Friday, June 25, 2010

FGM Charities targeting Africans have questionable motives..story by Nation newspaper.


First, they came for our babies. Now, they want to adopt African women’s private parts. Yes, a charity based in the United States wants you to “adopt a clitoris”.

Clitoraid claims to help victims of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Burkina Faso by funding a “Pleasure Hospital” in this West African country that will surgically rebuild women’s “organs of pleasure”. Its spiritual leader, who goes by the name Prophet Rael, says that he founded the private non-profit organisation to help as many circumcised women as possible to “be whole again”.

Clitoraid is getting support from various US-based organisations, including those purporting to be feminist. (Interestingly, the government of Burkina Faso has already been performing these reconstruction surgeries for free.)

Now no-one can deny that FGM has had a devastating physical and emotional effect on millions of girls and women in Africa. Study upon study has shown that FGM — in all its forms — cripples women physically, makes childbirth and sex extremely painful and leaves lasting scars on women’s psyches. It cannot be tolerated or encouraged in this day and age.

So why is this organisation and its advocates receiving so much flak from none other than African women themselves?

In a blog posting titled “Can? We? Save? Africa?”, San Francisco-based Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg explains: “For years now, African women have been complaining that even as we are engaged in domestic campaigns to end the practice of female circumcision within our communities, the eager participation by Westerners, particularly Western feminists, has done much more harm than good.

“In a nutshell, Western feminists have taken over the space, displaced African women’s voices on the issue and have carelessly thrown about their neo-colonial weight in ways that have served only to further entrench the issue.”

Kamau-Rutenberg has now started a campaign that questions the motives of Clitoraid and other campaigns like it, including one called Underwear for Africa that targets orphans in Kenya.

Started in 2007 by the US-based charity Mothers Fighting for Others, the campaign aims to collect underwear for distribution to Kenyan orphanages, IDP camps and such places where underwear is apparently in short supply.

The organisation claims to have donated 2,000 pairs of underwear to children living in two IDP camps in Kenya in April 2009. A noble gesture, but why does it bother so many Africans?

“PART OF THE PROBLEM WITH PHILANTHROPY towards Africa is that of ease,” explains Kamua-Rutenberg, who as head of a non-profit organisation in the US says she keeps running into well-meaning but completely off-the-mark efforts to “save” Africa. Unfortunately, the devil is always in the details. In the rush to simplify complex situations such as the one in Darfur, we lose understanding of historical context and how that impacts what is currently happening.”

Central to the debate is the question of dignity. If African women’s body parts can be appropriated — or “adopted” — by well-intentioned, albeit ignorant, Westerners, then what will be appropriated next? If they can adopt our bodies, what’s stopping them from “adopting” entire nations?

A case in point is the singer Madonna’s relentless campaign to adopt Malawian children even in the face of opposition from the parents of the children themselves.

James Kambewa, a security guard in South Africa and the father of five-year old girl Mercy, is challenging Madonna’s right to keep his daughter, but admits that he does not have the kind of money to hire a lawyer who will take Madonna to court. Are his rights and dignity worth less than hers because he is poor?

Recently, at the Pan-African Media Conference, Prof Guy Berger from South Africa argued that Africa’s negative image in the international media will only be fixed if the reality of Africa is fixed first. In other words, when African countries become wealthy, well-functioning societies, the international media will have no choice but to focus on the positive.

I beg to differ. In the last few years, African countries, including conflict-ravaged Sudan and Ethiopia, have enjoyed double-digit economic growth rates, but one would never know it by looking at images of these countries in the international media, where war, witchcraft, poverty and famine in Africa make more headlines than thriving economies.

Perhaps the question we should be asking is: Who is saving who? In his book The Road to Hell, Micheal Maren writes: “The starving African exists as a point in space from which we measure our (Westerners’) own wealth, success, and prosperity, a darkness against which we can view our own cultural triumphs...

“The belief that we can help is an affirmation of our own worth in the grand scheme of things… And it is in their (Africans’) helplessness that they become a marketable commodity.”

Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415

Doctor invents female condom with 'teeth' STOPPING RAPE IN SOUTH AFRICA.


Few dare confront it, yet the violating act of rape is still very much an aspect of every society. But for one South African doctor, something needed to be done — and fast — to stem the menace after her encounter with a rape victim.

She invented female condoms with “teeth”. Four decades ago when Dr Sonnet Ehlers was reportedly on call at night, a devastated rape victim was brought in.

