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By Root 830 0

cetera) to be sold as sex slaves and exploited in the rich West. Asylum seekers who have been refused a residence permit are enticed by pimps, who promise them “work” and then send them to the red-light districts of European cities, where they are forced to offer themselves as prostitutes. The money earned by these women goes to the so-called organized crime networks. An unintended effect of European asylum policy in combination with the constant stream of immigrants arriving from non-Western countries, is that countless girls fall victim to the sex industry. Given the international character of the trafficking in women, a joint plan of action from the European countries is called for. The harmonization of European asylum policies would at least allow us to get a clearer picture of the scale of the trade in women. It is precisely in this area that a joint European approach is so necessary.

Twelve

Genital Mutilation

Must Not Be Tolerated

Genital mutilation of girls is sometimes referred to as “circumcision.” Implicitly, this likens it to male circumcision. If male circumcision meant removing the glans and testicles, and adhering the remains of the penis to the empty sac, the comparison would be valid. It is not valid. “Circumcision” is a term that implies that the practice is acceptable. It is not acceptable. Nor is it culturally “excusable.”

Genital mutilation of girls is the most underestimated violation of human rights and women’s rights worldwide. In 2002, according to Amnesty International reports, between 1 million and 1.4 million girls were robbed of their genitals. The international community is more gripped by the spread of the HIV virus and AIDS than by the atrocious practice of genital mutilation in girls. Yet the health complications that circumcised women suffer are shocking, pernicious, and widespread. For instance, working in Ghana, Dutch urologist Hans de Wall was visited by an utterly distraught twenty-six-year-old woman who had been circumcised with a piece of broken glass when she was ten. Since the birth of a stillborn child, the woman had been constantly leaking urine and feces because of fistulas. These fistulas often develop when women have trouble giving birth due to the mutilation of their bodies, the narrowing of the vaginal canal. The mutilation also endangers the infants in their passage through the birth canal. Many first-time mothers are unable to labor successfully and the babies get stuck in their mother’s artificially narrowed birth canal. Some babies die as a result; some have birth-related handicaps and injuries.

The pressure of the stuck baby on the mother’s internal tissues cuts off the blood supply, damaging the tissues and nerves—including nerves of the legs, leading to lameness—and also can rip holes in their urethras and bowels. The women suffer the grief of losing their babies—because of a cruel mutilation of their own bodies over which they had no control—and also suffer from the trauma of their internal injuries, which leave them completely incontinent.

Women with obstetric fistulas number in the millions, according to the World Health Organization. And there are few doctors who can care for them. Often cast off by their families, abandoned, impoverished, embarrassed by their condition, they wait years for an operation to correct the fistula—if they can get to a medical center that does the procedure. Many suffer in silence and shame. Their isolation and disownment are not even a blip on their governments’ radar screens.

According to a story in the New York Times, more than a third of one doctor’s patients in Nigeria are fifteen or younger; almost another third are between fifteen and twenty; most were married before they had menstruated, at eleven or twelve. Even doctors who devote themselves to corrective surgery for obstetric fistulas cannot keep up with the demand for their services. And even after fistulas are repaired, labor with another baby can create new ones. Genital mutilation of girls leads to inevitable, later mutilations when the women are grown.