SOLIFE Kick Against Female Genital Mutilation

SOLIFE Kick Against Female Genital Mutilation

A group under the name of Society for Life Changers and Good Parental Care (SOLIFE) have charged women group stakeholders in the state to beef up campaign against Female Genital Mutilation and Circumcision, (FGM\C) with the creation of community awareness to eradicate the FGM practices in Osun according to the worrisome National Demographic Health Survey, saying urgent attention is required to abolish the practice.

The Board of Trustee Chairman, Mr Aremu Stephen who said the rating of Osun state as number one on the hierarchy of the six FGM\C most endemic states, disclosed this at the opening ceremony of the three days CAMP Project 2019 for CBOS/Women Group Training on Creating Community Awareness to Eliminate Female Genital Mutilation and Circumcision in Osun, held at the event hall of Omilas Continental hotel in Osogbo, the state capital.

He stated that championing the intensive advocacy against female circumcision through the CAMP Project meeting is to sensitize the people of the state on the dangers and disadvantages of female genital mutilation and to discourage the practice made paramount, based on the health risk associated with the practice, as well as the pattern and trend of medicalization.

At the program funded by POSITIVE ACTION for Girls and Women, Aremu described the act as bad culture, which is disheartening and barbaric in modern day, however he disclosed rigorous campaigns and sensitization against female genital mutilation will be taken to the market women, community development associations, religious place of worships, motor parks, local government health officers, birth attendants as well as traditional rulers so that more people will be aware that is bad and should be eradicated.

He added that Female Genital Mutilation and Circumcision expose its victims to HIV and other health implications of FGM which ranges from dangerous infections arising from unsanitary conditions in which the practice is carried out to death through severe bleeding as well as pain and trauma, as mutilated infants, girls and women face irreversible lifelong health risks among other consequences.

Aremu who posited that FGM is also a violation of fundamental human rights carried out on a child at a very young age when there is no possibility of individuals consent, disclosed to the CAMP Project 2019 meeting how to access data about gender and FGM\C usefulness, analysis, identification, familiarization with existing laws, work-plan and tracking tools, and strategies needed to be used in their communities in the campaign against Female Genital Mutilation and Circumcision in Osun.

Adding further, the BOT Chairman stated that, aside FGM being a serious human rights violation of women and girls, and its having grave health consequences, the Government of the State of Osun have enacted law in 2002 for the elimination of Female Genital Mutilation/ Circumcision, and as such it is necessary that the practice be totally eliminated in the state of Osun.

Participants at the CAMP Project 2019 CBOS/Women Group training on creating Awareness to Eliminate Female Genital Mutilation\Circumcision Practices in Osun state were drawn from the women groups and non-governmental organizations in the state with the Goal of Ending FGM to Save More Lives.