Women Condemn Female Circumcision

African News Dimension

Uganda

April 11, 2006

Karimojong women have condemned female circumcision, now on the increase in Karamoja region, Uganda.

This was contained in a resolution after a four-day advocacy training for Karimojong elders, organised by The Karamoja Agro-pastoral development Programme and Minority Rights International at Mt. Elgon Hotel in Mbale over the weekend. 

The resolution, read by the Pokot LC5 Woman counsellor for Nakapiripirit, Paulina Isura, said dozens of girls were brutally circumcised each year, especially in Pokot county, Nakap-iripirit and Tepeth in Moroto district and some of them had bled to death. 

“This practice is silent and unattended to but it is killing our girls. Surprisingly, neither the Government nor any organisation is addressing this alarming situation,” Isura said. 

She said the circumcisers, mostly elderly women, use one knife on several girls, exposing them to HIV/AIDS. 

She said the practice mainly among the Pokot of Kenya, is spreading to Ugandan Pokot as men are interested in marring only circumcised girls. 

She said girls are circumcised between the age of nine and 15 and are thereafter married off, since they have become full women. 

However, Michael longok, an elder, shocked the audience when he said there was no need to stop the practice. You can’t remove our culture because if a man marries an uncircumcised woman, he is not a man,” Longok said.