Djibouti: Women fight mutilation
12.07.2005
For thousands of years, girls in the area that is now the tiny African country of Djibouti, have been subjected to pharaonic circumcision. It is a practice that involves cutting away a girl’s inner labia and clitoris, and sewing the wound together, leaving a tiny hole for passing urine and menstrual blood. Despite medical evidence that genital mutilation puts women at risk of infection, pain and complications during childbirth, social pressure is such that most mothers opt to circumcise their daughters.