman becomes pregnant that her FGM is discovered and a doctor or midwife asks, “Where did you have this done?”.

They want to know because performing it is against the law in the United Kingdom. The Female Circumcision Act was passed in 1985 and superseded by the Female Genital Mutilation Act in 2003. This later Act makes taking a female person out of this country for FGM to be performed abroad punishable by a maximum of 14 years’ imprisonment. Yet FORWARD estimates that 24,000 women are at risk of FGM in the UK and over 66,000 live with its results in England and Wales, figures which may be grossly underestimated since the data were based on the 2001 census.

Although the police are intent upon bringing a prosecution—it is hoped for more its deterrent effect than as punishment—no prosecution has yet taken place, the secrecy factor being in great part responsible for this failure. Girls who can be heard in north London talking to their friends about being “cut” as initiation into a kind of community membership will say that FGM was performed on them as babies or before they came to the United Kingdom. Women presenting themselves at ante-natal clinics may well say the same and midwives are naturally wary of inquiring too closely into this highly sensitive and delicate cultural area.

The public at large know little about FGM and many of those who have heard it called female circumcision believe it to have some connection with male circumcision and be therapeutic or a mere formality. I have told those who have asked me what it really is and my explanation has been received with horror and in some cases, “I don't want to know”. But I believe that the more people who know the details of this practice the better; that they know that some victims—the word is not an exaggeration—are babies of three months or even newborns; many are infants and five year-olds.

Obviously, because of its nature, it cannot be the subject of a widely advertised and well illustrated campaign of the kind that alerts the public to the dangers of, say, heart disease, prostate disease and many forms of cancer. Does the Minister believe that such widespread advertising of what FGM is and what remedies are possible—I am thinking of reversals—could be achieved and might be effective?

Reversals are now being performed and they are of enormous benefit to mutilated women. Parts of the excised genitalia cannot, of course, be restored. No surgeon, however skilful, can do that, but reversal is of great benefit to women, restoring ease in urination and establishing straightforward menstrual periods. Most of all, perhaps, it ensures easier childbirth and less danger to mother and child.

I am constantly asked by those who know what FGM is, why, if it happens in the UK, there have been no prosecutions eight years after the passing of the Act. It is not for want of trying that the police have so far been able to bring no prosecutions, against either practitioners carrying out FGM here, or those taking a child abroad for mutilation to be performed in a country less aware of its dangers. The police are anxious to prosecute, as much to provide a deterrent as to punish the perpetrator. They would be much assisted by public awareness. It would be particularly valuable in the struggle against FGM if teachers, especially in primary schools, were to be on the watch for female children who tell them that they are being taken to the country of their parents' origin for a holiday or to visit family in Somalia, for instance, Nigeria or the Côte d'Ivoire.

The Metropolitan Police, in conjunction with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Kids' Taskforce, have made a film to raise awareness of the issue which will be launched next Monday at the Lilian Baylis Technology School in Kennington. The National Clinical Group against female genital mutilation has had worldwide success and benefited a large number of women with its DVD showing a surgical reversal being performed. I understand, too, that there are films being made, often by schoolchildren, all over this country. Do the Government support the making of such films showing the pain and suffering caused by FGM and exposing the superstitious beliefs which help it to remain an ongoing custom? There are 16 specialist FGM clinics in England, 10 of them in London. Unfortunately, many are at risk of closure due to funding and staff cuts. Does the Minister agree that it is essential these clinics remain open? Again, does she agree that encouraging teachers to be aware of what is a very real danger to young girls can be of help to the police in bringing perhaps the single prosecution which would be such a major deterrent and factor in putting an end to this practice in the United Kingdom?

Violence Against Women

Baroness Rendell of Babergh Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend is absolutely right. That is why the more than £28 million we have earmarked is directed towards those specialist services to ensure that victims are given the best possible support.

[Baroness Rendell of Babergh]

My Lords, female genital mutilation is a cruel and barbarous form of violence against women. What action are the Government taking to put an end to female genital mutilation in this country, and what can be done to bring about a prosecution under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003?

