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UNICEF calls for enforcing ban on Female Genital Mutilation

ADDIS ABABA, 7 February (IRIN) - The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on Friday called on governments to enforce a ban on female genital mutilation (FGM). In a statement to coincide with the first ever International Day of Zero Tolerance of FGM, UNICEF head Carol Bellamy said that governments and communities must take urgent action to outlaw the traditional custom which some 2 million girls undergo each year."This practice is not only a violation of every child's rights, it is physically harmful and has serious consequences for a girl's health," Bellamy said in the statement, released by UNICEF in Ethiopia. "This is why governments and communities alike must take immediate action to put an end to this practice."

"There is no better time to start taking action than today, the very first International Day of Zero Tolerance of FGM," she added. She said that world leaders must abide by their commitment to end the practice by 2010. "These girls deserve nothing less," Bellamy said. "The 100 million women who endured female genital mutilation or cutting as young girls are living proof that the world has failed to protect them," she said.

Hundreds of girls run away to evade Female Genital Mutilation

NAIROBI, 7 February (IRIN) - As the world marked the international day against female genital mutilation (FGM) on 6 February, hundreds of girls in Kenya's Rift Valley Province were running away from home to escape the
practice, according to media and human rights sources. Several hundred primary schoolgirls are said to be "holed-up" in churches in Narok and Kajiado districts after escaping FGM being practised in their communities.

FGM was formally outlawed in Kenya with the introduction of the Children's Act, passed by parliament in 2001, but it is still widely practised in secret by a number of communities, particularly in the vast Rift Valley Province. According to the women's umbrella body, Maendeleo ya Wanawake [Kiswahili for women in development], the Rift Valley region has the highest incidence of FGM in the country. Rosemary Moraa, who runs Maendeleo ya Wanawake's anti-FGM programme, told IRIN on Friday that most of the girls were running away as a result of awareness created by widespread anti-FGM campaigns throughout the country, and urged the government to establish an institution which could provide shelter for such girls.

"The girls have known they are not going to benefit from FGM, so they run away," Moraa told IRIN. "For now, we are still debating what to do with them." The ubiquity of FGM in the province was highlighted further by a case in
which two sisters took their father to court to avert forcible circumcision. The girls won the case. One human rights organisation in the region has urged the Kenyan authorities to introduce medical check-ups on schoolgirls in such
communities as part of the fight against FGM, the East African Standard reported.

Ken Wafula, who runs the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (CHRD), an NGO in Eldoret, Rift Valley Province, said since the enactment of the Children's Act, the communities still practising FGM were doing so
secretly to avoid arrest. "We are currently making visits to various primary schools to educate young girls against the dangers of the rite, and encouraging the formation of anti-FGM clubs in schools," the East African Standard quoted Wafula as saying. However Maendeleo ya Wanawake says it opposes this approach and prefers
advocacy. "Our work is advocacy, so parents can be convinced that FGM is wrong," Moraa told IRIN.