Over FGM death: Govt`s rights commitment queried

The credibility of the Sierra Leone government has been called to
question over its apparent reluctance to prosecute the death of an
underage girl who was compulsorily subjected to Female Genital
Mutilation (FGM).
Nine year-old Zainab Wumba became the latest victim of the menace of
the globally condemned practice when she was accused of intruding into a Bondo Bush (female initiation ceremony).
The bizarre incident occurred in Bondayma Village in the Nimikoro
Chiefdom, Kono District.
According to sources, the child had climbed up a tree that was within
the vicinity of a Bondo Bush and she was thought to have seen what she wasn't permitted to.
The Sowei (elderly female circumciser), therefore ordered her
immediate arrest and her parents were fined le 1, 500, 000 (One
million five hundred thousand leones), failure of which she was
forcefully circumcised as a punishment.
FGM, which is otherwise called Female Genital Cutting (FGC) or female
circumcision, involves

partial or total removal of the external female
genitalia.
The practice is predominant across Africa and the Middle East, fuelled
mainly by religious and cultural beliefs.
West Africa is at the top of the game on the African continent and
Sierra Leone is just one of the leading countries in the sub-region
where some cultures have historically embraced it with so strong a
passion.
However, the UN which last year outlawed the practice says it has no
medical benefit and only endangers the lives of women and girls.
A number of religious scholars, especially those of the Islamic faith
which has been fronted as espousing it, have also spoken against it.
Opponents cite crude and often unsterilized instruments used largely
by untrained circumcisers who they say endanger the lives of victims
by risking infection or bleeding to death.
The case of young Zainab was first reported mid May.
According to the accounts of civil society activists, the first
attempt at cutting her proved unsuccessful, prompting a follow-up
which led to her bleeding uncontrollably to death.
Police spokesman, Assistant Superintendent Ibrahim Samura, said at the time they were investigating the matter.
"I am baffled as to why they have not charged the matter to court up
to now," laments Christiana Davis-Cole, Project Coordinator of the
Legal Access through Women Yearning for Equality, Rights and Social
Justice (LAWYERS).
LAWYERS has been pursuing the matter from day-one but its
representatives have grown "pessimistic" by the pace of investigation,
she says.
According to her, the postmortem result showed Zainab died of bleeding and wonder why the delay in court action.
Curiously, no one, besides the UN country team, has issued any
statement from either the government or any local or international NGO on the matter; not even from LAWYERS itself, prompting insinuations on how much political influence has been exerted on what is one of the few means of accessing justice by the country`s largely marginalized female population.
Despite repeatedly trumpeting its commitment to meeting its
international human rights obligations, Sierra Leone has failed to
meet its obligations when it comes to FGM, stresses Davis-Cole.
The UN General Assembly in December 2012 passed a resolution
unanimously outlawing the practice.
Analysts say the government fears upsetting its political support
base, hence its lackluster attitude towards addressing it.
Almost about the same period the death of Zainab was reported,
Minister of Social Welfare, Gender and Children`s Affair, Moijua Kai
Kai, was quoted just about ruling out a total ban.
Eradicating FGM, he argued in front of the parliamentary sub committee on social justice, could be a recipe for social instability.
Consequently, forceful initiations have become a fashion, as it were.
The north and eastern part of the country are said to be the last
bastion of the practice the country.
In 2012, five young girls from Koidu took refuge in the offices of
LAWYERS after their parents attempted to forcefully initiate them,
recalls Davis-Cole.
Two of them, she adds, were above 18 but they did not approve of the
idea of circumcision. The three were all minor.
That case was settled and those girls were left alone.
Similarly, at least three different cases were reported in different
chiefdoms in Port Loko district about last year, according to other
civil society organizations monitoring the practice.
"Without commenting on the specific facts of this [latest] case, it is
the UNCT [UN Country Team] position that domestic law in Sierra Leone is clear that there should be no female genital mutilation on children under the age of 18 years," says UN Resident Coordinator`s office in a statement released May 30.
"Further, the UNCT recalls Sierra Leone's commitment during the
Universal Periodic Review in May 2011, and in line with its
international obligations, that Sierra Leone should urgently: adopt
measures to eradicate female genital mutilation, and conduct enhanced and robust awareness raising campaigns, particularly among families and traditional leaders, of its harmful effects."
The pace of ongoing investigation appears even more suspicious in the
eyes of Davis-Cole who suspects political interference.
She says information they`d received suggests majority of the police
officers at the station which was handling the case have been
transferred, presumably to kill the case.
And the officer who was in charge, she adds, was still there "but only
because they have not got a place to post him."
Another indication of reluctance to prosecute the matter, according to
the activist, is that the police were now looking at manslaughter
charges for the accused. Campaigners are calling for nothing short of
murder charges.
"If the President (Ernest Bai Koroma) is interested in FGM, he should
have taken action. And if they (government) do not take action, that
means they have failed the entire womanhood of this nation."