{"id":27745,"date":"2019-01-02T09:24:34","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T09:24:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27745"},"modified":"2019-01-02T09:24:34","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T09:24:34","slug":"in-kurdish-iraq-women-strive-to-end-genital-mutilation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27745","title":{"rendered":"In Kurdish Iraq, women strive to end genital mutilation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nSHARBOTY SAGHIRA, Iraq: Dark skies were threatening rain over an Iraqi Kurdistan village, but one woman refused to budge from outside a house where two girls were at risk of female genital mutilation.
\u201cI know you\u2019re home! I just want to talk,\u201d called out Kurdistan Rasul, 35, a pink headscarf forming a sort of halo around her plump features.
For many, she is an angel: an Iraqi Kurdish activist with the non-profit WADI on a crusade to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM).
FGM, in which a girl or woman\u2019s genitals are cut or removed, was once extremely common in the Kurdish region, but WADI\u2019s campaigning has chipped away at the practice.
Rasul, who herself was cut at a young age, is helping to eradicate FGM in the village of Sharboty Saghira, east of regional capital Irbil.
She has visited 25 times, challenging its imam on perceptions FGM is mandated by Islam and warning midwives about infections and emotional trauma.
That morning, she used the mosque\u2019s minaret to vaguely invite villagers to discuss their health. When eight women entered the mosque, she patiently described FGM\u2019s dangers.
At the end, a thin woman approached Rasul and said her neighbor was planning to mutilate her two toddlers.
That sent Rasul clambering up the muddy pathway to the house, first knocking then frantically demanding to be allowed in.
But the door remained shut.
\u201cWe are changing people\u2019s convictions. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so hard,\u201d Rasul told AFP, reluctantly walking away.<\/p>\n

FGM appears to have been practiced for decades in Iraq\u2019s Kurdish region, usually known for more progressive stances on women\u2019s rights.
Victims are usually between four and five years old but are impacted for years by bleeding, extremely reduced sexual sensitivity, tearing during childbirth, and depression.
The procedure can prove fatal, with some girls dying from blood loss or infection.
After years of campaigning, Kurdish authorities banned FGM under a 2011 domestic violence law, slapping perpetrators with up to three years in prison and a roughly $80,000 fine.
The numbers have dropped steadily since.
In 2014, a UN children\u2019s agency (UNICEF) survey found 58.5 percent of women in the Kurdish region had been mutilated.
This year, UNICEF found a lower rate: 37.5 percent of girls aged 15-49 in the Kurdish region had undergone FGM.
It compares with less than one percent across the rest of Iraq, which has no FGM legislation.
\u201cShe cut me, I was hurt and cried,\u201d said Shukriyeh, 61, of the day her mother mutilated her more than 50 years ago.
\u201cI was just a child. How could I be angry at my mother?\u201c
Shukriyeh\u2019s six daughters, the youngest of whom is 26, have all been cut too. But with so much campaigning against FGM, they have declined to do the same to their girls.
Years ago, 38-year-old Zeinab allowed female relatives to cut her eldest daughter, then three.
\u201cI was so scared that I stayed far away and came to wash her after they cut her,\u201d she recalled, squirming.
After WADI\u2019s sessions, she protected her other two daughters from mutilation.
\u201cAt the time I accepted (it), but now I wouldn\u2019t. Yes, I regret it. But what can I do now?\u201c<\/p>\n

Rasul told AFP it was hard to combat a form of gender-based violence that women themselves practiced.
\u201cYoung men and women agree FGM should stop. But after we leave a village, older women talk to them and tell them: \u2018be careful, that NGO wants to spread problems,\u2019\u201d she said.
UNICEF\u2019s 2014 survey found 75 percent of women saw their own mothers as the most supportive of cutting.
\u201cI tell these women: this is violence that you\u2019re carrying out with your own hands \u2014 women against women,\u201d said Rasul.
That proximity has also made FGM victims less likely to seek justice.
\u201cThe 2011 law isn\u2019t being used because girls won\u2019t file a complaint against their mothers or fathers,\u201d said Parwin Hassan, who heads the Kurdish Regional Government\u2019s anti-FGM unit.
Hassan has wanted to work on the issue since she narrowly escaped it: her mother pulled her away from their midwife after a last-minute change of heart.
\u201cI\u2019ve been working on women\u2019s issues since 1991, but this is the most painful for me. That\u2019s why I promised to eradicate it completely,\u201d she told AFP.
She said Kurdish authorities would unveil a strategy next year to strengthen the 2011 law and carry out more awareness campaigns.
And for its part, the UN expects it can better fight FGM in 2019, partly due to the reduced threat posed by the Daesh group.
After Daesh emerged in 2014, UN agencies scrambled to deal with displaced families and combat operations, said UNICEF gender-based violence specialist Ivana Chapcakova.
\u201cNow that the acute emergency is over, we can regroup to have that final push toward making FGM a thing of the past everywhere in Iraq,\u201d she told AFP.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SHARBOTY SAGHIRA, Iraq: Dark skies were threatening rain over an Iraqi Kurdistan village, but one woman refused to budge from outside a house where two girls were at risk of female genital mutilation.\u201cI know you\u2019re home! I just want to talk,\u201d called out Kurdistan Rasul, 35, a pink headscarf forming a sort of halo around…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}