Custom of Cutting

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 November 2016

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More than 200 million women and girls alive today have undergone female genital mutilation, or cutting. It is where parts or all of a girl's genitals are damaged or removed. There are no medical benefits to FGM, and people who undergo the practice can face problems in later pregnancies, infections and even death due to blood loss. FGM is recognised internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women. The head of the UNFPA recently described it as child abuse. The BBC's Global Health correspondent Tulip Mazumdar has travelled to East and West Africa to investigate efforts to end the practice and ask why this extremely harmful tradition, is proving so difficult to stamp out.

(Picture: Women in Narekuni © Krisztina Satori)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:03.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use,
0:07.0	go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts. broadcasts. Thank you for inviting us to your home. I hope we're not disturbing. What are you making here?
0:24.0	Yeah. It's tea, okay, okay.
0:27.0	I get a wide friendly smile and a warm happy welcome into Noritet's home.
0:32.0	A group of women wrapped in beautiful colourful
0:35.6	fabrics encourage me to take a seat. I've come to a village on the edge of the vast Masay Mara game reserve in southwestern Kenya, close
0:47.7	to the border with Tanzania.
0:50.1	And I'm here to start a journey investigating an ancient and brutal practice called female
0:56.3	genital mutilation or cutting.
0:59.9	It's where some or all of a woman's genitals are removed.
1:03.2	It's an entirely cultural practice.
1:05.6	It isn't encouraged in any sacred scripts
1:08.7	and there are zero health benefits to cutting girls.
1:12.3	I'm the BBC's global health correspondent Tulip Mazzimda and I'm trying to
1:16.2	understand why the custom, which affects around 200 million women in girls around the world is still so widely practiced.
1:30.0	Here in Kenya it's been banned since 2011, but old customs die hard.
1:35.0	Our journey is, in parts, a harrowing one,
1:38.0	and some listeners may find some of the graphic details upsetting.
1:45.0	We've come to Nariquni village.
1:49.0	It's just a few traditional Maasai huts dotted around probably about 10 families at the most here.
1:57.3	It is incredibly remote.
	...

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