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Framing FGC: Health and Human Rights
Approaches
Bettina Shell-Duncan, Ph.D.Department of Anthropology
University of Washington
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• What are the ramifications of framing FGC as a human rights violation?
• What perils and pitfalls potentially arise from a rights-based framework?
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Previous Frameworks for Justifying Intervention
• Health Framework
“Genital mutilation should be treated as a public health problem and recognized as an impediment to development that can be prevented and eradicated much like any disease.”
-Fran Hosken (1978: 151)
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“Problems” Emanating from the Health Framework
• Failed to motivate behavior change
• Credibility gap
• Difficulty in establishing the “medical facts”
• Encouragement of medicalization
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Human Rights Framework
1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights
1) FGC classified as a form of violence against women (VAW)
2) VAW recognized a a human rights violation
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Doctrinist Claims to Define FGC as a Human Rights Violation
• 1) Rights of the child
• 2) Rights of women
• 3) Freedom from torture
• 4) The right to health and bodily integrity
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Perils and Pitfalls of the Human Rights Framework
• 1) Can view the problems and solutions too narrowly
• 2) Imposition of a Western human rights culture
• 3) Undermine women’s agency
• 4) Unresolved questions concerning consent
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Recommendations
• Assess, anticipate and attempt to avert pitfalls
• Conduct research on how legislative measures contribute to changes in FGC
• Seek to understand how legal measures interact with other change efforts