Obama’s call to end female genital mutilation yet to reach Ethiopia’s villages

While some Ethiopians praise the US president’s speech in Addis Ababa, other activists are concerned his message did not reach the people who needed to hear it the most in remote, traditional villages where circumcision continues

David Smith in Awash, Ethiopia

Leila Kedir with her mother Sadiya Aliye, who went to jail for two months and paid $50 fines every time she had her four daughters circumcised in Ethiopia. Photograph: David Smith for the Guardian

When she was a girl, Sadiya Aliye’s genitals were cut, as she was told tradition dictated. So when she became a mother to four daughters, she put all of them through the same agonising ritual.

But attitudes, and law enforcement, are changing in Ethiopia. Aliye was arrested all four times, spent two months in jail and paid $50 fines. “I was very angry,” she recalls. “They beat me.” Her husband, the midwife and those who held down the girls were also punished.

Efforts to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM) received a further boost last weekend when Barack Obama told an audience in Kenya: “There’s no excuse for sexual assault or domestic violence, there’s no reason that young girls should suffer genital mutilation, there’s no place in a civilised society for the early or forced marriage of children. These traditions may go back centuries; they have no place in the 21st century.”

He reiterated the message in Addis Ababa to an effusive audience. But 235km away in the remote and arid Afar region of north-eastern Ethiopia, where a decade ago nine in 10 girls suffered FGM, Aliye was only vaguely aware of the US president’s visit. In her modest mud brick home in the dusty village of Awash, where horses and carts are still commonplace, she lacked TV or radio to hear his plea.

Explaining through an interpreter why she subjected her daughters to FGM, Aliye, who gave her age as about 50, said of the Muslim community: “They said it was ‘haram’ [forbidden by religion] for a woman to be uncircumcised and would spoil her prayer. This is what they told us and this is why we did it.”

Told that Obama had condemned the practice, Aliye replied carefully: “He speaks well. I think he will change minds.”

Aliye’s daughter, 18-year-old Leila Kedir, believes that her mother still endorses the practice, but few here now dare say so publicly for fear of prosecution. Kedir, who was nine when she underwent FGM, blames it for the pain she suffered giving birth to her son Tewekel, now three, and two-year-old daughter Kalid. She said: “It should be stopped because it causes fights between husbands and wives and is destructive to marriage. It’s good that Obama condemned it.”

A government survey in 2000 found that 98.6% of women in the Afar region had been circumcised, usually by a midwife using a razor blade, the second highest rate in the country. By 2005 the figure had dipped only slightly to 91.6%. Within the clan-dominated social structures, it was believed that FGM was a religious requirement, that girls would be promiscuous and adulterous if not cut or that the clitoris would grow longer to resemble a man, who must not then sleep with another man.

But in 2007 the UN launched an anti-FGM programme with the support of the Ethiopian government, civil society organisations and educational bodies. By 2013, their studies found, FGM in Afar had dropped to to 39%. More than nine in 10 questionnaire respondents said it should be abandoned.

Among those leading the efforts is Sheikh Mussa Oumer, 52, head of the Sidehabura clan. Growing up, he never questioned FGM until he went to study abroad and was exposed to new ideas. One of his daughters, 18-year-old Zehara, died in childbirth from internal bleeding because her vaginal opening was too small. And five years ago his wife, Fatuma, absconded with one of their daughters for 15 days to have her cut; he took her to court and divorced her.

“There was a big challenge of resistance from the community when we started,” he said. “Religious leaders claimed I had come to change their religion so should be killed. First they said it’s ‘sunna’ [‘following the Prophet’s tradition’] in our religion. We asked them: ‘If you say so, bring those religious books which allow you to do this.’

“We sat together and showed them the Koran says you can only cut something that does not cause harm, like a fingernail. We said: ‘You are causing women to bleed and if you continue to do this it’s a crime and we will take you to court.’”

The “cutters” would slice a girl’s internal organ left to right then sew it together, Oumer continued, leaving only a small hole for her to urinate. The response was both customary and legal. The penalty for cutting the left side was 50 cows, and for the right side a further 50 cows. The government imposed a sanction of five years’ imprisonment for cutting one side and 15 years for cutting both.

But FGM continues, he said, among pastoralists in remote areas not easy for activists to reach by road. “There are people still doing it in hiding. They go to that area to escape the law and after circumcising their children, they bring them back. There could be many people who did not know Obama was here. They do not have TV or radio. They are walking out every morning and coming back every evening. Their lives are far from the media.”

Obama’s intervention was hardly a game changer, Oumer added. “He spoke … but we have been struggling against this thing for 20 years. But if he helps us, we accept his support.”

Kassawmar Angaw, monitoring and evaluation officer at the Rohi Weddu Pastoral Women Development Organisation, which has led local efforts on the ground, welcomed the president’s words: “Obama is every popular and more people listen to him so I think it’s a good opportunity. His voice can address all Ethiopians, so people can think again about FGM as an issue of rights and freedoms.”