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Ethiopia, an ancient country has culture and traditions dating back over 3000 years. With over 80 different Ethnic groups with their own language, culture norms, customs, beliefs, and traditions are leaving with peace and harmony.
Like other countries Ethiopia is also a home for many useful and harmful traditional practices. These traditional practices have been widely exercised through out the country since many years back. It is good quality to develop and promote the useful traditional practices in the country so as to make it the identity and the culture of the people. In contrary there are many harmful traditional practices that are creating physical, mental, psychological and social problems in the society. Some of these harmful traditional practices which are considered to be a major problem in reproductive health are common in Ethiopia.
Today in this article I would prefer to entertain female gentile mutilation one of the traditional practices which is widely practiced, especially in rural areas of the country where awareness of reproductive health is considered to be very low and minimal.
Scientist have tried to identify the reason of female genital mutilation since many years back but no scientific evidence exactly trace when and where female gentile mutilation began in the world. Female gentile mutilation, the reproductive health problem, extremely increases the troubles of women in our country and affects their life negatively. This is practically exercised since many years back because of lack of knowledge about the importance of each parts of human body.
This traditional practice has been widely exercised in different regional states of the country in different magnitude. In Ethiopia almost 80% of women are victim of this backward traditional practice. When we ask our self about the relevance of female genital mutilation we will always end up with its problem. It doesn’t have any use for female except making them suffer a lot with pain.
God has a purpose when he created us and each parts of our body. Each parts of our body are created for purpose; no part of our body is created with out use. If it were useless, God would not have created that part. Cutting out any parts of our body affects the natural function of our body system. In any age level exercising female genital mutilation is precarious and full of suffers.
In our country the government has endorsed different laws and regulation to respect the right of reproductive health of women in the country; however it is too difficult to tackle the problem related to the female genital mutilation because of the lack of awareness in the side of the public. Traditionally people in different parts of the country have their own assumptions and beliefs about the female who doesn’t undergo mutilation; some of these are;
· She will not get married because the boys don’t like to marry a woman who doesn’t under go mutilation.
· She is considered to be sexually active and it is believed that she will have many sexual partners to get sexual satisfaction.
· The societies consider the woman as if she is cursed unless she gets mutilated.
· It is also believed that she will break all the material and the utensil in the home.
To break these wrong assumptions the constitution of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia article 35 and sub article 4 has clearly indicated that any activities, laws, regulations traditions and customs that create physical, mental, psychological and social problem on women is highly prohibited. In addition to this the government of Ethiopia has accepted the united nation declaration that condemns any activities against physical, mental and social rights of women.
Do you have any thing to share for us about female genital mutilation in your country?
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by Anatic09
http://reproductiverights.org/sites/default/files/documents/pub_bp_fgmlawsusa.pdf
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/fgm/fgm.htm
Additionally, there are some in the US who consider cosmetic genital surgery another type of FGM.