500 Teenage Girls in Danger After Being Forced Into FGM [VIDEO}

Women hold FIDA Kenya-Anti FGM handouts. Over 500 teenage girls have been forced to undergo the outlawed practice between March and June 2020.
Women hold FIDA Kenya-Anti FGM handouts. Over 500 teenage girls have been forced to undergo the outlawed practice between March and June 2020.
File

At least 500 teenage girls from West Pokot County have been forced to undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) between March and June 2020.

On Wednesday, June 10, Domitilah Chesang, who serves as the director of IREP- a locally initiated Community Based Organization that protects, empower, rescue, socialize and support girls and women who have undergone or who are at risk of undergoing FGM, shared the startling findings with one Ward registering over 300 cases of the outlawed practice.

"Girls are idle and there is uncertainty about the future. There is also misleading information around the villages that this Covid-19 pandemic will never end so the girls need to be cut and married off.

"People cannot afford food so its also another form of income because once they are cut and married off, the parents are handed a dowry. Tapach ward is the leading Ward with over 300 cases reported so far,"

she revealed.

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Tapach Chief Solomon Chepkeremoi, confirmed that there was a worrying surge in FGM practices taking place under his jurisdiction, adding that he had managed to apprehend a few women who had taken a group of girls into a nearby forest to carry out the procedure.

Chesang, who received a Queen's Young Leaders Award for 2017 from Queen Elizabeth II at the 2017 Queen's Young Leaders Awards Ceremony at Buckingham Palace on June 29, 2017, in London, England, for her advocacy against FGM, pleaded with the law enforcers and county government to step up and defend the hundreds of teenage girls that were currently forced to face the knife.

A 12-year-old girl is said to be fighting for her life at the Kapenguria  County Hospital after she was cut on June 6, the IREP director revealed.

FGM is now increasingly being conducted underground, with most taking to thickly forested areas to avoid capture.

In 2011 Kenya passed a law that prohibits the practice and imposes tough penalties on perpetrators and those abetting the practice.

The law not only bans the practice in Kenya but also prohibits cross-border FGM and bars medical caregivers from carrying out the practice. In addition, the law holds that consent cannot be cited as an excuse for conducting FGM.

The World Health Organization estimates that over 200 million girls and women who are alive today have undergone female genital mutilation in 30 countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

FGM is mostly targeted toward girls under the age of 15 and has been considered a violation of human rights. 

An anti-FGM campaign message plastered on a billboard.
An anti-FGM campaign message plastered on a billboard.
Photo
Wikipedia
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