LAS VEGAS, Nov. 25 - According to the World Health Organization, the number of women and girls who have suffered the consequences of FGM is currently estimated at 165 million. And if the current trend continues, some 86 million girls worldwide are at risk of genital mutilation between now and the year 2030. Although many of them are African, Nadine Gary, Clitoraid’s Director of Communications - an international NGO based in the USA - said in a statement issued today that “the problem is now global and it should be eradicated once and for all."
"Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights," Gary said. "This means that the integrity of the individual, her dignity, and the physical autonomy of her body, including her genitalia, should in no way be violated against her will.”
"And this includes, women’s right to their sensuality and to their pleasure, as well as sexual pleasure," Gary added. Unfortunately, this right to sensuality and pleasure is still far from being recognized and taken into account in the fight to stop violence (including FGM) against women. Yet it is a fundamental right. Women are still strongly denied this right today. For instance, in Kenya, while justice is fighting against female circumcision, women are forcefully undressed in public because they are deemed too sexy. And in the UK, reconstructive surgery still does not include the clitoris (because it is considered an organ "only" for pleasure). Only the surgery to free the opening of the vagina is available, not to repair the clitoris."
To restore dignity to these women and their rights to pleasure, the grand opening of the Kamkasso Hospital (also called "Pleasure Hospital") built by Clitoraid in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, is a necessity. Clitoraid, which fights against FGM since 2006, doubled down in its efforts to open this hospital on Feb. 6, 2015, a day the UN has declared, "Zero Tolerance to FGM."
"We offer a clitoral reconstructive surgery for victims of female circumcision," Gary stated.
Due to religious discrimination, adverse administrative misfortune have unfortunately delayed the hospital’s inauguration, and consequently the opening had to be postponed. However, Clitoraid’s American surgeons, all volunteers, have nevertheless been able to help 38 victims of genital mutilation at a nearby clinic. These patients came from Burkina Faso, other countries in West Africa and the Horn of Africa as well. Alas, Clitoraid’s waiting lists still count hundreds of other women and these women beg us every day to help them regain their dignity as a woman and their sense of pleasure (our surgeries are free).
The Clitoraid team works tirelessly for the hospital’s grand opening to take place in the spring of 2015 and any financial help is welcome.
Gary explains that during the inauguration of the hospital "volunteer surgeons such as Dr. Marci Bowers and Dr. Harold Henning will travel to Burkina Faso to launch this historic humanitarian mission and will then travel to Kenya to train other surgeons in Nairobi. Thanks to these doctors’ generosity, to donors, to all the Clitoraid volunteers, and to modern science, victims of female circumcision will be able to regain their sense of physical pleasure that was so brutally taken away from them. Their dignity as a woman will finally be restored."