Narok girls now have to be inspected before they can go to secondary and upper primary school to see if they have undergone FGM (see P3).
County commissioner George Natembeya wants to prosecute parents who have taken their girls for circumcision.
This is profoundly misguided. It will be terribly traumatic for the young girls to face examination by health workers, education officials and police.
As head of the local security apparatus, why doesn't Natembeya stop FGM ceremonies in the first place?
Curiously, women lawyers in FIDA have backed the mandatory tests, saying FGM is illegal. But the end does not justify the means. This intrusive inspection of schoolgirls is a gross invasion of privacy and is surely unconstitutional.
The irony is that it is not even necessary. In East Africa the rate of female circumcision has dropped from 71 per cent in 1995 to eight per cent in 2016, according to a recent study in the British Medical Journal.
FGM is steadily dying out. The clumsy and insensitive intervention of Natembeya should be reversed.
Quote of the day: “In politics all abstract terms conceal treachery.”
C. L. R. James
The Trinidadian intellectual was born on 4 January, 1901.
