Subject: Fw: Ban on Female Genital Mutilation (fwd)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 1999 07:35:45 -0600


Of interest--J. Abbenyi.

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> Subject: visions-afr: Senegal: Ban on Female Genital Mutilation (fwd)
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> Senegal: Ban on Female Genital Mutilation
> Date distributed (ymd): 990104
> Document reposted by APIC
> +++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
> Region: West Africa
> 
> Issue Areas: +economy/development+  +gender/women+
> Summary Contents: 
> This posting contains a short report, from the "Indigenous
> Knowledge" section of the World Bank's Africa Region,
> providing background to the December 1998 decision by Senegal
> to ban female genital mutilation (see the BBC report at
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/default.htm). 
> That decision, which follows a similar step by Togo in October
> 1998, was in large part the result of local initiatives by
> Senegalese women described in the report, as well as a
> worldwide campaign by UNICEF.
> For additional background, and information on action on this
> issue by African women in the United States, including a
> "Declaration of Values" with a form to indicate your support,
> see the Rainbo web site (http://www.rainbo.org).
> See also:
> Summary background from UNICEF 
> http://www.unicef.org/pon96/womfgm.htm
> http://www.unicef.org/french/pon96/womfgm.htm
> ENDA SYNFEV - Synergy Gender and Development
> http://www.enda.sn/synfev/synfev.htm 
> And visit APIC's Africa Web Bookshop 
> (http://www.africapolicy.org/books) for a short review of
> Do They Hear You When You Cry, by Fauziya Kassindja and 
> Layli Miller Bashir, the account of a young Togolese woman's
> case against the U.S. immigration authorities on this issue.
> +++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> IK Notes World Bank
> No. 3, December 1998
> Senegalese Women Remake Their Culture
> IK Notes reports periodically on Indigenous Knowledge (IK)
> initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is published by the
> Africa Region's Knowledge and Learning Center as part of an
> evolving IK partnership between the World Bank, communities,
> NGOs, development institutions and multilateral organizations.
> The views expressed in this article are those of the authors
> and should not be attributed to the World Bank Group or its
> partners in this initiative. A webpage on IK is available at
> http://www.worldbank.org/html/afr/ik/index.htm
> Letters, comments, and requests for publications should be
> addressed to: Editor: IK Notes Knowledge and Learning Center
> Africa Region, World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Room J5-171
> Washington, D.C. 20433 E-mail: pmohan-AT-worldbank.org
> Although for decades the capital of French West Africa,
> Senegal, like other countries of the Sahel, remains
> predominantly rural. And while 62 percent of the people reside
> in rural areas, more than 85 percent of the wealth is in urban
> centers. As in many countries, disadvantage accumulates at the
> level of women and girls. In 1995, female literacy countrywide
> was just over half the rate for men (23 percent compared to 44
> percent), and the discrepancy was still greater in rural
> areas.
> TOSTAN, literally means "breaking out of the egg" in Wolof,
> the language spoken by the majority of Senegal's 7.9 million
> people and is among a number of innovative rural development
> and women's education initiatives that are addressing the
> problem at its source. It offers an 18-month learning program
> that combines basic education in national languages with
> practical development issues, and provides rural people with
> the resources to improve their standard of living while
> fostering increased confidence in their way of life.
> More than literacy, this breakthrough program offers
> participants the tools to tackle such community issues as
> health, hygiene and the environment. The program uses six
> modules that link literacy to life skills in a highly
> participatory process of problem solving. TOSTAN successfully
> sustains the link between basic education and rural
> development, giving adult learners not only literacy and
> numeracy skills in their national languages but the means to
> understand and solve local problems.
> Several years ago, the TOSTAN NGO responded to the
> solicitations of village authorities in Malicounda who had
> seen the impact of its training programs on women in
> neighboring communities and helped this Bambara community of
> west central Senegal to create its own center. The program
> placed special emphasis on the identification and resolution
> of common problems, and one of the last training modules in
> the series addressed issues of women's health and sexuality.
> Its popularity among rural women participants broke all
> records.
