So What Have Politicians Done For The UK ‘End FGM’ Campaign In 2014?

It’s been a busy year for activists seeking to stop female genital mutilation in Britain. We’ve seen media campaigns, debates in Parliament, more research on incidence and a full Home Affairs Committee investigation, chaired by Keith Vaz, which resulted in a report, Female genital mutilation: the case for a national action plan.  This is a version of the piece I wrote for Huffington Post, as a review of political progress towards ending FGM in Britain in 2014.

Positive moves
The UK Government response to the Vaz Report was presented to Parliament on 9 December by Theresa May, the Home Secretary. Amongst other things Ms May stressed the importance of the new hospital reporting protocols (to help us understand where FGM occurs and who must be protected) and confirmed that consultation is underway until early January on possible mandatory reporting (to whom?) by concerned professionals.

Importantly too, the Home Secretary stated that she sees no need to revisit the 2003 FGM legislation relating to reinfibulation; it is clearly already illegal – as the 2003 Act similarly indicates, worried plastic surgeons notwithstanding, may also be female genital cosmetic surgery.

Reactions to the Government ‘action plan’
Commentary on the Government’s 9 December response so far has been muted – perhaps the NGOs are content, or prefer discretion – but personally I’m disappointed. The proposals as presented pass the buck massively. This top-level response is far more about consultation and leaving the professionals to decide, than, beyond necessary legislative tweaking, it is about what the Government will itself take responsibility to deliver. For instance:

> there are no targets, and no named senior politicians with specific obligations for which they can be held publicly accountable (just a commitment to a biannual ministerial roundtable);

> schools remain free to choose how the social curriculum is offered; but some schools with at risk students are very unlikely to tackle FGM properly unless they are made to do so;

> despite constant media pronouncements, domestic FGM action budgets (where these exist) are tiny; five or six figure funding is almost nothing in the context of about 137,000 harmed or at risk UK residents, especially when hard-pressed charities must expend resources to prove their worth and pitch against each other for these token sums;

> FGM reporting channels for the public (adults, or children fearing FGM for themselves or for young siblings or friends) remain largely obscure and localised, despite the NSPCC initiative;

> the poorly functioning connectivities between Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and schools are ignored (still no formal requirements for all services to collaborate actively, or even required attendance at joint meetings);

> FGM occurs in diaspora (often very fluid) communities, but there’s no recognition that vulnerable children may fall through the cracks between different practices in different localities;

> FGM and child, early and forced marriage (CEFM) have been brought together without really considering either the implications in the UK of this merge, or how other sorts of child abuse and cruelty connect in;

> the responsibilities and accountability of the newly (re-)introduced FGM Unit (there was a prototype being developed by the previous Government, which the Coalition ceased in 2011) require fuller articulation; and

> the protocols pass responsibility for everything on to services already struggling due to Government-imposed austerity.

So is this really a National Action Plan, or is it a sort of tool kit for use as professionals see fit?

Contextualising FGM in Britain
And are the Home Office and International Development collaborating well on FGM? How does the much-hyped July 2014 Girl Summit fit the domestic picture, especially when so many UK NGOs were not involved?

I do not agree – perhaps others do? – that responses to FGM should or can be exactly the same in the UK, as in traditionally practising countries. We need more domestic dialogue to think this through.  (Nor do I agree with claims that we cannot abolish FGM in Britain until it is eradicated in Africa.  Our legal, governance and public service structures give us a very strong starting point.)

Further, whilst the Government is 100% right to emphasise prosecutions and health and education service prevention programmes, we must also tackle head-on what the Government fails to recognise: that FGM is economic patriarchy incarnate. Often the rationale is to make girls marriageable (‘pure’), ie to transfer them as chattels from socio-economic dependency on their fathers, to similar servitude with their husbands.

Underlying factors
To date there has been little effort in Britain to tackle the fundamental, causative, socio-economic issue – the underlying routine exclusion from main-steam society of girls in some BME communities, which leaves them very vulnerable to FGM, CEFM and other horrific abuse.

Nor have we in the UK as yet understood (or perhaps admitted that we understand?) how hypocritical it is to claim to be addressing FGM whilst we still won’t even to monitor asylum refusal to women from countries where FGM is traditionally practised.

In Spring 2014 Prof Rashida Manjoo, the United Nations Rapporteur on violence against women visited Britain. Her ensuing report did not reflect particularly well on us; and relevant findings remain disregarded by the very people who now claim to be addressing FGM in the UK.

So, how have the politicians been doing on FGM in 2014?

Credit where it’s due (or not)
To all Parliamentarians who worked to ensure FGM eradication became mainstreamed, especially Jane Ellison, and before her Christine McCafferty and Ann Clwyd, plus Keith Vaz, Karl Turner and others, much thanks.

To the Prime Minister and everyone across parties who support the international initiative against FGM and CEFM, all due credit.

But to those who originally dismissed existing work on FGM, and have now chosen not only to defer decisions, but also rather conveniently to position FGM in Britain in the context of FGM elsewhere, accepting little direct responsibility for what happens here: please review your perspectives.

Until the connections are made between socio-economic marginalisation (of some BME girls), public health, and the need for genuine top-down leadership and accountability, domestic FGM will be hard to shift.

Resources to make a difference
It’s not enough to exhort teachers, medics, volunteers and legal people to do more. Tools to enable action will not alone do the job. To eradicate FGM we need resources and clearly defined pathways as well as lectures.

So in 2015 could the emerging FGM Unit please find some serious longer term money, tighten up the loose ends and tell us who is ultimately in charge? Then there’ll be a decent chance FGM will end in Britain.

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FURTHER INFORMATION AND ACTION

Readers are invited to support these two FGM e-petitions:

UK Government: Enforce the UK law which forbids FGM (Female Genital so-called ‘Cutting’)    ..

and FGM abolitionists internationally: Support the Feminist Statement on Female Genital Mutilation

[See also HM Government e-petition, No. 35313, to STOP Female Genital Mutilation (FGM / ‘cutting’) in Britain  (for UK citizens and residents – now closed).]

There is a free FGM hotline for anyone in the UK: 0800 028 3550, or email:fgmhelp@nspcc.org.uk

The #NoFGM Daily News carries reports of all items shared on Twitter that day about FGM – brings many organisations and developments into focus.

Also available to follow is daily news from NoFGM_USA.

For more on FGM please see here.

Twitter accounts: @NoFGM1  @NoFGMBookUK  @FGMStatement  @NoFGM_USA   [tag for all: #NoFGM]

Facebook page: #NoFGM – a crime against humanity

More info on FGM in the UK here. Email contact: NoFGM email

** Hilary Burrage is currently writing a book, Eradicating Female Genital Mutilation: A UK Perspective