Fadumo Korn takes no account of the feelings of the audience when she describes what was done to her as a seven-year-old girl in the Somali steppe. “There is no word that can describe the pain of being robbed of your organs without anesthesia,” she says. “The woman took the razor blade and scraped my clitoris down to the bone.”
She almost died of the consequences of brutal female genital mutilation almost 50 years ago, says Faduma Korn. “But I survived. And I use my disability as a weapon. I convey my sexuality and my family life to the outside world in order to educate. “
Faduma Korn has been living in Germany for 40 years. She is married to a German man and speaks Bavarian. The fight against the mutilating downplaying of “genital cutting” of female genitals has become her life’s work. As chair of the association “Nala – Education instead of Circumcision”, she works for education; she has just handed over 125,000 signatures to her Federal Minister for Family Affairs Franziska Giffey (SPD) for her petition “Fighting genital mutilation in Germany”.
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A survey that Giffey presented on Thursday shows how necessary their commitment is. Accordingly, the number of genitally mutilated women living in Germany has increased dramatically in the past three years due to the increased immigration. Almost 68,000 women in Germany live with such an injury, 44 percent more than in 2017. The survey was commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs and was developed using a methodology developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality.
After that, most of the women affected come from Eritrea, Somalia, Indonesia, Egypt and Nigeria – countries where the 5000 year old tradition of female genital mutilation is still widely practiced. For Giffey, a “grave human rights violation and archaic offense” with “lifelong physical and psychological consequences”.
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Faduma Korn reported on her own suffering at the press conference with Federal Family Minister Franziska Giffey
Source: dpa
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The fatal: The tradition lives on and also endangers the girls of the second generation. Depending on the scenario, between 3,000 and 15,000 girls in Germany are at risk of circumcision, an increase of more than 160 percent compared to 2017, said Giffey. “Genital mutilation, forced marriages – these are phenomena that are in the midst of us.”
Especially in the summer holidays, the girls run the risk of being taken to their parents’ home countries and maimed there. Some of the interventions would also be offered in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, possibly also illegally in German private homes, the minister warned. As a mayor of Neukölln, letters were sent to schools every summer with the appeal to watch out for signs of such trips and, if necessary, to raise the alarm.
The legal basis for action has long been in place; according to Section 226a of the Criminal Code, genital mutilation is a crime that is punishable by at least one year in prison. In order to prevent so-called holiday circumcision, the passport law was also changed in 2017. Anyone who wants to travel abroad with girls or women to have genital mutilation undertaken there is now at risk of having their passport withdrawn.
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But both measures are completely useless. Giffey says there are currently only one or two convictions under Section 226a of the Criminal Code. “That doesn’t correspond in any way to the number of cases.” The amended passport law is also a toothless tiger, as a small request from the FDP faction from last year shows. Accordingly, the federal government has not known a single case since the passport law was changed in which a person’s passport was withdrawn on suspicion of leaving for the purpose of female genital mutilation.
“The numbers show that neither laws nor prohibitions work. The fact that the federal government relies on legal measures that turn out to be fig leaves has fatal consequences, ”commented the deputy FDP parliamentary group leader Katja Suding, who made the request, the current figures. “Girls continue to experience cruel physical and psychological suffering from female genital mutilation that tortures them for a lifetime. The federal government must do more to protect girls and women effectively, ”she said to WELT.
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Giffey conceded that it would be difficult to prosecute genital mutilation without specific reports from the community. The Federal Government is therefore now primarily focusing on measures for prevention, protection and education. For this purpose, a federal-state working group was set up, which also includes the Federal Medical Association and Integra, the umbrella organization of NGOs that work against female genital mutilation in Germany.
The introduction of a letter of protection issued by the Federal Government is also under discussion. It is designed to prevent families from being circumcised for vacation by providing information about impending prison terms. “The close association with the NGOs is particularly important to me, because these organizations manage to bring awareness and preventive measures into the respective communities,” said Giffey. With her club, Fadumo Korn has already trained around 100 girls for prevention work, as she says. “Giving up is not part of my vocabulary.”
