* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
A sneak peek at what’s on our radar this week…
Why would a parent subject a daughter to female genital mutilation? Some say they do it out of love – to preserve the girl’s virginity, to purify her and bring her status. Some consider it an essential prerequisite for marriage.
How on earth do you fight a practice that’s so deeply entrenched that even loving parents would take up razor blades, broken glass or tin can lids to perform such a rite of passage?
You might enforce laws against FGM, for a start. You might prosecute those who subject girls to cutting to send a clear message that FGM won’t be tolerated. In fact, prosecutions for FGM are rare, even in countries where it has been outlawed for decades.
Meanwhile, many efforts to eradicate FGM rely on a “softly, softly” approach aimed not at criminalising parents but at changing behaviours. Under this method, you try to convince communities that FGM is wrong and get respected individuals to denounce it. You enlist the support of religious leaders. You teach people their rights and responsibilities.
A poster child for this “community empowerment” approach is a non-governmental organisation called Tostan, often credited with pretty much eradicating FGM in Senegal. But a major report out last week from the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, suggests that major investment in Tostan’s programmes have failed to bring FGM rates down. Other methods costing far less in neighbouring countries have been more effective.
Our correspondent in Dakar, Misha Hussain, will be scrutinising the “community empowerment” approach and asking whether it’s time to prioritise other tactics. That’s a question he’s put to Tostan executive director Molly Melching. Ultimately it’s a dilemma that comes down to value for money since much of the fight against FGM is being fought with development aid dollars.
Misha will also be looking into an overlooked humanitarian crisis unfolding in northern Nigeria, parts of which are now officially the poorest places in the world. This is a story of hunger, natural calamity and extremist violence in a country with hundreds of billions of dollars of oil wealth. Expect more in coming weeks on this untold story in a region all but cut off to aid workers.
In Nairobi, Katy Migiro is piecing together evidence that Kenya has become the top destination in sub-Saharan Africa for illicit money flows: the proceeds of corruption, organised crime and other evils. She is also investigating an alarming rise in gang rape in Nairobi’s slums.
In London, Katie Nguyen has been talking to Britain’s chief prosecutor, Keir Starmer, about police attitudes towards the victims of sex crimes in the wake of high-profile sexual exploitation cases.
Coming to the end of his term as director of public prosecutions – during which he has overseen record conviction rates for rape and domestic violence cases in England and Wales – Starmer has much to say about the way victims of sexual abuse, grooming and other crimes are treated, saying the experience for most is “not a happy one”. Don’t miss Katie’s hard-hitting story.
In Bangladesh, we’re trying to get to the bottom of what may well be the country’s first lesbian wedding. But what at first appears to be the heartwarming tale of two girls in love – one Muslim, one Hindu – may turn out to be far more complicated.
Alex Whiting is seeking out aid agencies’ responses to a new U.N. brigade that will carry out military operations tracking down rebels in eastern Congo. It’s a slightly messy development in an already messy conflict because the brigade will be much more active than the current U.N. peacekeeping operation – and its presence is likely to blur the lines between the U.N.’s military and humanitarian mandates. Will such ambiguities put aid workers as risk of rebel attack?
Stay tuned for these stories and much more.
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