Reaching Our Main Goal:
Banning FGM Effectively

Since its beginning in 2005, the campaign »Stop FGM in Kurdistan« has already reached remarkable success in documentation, public mobilization, launching a legal reform and awareness programs.

Iraqi-Kurdish Media Reports on FGM

Thanks to the campaign, the facts about the practice of FGM have been reported in local media, covered by newspapers, debated upon in magazines, radio stations and talk shows. Kurdish TV stations produce documentaries and large newspapers like Hawlati and Awena cover FGM on a regular basis with detailed reports.

Mobile Teams across the region

To raise awareness, provide information as well as practical medical, social and psychological assistance the relief, the association WADI runs women-led local mobile teams. They visit villages and schools, especially in the rural areas of the region, where services are hardly available and the formal education of women is low.

The mobile teams visit women and children in remote areas of the regions of Suleymaniyah, Halabja, Pishder, Qandil and Garmyan. The teams consist of either a physician or a medical assistant and a social worker or a psychologist. The underlying idea, to assist the women where they live, is simple and effective.

The teams provide practical help (medical treatment, medicaments and sanitary goods), coaching and concrete assistance for women in distress. The teams also discuss matters of sexuality and especially FGM with the women. All teams work in close collaboration with local women’s centers and shelters.

Documentary for women in the villages

Since 2005, the mobile teams generally focus on FGM prevention. The teams show a documentary film that has been produced locally for the (mostly illiterate) women in the villages. The film shows experts including physicians, but also an Islamic cleric, who condemn the practice of FGM. It serves as a source of information and as means to encourage discussion with and among the women. Speaking about FGM and about their own suffering is only a first but an important step for the women.

Through their long term work, the teams have come to be accepted and trusted in the communities in which they work, and can therefore help bringing about change. The teams’ experience has shown that many women are willing and hoping to stop this practice, and do not wish to put their own daughters through this. But they lack the support and organization to resist the strong social pressures to conform. The mobile teams help fulfilling this important need.

Petition and bill before the Parliament

On the occasion of the International Women’s Day in March 2007, the campaign Stop FGM in Kurdistan published a petition in various local newspapers demanding a legal ban FGM. In only few days, more than 14,000 people signed the petition, among them prominent journalists, artists and writers.

Legal reform

Following the public support to the demand to ban FGM, an experts’ conference met in April 2007, including lawyers, physicians and women and human rights activists to draft an anti-FGM law. The bill was submitted to the Regional Parliament. The - mostly male - Parliamentarians have refused to deal with the matter and did not ratify the draft bill so far, but pressure from the public is growing.

New comprehensive study published

Early in 2010, WADI presented a new empirical study on female genital mutilation in Kurdish northern Iraq that received encouraging attention on the international level. The UN declared its intention to address the issue, and Human Rights Watch is soon to publish their qualitative study about FGM in Kurdistan.