FGM spreading to minority groups in Sudan, say campaigners

Female genital mutilation is spreading among minority groups in Sudan despite widespread efforts to eradicate the practice, say campaigners.

Women from communities which previously shunned FGM have told the Guardian they are being pressurised to undergo the procedure as adults to avoid being ostracised in a country with one of the highest FGM rates in the world.

The latest Unicef report estimates that 87% of Sudanese women and girls aged between 15 and 49 have been cut. Some women from minority groups said they had agreed to FGM because of pressure from their husbands.

“I wished I had been circumcised when I was a child,” said Fatima Abdullah, 35, a mother of two, who was subject to FGM at 31. She said almost all the women of her age and ethnicity had now undergone the procedure, although none had had FGM as children.

Campaigners had hoped that attitudes towards FGM were changing, with some signs of a drop in the number of girls under 14 being cut. But the experience of women such as Abdullah suggests that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Nahid Gabrellah, director of the Seema centre which campaigns against FGM, said the organisation was aware that the practice was spreading to minority groups. “[The women] want to be accepted in the mainstream culture that stigmatises women who were not subjected to FGM,” she said.

“I remember many South Sudanese women who lived in north used to be circumcised as a sign of integration into the mainstream culture, and to feel that they are accepted – even though the FGM was also not part of their culture.”