Women in Society

Baroness Rendell of Babergh Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rendell of Babergh]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for occasioning this debate and for choosing this subject, not just on the role of women but on women’s position in the modern world. My intention is to speak—not by any means for the first time—on the position of women trapped by a tradition that keeps them in a world closer to the medieval. Some women, perhaps the majority, have never enjoyed such freedom and never so closely approached equality with men as we do today, but that is some of us. They are in the minority, those who suffer a lifetime of discomfort, the curtailment of liberty, daily embarrassment, monthly misery and constant pain, but it is a very large minority, running into millions—perhaps as many as 10 million—for women’s genitalia are mutilated as a matter of course across sub-Saharan Africa from west to east, as well as in parts of Asia.

When on television, on the internet or in our newspapers we see pictures of starving women, women afflicted by flood and famine, refugee women with their children or women as victims of rampaging armies, do we ever think that disaster is not the only burden that they have to bear? In very many cases, they have been genitally mutilated as well. I have no space here to describe the process of the various greater and lesser types of female genital mutilation. I have done so before on many occasions.

This may be the place to explain that FGM or female circumcision, as it used to be called, is in no way analogous to male circumcision. It is never therapeutic, as male circumcision may be, and it always does harm. Very few—a tiny minority in this country— want to talk about it. Very few would be willing to give evidence against perpetrators. It is enough to say now that it is a useless procedure that serves no purpose other than to help to enslave women and to keep them in their place—that place being subservience to men.

We have as many as 200,000 women living in this country who have been mutilated. To “cut” a woman, as the procedure is known, is against the law in the many African countries where it is practised. That law is generally disregarded. FGM is against the law here. It carries a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment, but so far there have been no prosecutions. Silence on the subject prevails in the Somali, Sudanese and Nigerian communities, among many others. The police, who are strongly against FGM, are hampered in their efforts to bring prosecutions against circumcisers who come here to perform FGM and against parents who take their children to the Horn of Africa for it to be carried out there.

The Metropolitan Police is determined to find a way of bringing a prosecution. It knows that such success would be a huge deterrent to those planning mutilations. Sending a circumciser to prison would be the best warning possible to others but, in the absence of prosecution and conviction, the heavy penalty must itself be a deterrent and the police would prefer to deter than to punish.

In the dozen years that have passed since I first began campaigning against this practice, knowledge of it has spread widely. As well as FORWARD, the principal association opposing it, groups small and large have been started all over the United Kingdom. Most of them include in their membership women who have suffered FGM and who are therefore best able to instruct others about the pain suffered by the children on whom it is performed—some as young as four or five years old and a few babies under one year old—and many can number health professionals among their members. Hospitals increasingly incorporate African clinics where women can attend for help and treatment.

I am the patron of the London-based FGM National Clinical Group, where reversals of mutilation are routinely performed by a woman surgeon. Recently, we produced a DVD, which we have circulated across the United Kingdom, showing this reversal being performed. The procedure is carried out under the National Health Service and is available to all women who choose to have it. If it is not the perfect answer, for nothing can restore entirely what has been destroyed, it is of enormous help to women whose destiny seemed a lifetime of pain and fear.

Unfortunately, a large number of health professionals, especially those operating outside the big cities, still remain ignorant of FGM, fail to recognise it and are at a loss to know how to treat a mutilated woman in labour and childbirth. It would be of enormous help in making FGM in the United Kingdom a thing of the past if recognising it and knowing how to remedy its complications were to become part of the training for every doctor and midwife and if that training could include teaching the sensitive approach necessary when in contact with African women immigrants, who will be essentially modest and inhibited.

Women in Horn of Africa countries have a saying. It sounds antiquated to our ears—to us whose ideas of sexual relationships and women’s place in society have been so radically transformed in the past half-century—but it represents a reality to African women. It sheds a new light, or perhaps I should say a new darkness, on what most other women would see as happy occasions in their lives. I have quoted it before, but it may be illuminating to quote it again. They say that the three days of sorrow in a woman’s life are the day she is “cut”, the day she is married and the day she gives birth. There is no need to be more explicit. We have only to give it a moment’s thought to understand its dreadful meaning. I ask the Minister whether the Government’s intention is to keep these women in mind and to do all that they can to help the police and the health professionals in their efforts to end the practice of female genital mutilation.