> Shortly after completing their training, the newly literate
> women of Malicounda decided that the problem they wished to
> address was the custom of female circumcision a longstanding
> pattern in the Bambara/ Mandigue and Pulaar communities. By
> informing themselves on practices elsewhere and on the effects
> of circumcision on girls' health and sexual life, they
> developed an arsenal of arguments that eventually convinced
> the village council to abolish the practice officially. In the
> months May to July 1997 the traditional period for genital
> cutting on young girls no such operations were performed in
> Malicounda for the first time in the community's history.
> TOSTAN and UNICEF supported the women by organizing a visit
> from twenty Senegalese journalists to interview them about
> their stand. The women performed a play for the visitors to
> illustrate the reasons why they had made this decision and the
> arguments they had used with other villagers. The visit
> brought publicity to the issue, but also attracted some
> threatening comments and criticism from surrounding
> communities of the same ethnic group. Saddened but basically
> undaunted, the group from Malicounda decided to organize a
> delegation to two neighboring villages to convince women there
> of the importance of a local decision to abolish genital
> mutilation.
> In one of these the community of Ngerin Bambara women who had
> just completed the Tostan program decided to endorse the "oath
> of Malicounda." The President of their Women's Association,
> herself the daughter of a traditional circumciser, said that
> her own daughter had hemorrhaged seriously during the
> operation and that it was time to change.
> Inhabitants of the second community, Ker Simbara, decided that
> they could not put a stop to the practice without consulting
> kin in a whole network of neighboring villages. So for a
> period of eight weeks, two men who had taken part in the
> TOSTAN program one a TOSTAN facilitator and the other a 66
> year-old Imam (a senior Muslim priest) traveled from village
> to village to discuss the negative effects of female
> circumcision with local people. The men originally had feared
> that they would be chased out of many of the communities.
> Instead they discovered that the news of Malicounda opened
> doors and hearts, and they heard shocking stories from women,
> speaking out for the first time about what they had
> experienced.
> The men returned convinced of the importance of what they had
> heard and what they were doing. They assisted the women of
> Malicounda, Ngerin and Ker Simbara in organizing a
> intervillage conference in Diabougou for all those interested.
> In February 1998, three representatives the village chief and
> two women representatives from thirteen different villages met
> for two days to discuss the problem and formulated the
> "Diabougou Declaration," an engagement on the part of 8,000
> villagers to cease henceforth genital circumcision of girls.
> Word of this initiative next traveled to the Casamance region
> of southern Senegal, where another group of villages these all
> of Pulaar lineage, an ethnic group practicing genital
> circumcision on 88 percent of girls banded together for a
> similar conference and declaration. Their conference was
> attended by representatives from 18 communities, by health
> workers and by the highly respected Imam of Medina Cherif, who
> assured the women that the Muslim religion does not require
> girls' circumcision and guarantees women's rights to health
> and human dignity. Many women spoke of the harm wrought by
> this practice. One lamented the death of her two girls
> following the operation; and a traditional "cutter" admitted
> that a girl had died in her village the year before. Other
> women spoke of problems at childbirth and of painful sexual
> relationships. The group concluded their meeting by issuing
> their own declaration renouncing the practice.
> The initiative has continued to spread. Early in the process,
> President Abdou Diouf of Senegal himself proposed the "Oath of
> Malicounda" as a model for national adoption. On the heels of
> the meetings in the Casamance, women in the St. Louis region
> of Senegal are now preparing for an inter-village convocation
> of their own, to be held in February 1999. The sort of "active
> learning" promoted among women by the TOSTAN program in
> Senegal seems to have resulted in far-reaching cultural
> change. Elements that contribute to TOSTAN's successful impact
> in education and sustainable development are further examined
> below.
> Issues
> Cultural roots. Combined with the use of national languages,
> a deep valuing of African culture is the foundation of
> TOSTAN's educational program, exemplifying the practical and
> profound relationship between culture and education.
> National languages. Although French is Senegal's official
> language, the government has increasingly encouraged the use
> of national languages in literacy programs, recognizing that
> learning is easier and more effective in the affective domain
> of one's own tongue and is likely to facilitate the transition
> to international languages. Learning in the mother tongue
> inspires pride, empowering women to speak up in their homes
> and communities; and pride of place, encouraging men to invest
> in their community rather than migrate to the cities. As well,
> it eliminates the dissonance that children educated solely in
> French often feel within the village household, thereby
> facilitating intergenerational communication and solidarity.
