FGM perpetrators devise new methods

The Director at the Department of Gender in the Upper West Region, Mrs Charity Banye has hinted that perpetrators of the heinous Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) have devised subtle ways of plying their profession on innocent babies without necessarily resorting to physical cut.

She explained that due to increased sensitisation against the practice, these perpetrators had silently introduced a process called “Hot Press” to get rid of the clitorises of new born babies even before they developed into adults.

“With this hot press, the person in charge applies shea butter to a hot object and massages the clitoris with the object regularly until it finally diminishes or disappears with time”, she explained.

Mrs Banye was speaking at Wa on Wednesday on the sidelines of a meeting to consolidate efforts aimed at ending FGM. The meeting which was at the instance of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) was part of activities to mark the International Day of Zero Tolerance against FGM on the theme “Accelerating Investment to end Female Genital Mutilation”.

Mrs Banye explained that FGM was the partial or total removal of the clitoris from the genitals of a female mostly for cultural reasons aimed at purportedly making the girl chaste.

She said that due to increased education on the legal consequences of the act, perpetrators had shifted away from cutting the organ to using hot substances and said it behoved on stakeholders to also devise more strategic ways of dealing with the menace.

“The figures are looking gloomy globally because it has been estimated that about four million girls could suffer FGM annually and so it leaves much to be desired especially when we consider the quantum of effort we have devoted to fighting the menace in time past”, she lamented.

She explained that although the idea behind the practice was to make women chaste, it was interesting to note also that the same practice was making more men morally unsound as most men married to victims of FGM with low sexual libido, cheated on their wives.

The Regional Commander at the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit, DVVSU, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ASP) Adoingo Apiiya, also called for collaboration between the Ghana Health Service and the police to identify and arrest perpetrators of FGM.

“When a girl-child is brought to the health centre, the medical staff can help check whether the child had undergone FGM or not so that the parents of such child can immediately be picked up for questioning”, he said.

He believed such stringent measures would help end the menace which was considered constitutionally and globally a human rights violation.

The Programme Specialist/Head with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) decentralised office at Tamale in the Northern Region, Alhaji Mammah Tenii appealed to the stakeholders to join hands and help end FGM in Ghana.

From Lydia Darlington Fordjour, Wa