Speaker of Parliament Rt. Hon. Rebecca Kadaga has applauded local and international partners currently engaged in the fight to end Female Genital Mutilation and forced early marriages in Uganda.
The speaker yesterday vowed to give all the necessary support to ensure that “this barbaric practice is defeated.”
This was contained in her message read for her by East African Legislator Hon Dora Byabakama during a joint global consultation meeting organized by UNCEF and UNFPA at Golf Course Hotel in Kampala.
The two organizations are working together to realize their goal of eliminating FGM and by the year 2030.
Kadaga in her speech applauded different groups including trained medical doctors who gave up on facilitating the FGM practice, some of who attended the meeting.
Speaking at the event, Bukwo District Women MP Everlyn Chemtai amused participants when she narrated how she on a number of occasions survived being mutilated.
The MP said she was able to avoid the practice which was deeply entrenched in her family and community, by going to school.
“I was under a lot of pressure from my family and relatives. My parents told me that if I wasn’t circumcised I would not produce and that I would never hold any important position in society,” she said.
“At one point because FGM was illegal in Uganda, we were smuggled into neighboring Kenya, and I watched my sisters being mutilated, but because I was too scared, I feigned an illness and that is how I survived.”
Hon Chelengati says she took advantage of the fact that her father loved her so much and wanted to see her through school.
“I therefore asked him to let me finish school first, telling him that if I got circumcised, I was likely to drop out as everyone in the village would be waiting to marry me,” the MP narrated.
MP Chelengati at the event appealed to government and partner organizations to extend support to the surgeons who gave up on the FGM practice, and are under persecution back home.
Statistics from the recently conducted Health Demographic Survey 2016 put the prevalence of FGM at 1.4% nationally and 98% in areas that practice it.
Six districts have been selected for the UNICEF and UNFPA program, and they are Amudat, Kween, Bukwo, Kapchorwa, Nakapiripirit and Moroto.
Since 2009, 53 perpetuators of FGM have been arrest and only 33 prosecuted.
11000 girls are listed as survivors of this notorious act and 363 of these have been integrated back in the community.
45 cutters have denounced the act in addition to the 313 communities that have made commitment to denounce the act.