Source: Tanzania Daily News (Dar Es Salam)
RECENTLY, in mid December 2013, the media reported that 21 girls aged between three and 17 were subjected to genital mutilation (FGM) in Same District.

This came less than a month after the country marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Police broke up the illegal ceremony where girls were subjected to the cut. They rounded up 38 people, including seven cutters, 21 girls and parents, according to the Same District Commissioner Herman Kapufi.

Mr Kapufi said policemen swooped on a village after neighbours reported their suspicions about a dance ritual. Four of the girls were still bleeding and were taken to hospital for treatment, Mr Kapufi added. The Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act, 1998 (Sospa) which prohibits Female Genital Mutilation provides heavy penalties for offenders, including not only the 'ngariba' but also the parents of the victims.

The practice however, still continues today under the cover of secrecy in some areas of the country. Efforts to sensitize communities on the harm of the practice must thus be stepped up. Such efforts are fostered by the Gender Equality and Women Empowerment programme (GEWEII), being implemented by Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA ) in partnership with four other organisations that defend the rights of women and children.

They seek to wipe out the bad practice so as to protect girls from this humiliation. FGM is a surgical procedure performed on the genitals of girls and women in many parts of developing world. The term FGM covers a range of procedures, which are also referred to as female circumcision and introcision.

Among communities that practise FGM, the procedure is a highly valued ritual, whose purpose is to mark the transition from childhood to womanhood. In these traditional societies, FGM represents part of the rites of passage or initiation ceremonies intended to impart the skills and information a woman will need to fulfill her duties as a wife and mother.

The function of this practice, whether mild or severe, is ultimately to reduce a woman's sexual desire, and so ensure her virginity until marriage. The more extensive procedure, involving stitching of the vagina, has the same aim, but reducing the size of the vagina is also intended to increase the husband's enjoyment of the sexual act.

Discussions, conducted for the purposes of this report, with women who have undergone the procedure, revealed that penetration was almost always difficult and painful, even for the man, when women had undergone the more extreme forms of FGM. Certain communities carry out FGM for religious reasons, believing that their faith requires it; this is particularly true of Muslims who adhere to the practice.

All members of communities practising FGM have a role in perpetuating it. Families of girls or women who undergo FGM support it because it makes their daughters marriageable - the operation ensures that their daughters will have ready suitors and a satisfactory bride price.

In these communities, no eligible man would consider marrying a girl who has not undergone the procedure, so FGM makes a woman culturally and socially acceptable. It is in this important way that female genital mutilation is supported and encouraged by men.

Women in the community have a role too, as it is they who arrange for and perform the operation. Typically, the procedure is arranged by the mother or grandmother and, in Africa, is usually performed by a traditional birth attendant, a midwife, or a professional circumciser. In communities practising FGM there is literally no place for a woman who has not undergone the procedure.

Such societies have sanctions, which are brought to bear on the woman and her family, ensuring that the woman's relatives enforce compliance. Other circumcised girls will no longer associate with her. She is called derogatory names, and is often denied the status and access to positions and roles that 'adult' women in that community can occupy.

Ultimately, an uncircumcised woman is considered to be a child. In traditional societies that offer women few options beyond being a wife and a mother there is great pressure to conform. Women who lack the education to seek other opportunities are doubly constrained in terms of the choices open to them.

These women also typically come from communities that do not have alternatives to the traditional economy and modes of production, such as farming, fishing or pastoralism. Even educated women from such communities are often faced with the FGM dilemma for themselves and their daughters.

In the modern world few places exist in isolation, untouched by other cultures. The creation of nation states, which brought together many communities within common borders, as well as the forces of globalisation, have contributed to the blurring of boundaries in all societies.

Institutions that bring new norms in religion, national policy and legislation, and on a more individual level, education and intermarriage, create new options for societies. Sociocultural clashes arise as communities, ideas and cultures attempt to blend.

• Tanzania