> Problem solving is the program's backbone and provides a
> strong motivator for literacy acquisition. Skills taught in
> this five-step process include (i) identifying and analyzing
> the problem; (ii) studying adapted solutions based on
> available financial, material and human resources, as well as
> the time factor; (iii) planning the solution: what needs to be
> accomplished? when do the steps have to be completed? who is
> responsible? what human, material and financial resources are
> necessary? what are the possible obstacles? (iv) implementing
> the solution; and (v) evaluating the results: Did we solve the
> problem?
> Participation. TOSTAN was developed with villagers in a highly
> participative ten-year process. Curricular modules were based
> on the stories, proverbs, songs, and cultural traditions of
> each place gathered by traveling from village to village,
> listening and recording the oral tradition. The instructional
> method maintains a participatory approach and learners often
> involve their family and the community in the process of
> problem-solving.
> Women. With a female illiteracy rate in 1990 of 74.9 percent,
> women are the least-educated group in Senegal. Women
> particularly have been benefiting from TOSTAN's whole language
> approach that begins with concrete, relevant experiences from
> their daily lives rather than abstractions. TOSTAN has become
> a training ground for leadership as women gain confidence,
> begin to identify problems such as the retrieval of water, and
> start to make changes in their communities. Yet men are not
> excluded: nearly one-third of the participants are male, and
> as the story of Ker Simbara illustrates they may take many of
> the initiatives critical to alleviating the burdens that women
> bear.
> Process of developing approaches
> Besides the participatory processes mentioned, learners were
> also involved in the development of the contents of the
> program through a method of testing, dialogue and feedback.
> This was costly at the start but ultimately proved
> cost-effective due to the success rate of adaptation by other
> NGOs. Basic education, a UNESCO brochure on TOSTAN points out,
> "strikes a deeper chord in peoples lives than a
> straightforward literacy project...Understanding how each
> module will contribute to changing their lives and environment
> is a powerful motivating factor for learners". The
> problem-solving process is basic to the TOSTAN approach and
> easily adapted to varied environments.
> Problems Encountered
> In 1987 there were no basic education programs in national
> languages in Senegal, and two government ministries shared
> responsibility for literacy programs which often floundered.
> Existing programs were little connected to practical life and
> functioned in a non-literate environment, where skills learned
> and not practiced were soon lost. The TOSTAN basic education
> program addressed another basic problem, boredom, by relating
> literacy to community and personal life and developing
> attractive materials from local concerns. Finding qualified
> facilitators was not easy at the outset, and there was
> resistance from participants to the idea of paying the
> facilitators from local resources. They preferred to use that
> money for materials or classroom construction. TOSTAN
> graduates are now themselves trained to be facilitators and
> provide the bulk of staffing.
> Solutions and Conclusions
> The problem-solving skills presented in the first module are
> used throughout the following modules, which deal successively
> with hygiene activities, uses of oral rehydration therapy and
> vaccinations, financial and material management skills,
> management of human resources, and feasibility studies and
> income-generating projects. Using these skills, women
> participants have started a number of small businesses. The
> TOSTAN methodology has also been used to reach out-of-school
> children with a curriculum that covers reading, writing, math,
> problem solving, health and hygiene, nutrition, family
> management, children's rights, history, geography, education
> for peace, leadership skills and group dynamics. Using the
> participatory approach, adolescents learn to produce their own
> texts.
> The UNESCO flyer on TOSTAN draws an apt conclusion: "The
> availability of a comprehensive program that offers
> participants problem-solving tools and deals with the crucial
> problems of health, hygiene, and the environment is an asset
> for many regions of Africa faced with high illiteracy rates,
> especially among women. More focus needs to be put on
> implementing these well-studied and tested programs rather
> than developing new ones...TOSTAN has shown that individuals
> without any formal education, from villages with minimal
> resources, can improve their lives and environment through a
> solid program leading to greater autonomy and
> self-sufficiency."
> This article is based on research conducted by Senegalese
> researchers with the support and technical supervision of
> Peter Easton, Associate Professor, Graduate Studies in Adult
> Education, Florida State University, and with the active
> collaboration of the concerned African communities. The
> research was carried out under the joint aegis of the Club du
> Sahel/OECD, the CILSS and the Association for the Development
> of Education in Africa (ADEA). 
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