Eyes lifeless

“Her eyes were lifeless; she was like a breathing corpse. She looked at me and said, ‘If only I had teeth down there,’” recalled Ehlers, who was a 20-year-old medical researcher at the time. It was then that Dr Sonnet decided someday, she would come up with something to help fight rape, according to CNN.

Forty years down the line, she came up with a unique solution, worn by women like tampons — the Rape-aXe. The device can only be surgically removed once it has lodged itself on the male genital, which will result in positive identification of the attacker and subsequent arrest.

The rapist in question will not be able to walk right or even urinate due to constant pain. If he tries getting rid of it, it will only get a tighter grip. However, the condom will not cause any serious harm like breaking the skin or giving way to the danger of any fluid exposure.

Dr Sonnet went a step further and consulted “engineers, gynaecologists and psychologists” to help make the design safe and not subject victims to HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases.

The anti-rape condom is now undergoing a trial period in South Africa, where it is distributed free to women, especially during the Fifa World Cup. Once the trial is over, it will be available on the market for $2.20 (Sh170).

So will the razor sharp condom be the answer to rapists? Perhaps in South Africa, which according to Human Rights Watch has one of the highest incidence of rape in the world. A 2009 report by the country’s Medical Research Council found that 28 per cent of men surveyed had raped a woman or girl, with one in 20 saying they had raped in the past year.

Some people see Dr Sonnet’s innovation as welcome, since women have always taken drastic steps to ward off rape. However, critics are accusing Dr Sonnet of developing a medieval weapon in fighting rape.

They are asserting that the device will only incite more violence against women since a man subjected to great pain might easily kill the woman wearing it, adding that the act of wearing the condom in anticipation of being assaulted represents enslavement that no woman should be subjected to.

Ms Rosemary Okello, the director of African Woman and Child Feature Service (AWC), a non-governmental organisation based in Nairobi, seems to agree. Speaking to the Nation Media Group’s online publication, Africa Review, Ms Okello says “medical invention cannot be used to tackle a social problem”, since this will not address say, sexual harassment.

Then there are all those babies who are subjected to rape, but are still too young to wear the condom. Ms Okello added that although the device had been developed in good faith, it was still gender and age biased. “What about men who are also victims of rape, and how many women will have access to it?” she asked.

Like other lobbyists, she is instead rooting for more preventative and educational measures for both men and women, aimed at stopping sexual assault in the first place. At the World Cup, the world is watching to see if rapists will be deterred.
Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

It is called Female Genital Mutilation not female genital cutting!!


As a survivor of this atrocity I am mad as hell for the organisations ,individuals who have never been through this terror bringing up the theory of lessening MUTILATION to cutting.
For instance you can never belittle RAPE to forced sex to please the RAPISTS and work with them..I say send the rapists and mutilators to JAIL or HELL!!! Stop using FGM for publicity and donations at the expense of 300 million survivors and millions of victims murdered every year...Then you try to convince me with your intact genitals you know better about the hell we have gone through and still live with it every single day!!!!! while 200 of us bleed to death every day and you dare say it is cutting? SHAME ON YOU!!!!!
All I know is FGM as a form of sex discrimination and gender-based violence performed to control women's sexuality, ensure virginity until marriage, and guarantee their acceptance into a particular community. A 2008 statement on FGM adopted by 10 prominent UN agencies
clearly states that,
the guiding principles for considering genital practices as FGM should be those of human rights, including the right to health, the rights of children and the right to nondiscrimination on the basis of sex."
Let there be no lighter misinterpreted version for any organisation, movement, culture, religion, country or individual to misconstrue FGM's harmful face of atrocity.
Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415

Monday, June 14, 2010

LONG LIVE AFRIKA. WORLD CUP 2010 Zangalewa


The death of Nelson Mandela’s great-granddaughter cast a shadow over the opening day of the World Cup on Friday, dampening the spirits of a nation proud and excited to be hosting the world’s most popular sporting event.

Zenani Mandela, 13, was killed in a car accident on the way home from a World Cup concert in Soweto on Thursday night, where tens of thousands of people had sung and danced with headline music stars Shakira and the Black Eyed Peas.


REST IN PEACE SWEETHEART GONE TOO SOON:(
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4768606&id=608286318

Ambassador Lucy .s .Mashua President of Mashua's voice for the voiceless International
Assisting refugees in the US and representation in advocasy
The Global Ambassador for fighting Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and standing up for Women’s Rights.
And the Chairperson of a worldwide campaign against FGM.
http://twitter.com/Mashua
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mashua-Against-FGM/225406701415