Genital mutilation in Africa

Sierra Leone:

Ms Turay was mutilated at her aunt's house where she was staying with her three sisters and her cousin. "We didn't even know that we were going to be initiated," she says. "They called me to get water and then outside they just grabbed me."

She was blindfolded, stripped, and laid on the ground. Heavy women sat on her arms, her chest, her legs. Her mouth was stuffed with a rag. Her clitoris was cut off with a crude knife. Despite profuse bleeding she was forced to walk, was beaten and had hot pepper water poured into her eyes.

"My mother had always told me never to let anyone touch me there. I was scared and I tried to fight them off. Nobody talked to me but there was all this clapping, singing, shouting," recalls Ms Turay. "When I tried to walk on the seventh day I could not walk. All they could say is 'Today you have become a woman'."

Ms Turay is among the estimated 94 per cent of girls who undergo female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone. The practice – which forms part of a ceremony of initiation rites overseen by women-only secret societies such as bondo and sande – can cause severe bleeding, infection, cysts and sometimes death, but is largely ignored.

Reasons for the process vary, but many people cite tradition and culture, saying it is essential preparation for marriage and womanhood; binds communities to each other and to their ancestors; and restricts women's sexual behaviour.

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While not as barbaric and actually useful in preventing HIV transmission, male genital mutilation is more prevalent and still a problem in much of the world because it's often done without consent, especially to infants.

In the Western United States 62% of males have their genitals intact, but in the South it's 35% and in the North 32%. Here in the Midwest we have the worst prevalence with only 18% intact. Those numbers wouldn't be a bad thing if done with consent.

The inhumane practice of genital mutilation without consent needs to be banned worldwide.