Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Programme

The programme focuses on empowering local communities and making them responsible for behaviour change related to FGM in their local community. To begin, SAACID identified potential community catalysts and stakeholders or interest groups that could help spur grassroots social change. They then gathered some of these stakeholders together in a 4-day workshop for 50 of Adale District's major leaders in the district; the goal was to provide an outline of the initiative and to get their input as to how it should proceed. The strategy here involved seeking full local participation in developing a strategy for the elimination of FGM in the entire district through the development of new rituals designed to maintain group cohesion and identity.

The second phase of the workshop process involved visits to each of the 11 major villages in the district, where open village meetings were held to provide the local leaders with a summary of the outcome of the first workshop, the education necessary to implement the changes that were outlined there, and to initiate the development of a village committee that would develop a strategy to eliminate the practice in their locale. These strategies drew heavily on community participation and action, in the form of:

• awareness-raising about FGM for the community in large population clusters - for instance through an anti-FGM campaign conducted in 1996 in Adale Town which was designed to provide the population with knowledge of the biological problems associated with the procedure. (To learn about the 4 types of FGM carried out in Somalia, visit the SAACID website).
• the development of new community rituals to celebrate girls who are not circumcised
• the designation of ceremonial places to be visited by all members of the community to observe the new rituals. The idea was that everyone would observe these new rituals and discuss them, hopefully coming to an agreement. The goal was that all villages in the district would adopt the same ritual pattern, also providing gifts to girls to celebrate their transition from child to young woman.
• the establishment of alternative income-generating employment activities for the current women who circumcise girls.
• the inclusion of the problems of FGM in the school syllabus of SAACID's primary and secondary school operating in Adale Town.

Girls, Gender, Health, Rights.

Programme objectives include:

• enabling Somalians to share their own experience, concerns, and hopes for the elimination of FGM in their community.
• demonstrating and highlighting the role and interaction of culture, as expressed in personal and community values, in shaping perceptions of and attitudes toward the practice of FGM
• fostering a full understanding of the physical and sexual health issues associated with (as well as the legal and ethical implications of) FGM
• helping individuals and groups interpret and reform those values that support FGM in the communities in which they are working
• critically comparing and evaluating approaches to social change that are appropriate to the Somali context.