Minister of Social Solidarity Nevin al-Qabbaj on Thursday launched a national program to raise public awareness on the importance of societal development, including a campaign to fight female circumcision, also known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).
The program targets investing in humans and changing the negative societal behaviors that hinder human and economic development via providing citizens with necessary knowledge and scientific, legal and religious information, she said.
The families involved in Takaful and Karama program will benefit from this program as well, she added.
The program is based on raising positive awareness in 12 societal issues including economic empowerment, education, knowledge and eliminating illiteracy, mother and child health, positive parenting, early discovery of disability, illegal immigration, population increase, female gentile mutilation, child marriage, cleanness and hygiene, combating drugs, citizenship and respecting religious and cultural diversity, she said.
The program was launched after the spread of some violence incidents, female gentile mutilation, drugs and negligence of disabled persons, she said.
FGM latest victim
This comes only days after Egypt’s top prosecutor referred a doctor and two others to the criminal court after a 12-year old girl died undergoing female circumcision, also known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), that he performed in Upper Egypt’s Assiut.
The General Prosecution on Saturday urged doctors to fulfill their educational role by correcting the society’s misconceptions concerning circumcision, including get people acquainted with the consequent harm and pain of such practice to women.
The Public Prosecution in a statement called on everybody to cooperate to eliminate such phenomenon and not to cover such “crime” up.
“The Public Prosecution also appeals to the legislator to reconsider the penalty stipulated for the perpetrator of a circumcision crime if he is a doctor,” the statement added.
Legal basis
Egypt imposed a complete ban on female genital cutting — also known as female genital mutilation or circumcision — in June 2007 after Budour Shaker, a 11-year-old girl in Upper Egypt’s Minya, died of an excessive dose of anesthesia while being cut at a private clinic.
Egypt’s Grand Mufti, the government’s official arbiter of Islamic law, decreed during the same year that female genital cutting was forbidden by Islam, in his strongest statement against the practice.
FGM was criminalized by Egyptian parliament in June 2008, thus creating a paradigm shift by moving the practice from social norm to crime.
Egypt Today
