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 Female genital mutilation (FGM) has been a criminal offence in
Britain since 1985 and new legislation in 2003 introduced a jail
term of up to 14 years for British citizens carrying out FGM abroad,
even in countries where it is legal.
Last year the government made it compulsory for teachers, social
workers, doctors, nurses and midwives to report FGM with campaigners
fearing many cases are going unnoticed because they happen at a
young age and abroad.
British parliamentarians said in a report that they were "alarmed"
by the lack of prosecutions and to learn that some clinicians were
ignoring the legal duty to report cases to the police with some
seeming to regard the duty as "optional".
"We are dismayed that there have been no convictions for FGM-related
offences," said Tim Loughton, interim chair of the Home Affairs
Committee responsible for the report.
FGM involves the total or partial removal of the clitoris and
external genitalia. In extreme cases the vaginal opening is sewn
closed. It can cause serious physical and psychological problems and
complications in childbirth.
In the first case of its kind in Britain, a doctor accused of
stitching up a new mother was acquitted by a UK court last year
after he argued his actions were in the best interest of a patient
with severe bleeding.
Official data released in July showed that a total of 5,700 new FGM
cases in England were recorded in 2015-16, but only a small number
had been cut in Britain.
STRONGER SANCTIONS
The committee recommended stronger sanctions for failing to meet the
mandatory reporting responsibility, noting that prosecutions would
remain unlikely without them, since daughters rarely report their
parents to the police themselves.
Worldwide more than 130 million girls and women have undergone FGM,
according to U.N. data, with the practice prevalent across Africa,
parts of the Middle East and Asia.
The practice is much less common in the UK, although exact data is
lacking. A study estimated in 2011 that about 137,000 women and
girls in England and Wales had been subjected to FGM.
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"[These numbers] are still just the tip of the iceberg," Mary Wandia
of Equality Now, a women's rights charity, told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation.
The committee advised the government to look at the example set by
France, where prosecutions for FGM have been more successful, saying
there was a "strong case" for a system of routine medical
examinations akin to the French model.
The government's aim is to eliminate FGM "within a generation" with
the previous government of David Cameron introducing powers to
prosecute parents who fail to prevent their daughters being cut.
The committee welcomed these measures, but criticized the government
for providing insufficient resources to charities and campaigning
groups devoted to tackling the issue.
"The committee's review highlights the immense amount of work that
still needs to be done in preventing FGM in our own communities up
and down the country," the National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said in an email.
(Reporting by Tom Gardner @tomgardner18, Editing by Belinda
Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the
charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news,
women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change.
Visit http://news.trust.org)
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