The rise of female circumcision during COVID in Somaliland

(28 Feb 2022) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4368329

Safia Ibrahim's business was in trouble. COVID-19 had taken hold in Somaliland, in the Horn of Africa.
So the 50-year-old widow with 10 children to support set out door to door on the capital's outskirts, a razor at hand, taking advantage of the lockdown to seek work with a question: Have your daughters been cut?
Her business is female circumcision, learned at the age of 15, performed countless times and now being passed along to her daughters.
For 35 years, she has congratulated young girls upon completing the procedure.
"Pray for me, I've made you a woman now," she tells them, the most recent just 10 years old.
She believes her work keeps girls pure for marriage. "This is our Somali culture. Our great-grandmothers, grandfathers - all of them used to practice," she said, even though she now knows there's no medical or even religious reason for the removal of external genitalia, which can cause excessive bleeding, problems with urination and childbirth, infections and even death. But it remains legal in Somaliland, so Ibrahim will continue until authorities tell her to stop.
Her story echoes through Muslim and other communities in a broad strip across Africa south of the Sahara, as well as some countries in Asia. In many places, COVID-19 brought stark challenges to efforts by new generations of health workers and activists to stop what they along with the United Nations and others call female genital mutilation.
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This story is part of a yearlong series on how the pandemic is impacting women in Africa, most acutely in the least developed countries. The Associated Press series is funded by the European Journalism Centre's European Development Journalism Grants program, which is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The AP is responsible for all content.

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