One of Lynne Featherstone’s main achievements in government was around tackling Female Genital Mutilation. She has recorded a message for today’s International Day of Zero Tolerance against FGM.
And here is the letter that she has written to Justine Greening and Theresa May on the subject:
6th February, 2017
Dear Theresa and Justine
It is International Day for Zero Tolerance on Female Genital Mutilation – but we are still tolerating it. There is more we must do.
You both supported the campaign I spearheaded in Government to eradicate FGM here and abroad. You both have a proud record on this issue.
We made much progress with FGM Protection Orders and Mandatory Reporting amongst other measures – not to forget the Girl Summit where the world came to London to sign up to actions to end this brutal practice.
But there is one absolutely critical thing that didn’t get done. We have a duty to safeguard our children. British girls are routinely still being cut both here and in their mother countries. These girls often have no idea what is about to happen to them. They are whisked away and without warning find they are held down and cut.
I remember only too well Theresa – you berating Michael Gove (then Secretary of State for Education) for not allowing girls to be informed / taught about FGM at school. Without any information we abandon girls to their fate. We agreed they needed to know what to look for and who to turn to if they feared it was about to happen to them.
We agreed it should be taught in schools – whether by teachers or community volunteers. If it is not – then we are not safeguarding our children.
You are both now in positions where you can finally make this happen.
You have the power.
I am asking you to use it.
Kind regards
Baroness Featherstone
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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15 Comments
“… Zero Intolerance of FGM.”
Are you sure you didn’t mean zero tolerance?
I read this shocking story this morning:
“A case of female genital mutilation (FGM) is either discovered or treated at a medical appointment in England every hour, a charity has said.
Plan International UK said statistics showed there were 8,656 times when a girl or woman was assessed at a doctor’s surgery or hospital.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38878298
We can prosecute people doing this in the UK, but how do we prosecute people doing it abroad? Outside of the EU? I’ve previously called for prosecuting the parents, which I still think should be considered. People shouldn’t be immune to prosecution for acts against their children. We can take into consideration children’s wishes to try to ensure they don’t stay quiet out of fear of a big punishment for their parents.
Well done those highlighting this barbarism!
Political correctness is not something I bang on about a lot, one persons that , is another persons equal opportunities. But sometimes we need to call a spade a spade and not a shovel !
On gender related abortion, at the worst end, and not claiming the fees from foreign nationals at the softer end, we are ignoring common decency and common sense , for a political understanding of others or a tolerance that is skewed or warped.
Female genital mutilation is a very significant example of something that has been recognised as wrong and awful and must be stopped. Time to get real.
My understanding is that there have been no prosecutions over FGM in Britain, certainly since the 2003 law updates.
Strangely, if a child attends clinic, or A&E with unaccountable bruises or injuries, the parents, justifiably, have a lot of questions to answer to clinicians and social workers. If a child presents with FGM injuries, recent or historic, why does that same level of parent scrutiny not apply, and result in prosecutions of the childs parents by social services.? If a child has FGM injuries, the parent(s), are resposible for those abusive injuries, are they not.?
Is it the same political correctness that got in the way of revealing the Rotherham scandal, getting in the way of proper action against parents inflicting horrific FGM abuse on their own children?
The genital mutilation of ANY child on non medical grounds should be a criminal offence!
The genital mutilation of ANY child on non medical grounds should be a criminal offence
It already is, surely, and always was? It’d be malicious wounding if not GBH, just like mutilating an adult would be.
DAV: No it’s not! You can have your son’s genitals mutilated with no legal consequences. As far as I know you can still get it done on the NHS provided you claim some religious or cultural excuse.
Oh, I hadn’t thought of it like that.
Still, a bit difficult to start criminalising being Jewish. That sort of thing has bad optics, as they say.
It’s about criminalising people’s actions. It’s ridiculous that it’s a criminal offence to tattoo a male child under 18 years of age but perfectly okay to lop a piece of his genitalia off with no questions asked. All children should be protected from this sort of abuse regardless of their gender.
Still, that would effectively make it a crime to be Jewish, wouldn’t it?
I’m not sure I’d be comfortable going down that route.
Robert : “It’s ridiculous that it’s a criminal offence to tattoo a male child under 18 years of age”.
Oh no it’s not.
No it wouldn’t make it a crime to be Jewish, Muslim or anything else. As with FGM the crime would be allowing a barbaric practice to be carried out on a child, not one based on where you have come from or any supertitious or religious belief you might hold. Anyway I believe there is a growing body of Jewish opinion that is against this practice in the 21st century and good luck to them too.
I am not an expert but as I understand it you can’t be Jewish and not circumcise your baby boy? You can’t just not do something that was commanded by God.
[Presumably you don’t think it was commanded by God — fine. But should the law really be taking a stance on whether something was commanded by God or not?]
Maybe I’ve wrong, but if I’m not, then would banning circumcision not be pretty much functionally equivalent to making it illegal to be Jewish?
And those are choppy waters for a state to enter. As I say, I would be very uncomfortable with a state that was happy to go there.
Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to leave the child alone until he himself is in a position to decide for himself if his belief in God, if that’s criteria, is strong enough to want to go through the procedure voluntarily?
Again, I’m not an expert, but I think there is a limited window in which the circumcision is supposed to happen — eight days after birth? So waiting is not really an option, it’s either do what God requires or don’t.
So making it illegal would basically have the effect of forcing all Jewish couples of childbearing age to leave Britain. Is that really something you’d feel comfortable with? In this day and age?