Genital and Sexual Mutilation of Females

Numerous other activities and meetings for girls and women African immigrants are listed in various locations including seminars and educational activities during the year. Collaboration with media is specifically listed including press, radio and TV. Printed educational materials were produced and distributed and much more. A program with the European Community with different partners is listed and production of posters, pamphlets and more."

EDITOR'S NOTE:

GAMS has been working with African Immigrants in Paris - women and children - for many years (see previous issues of WIN NEWS (cited above) where their efforts are reported. GAMS also adapted the WIN NEWS Childbirth Picture Books (CBPB) and printed a special Parisian version of these teaching materials in French for use by the Mother and Child health clinics in and around Paris where mast African immigrants live. The CBPBs have Additions showing the damage done by FGM

The reason for the early and forced marriages of young African Immigrant girls - another terribly damaging African tradition - is greed - African fathers get paid the "bride price". The bride price in reality is the sale price for a daughter paid to the father: as a result the African men are anxious to negotiate the highest possible price - often with middle aged men who can pay more: the daughters are never consulted - often they are too young to know anything about what is going to happen to them. The fathers are anxious to sell their daughters as early as possible as this also saves them the money they have to spend for support and education of the child and she is usually too young to resist. The mothers are not consulted: selling a daughter it is a 'deal' between African men.

All these illegal activities go on in France with the full knowledge of the French authorities who do nothing to intervene - though the activities of the men including child marriage and widely practiced polygamy are entirely illegal. But the French Government does not want to "offend" the African men who might protest - while the African girls have no voice and are never heard. The greed of the men is the real reason for child marriage which goes on all over Africa and among African immigrants in Europe and worldwide: it causes terrible tragedies for young women. and deprives them of education and their future; it robs women of education, their health and independence.

The health problems resulting from early childbearing include death in childbirth and fistulas - the rupture during birth of the genital tract, the rectum and vagina resulting in incontinence and many other permanent health problems.. Women with fistulas - which are very difficult to operate and cure - can be found all over Africa: they are abandoned by their families and communities. (See Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital Report in WN 27-3 p23, summer 2001)

Once the father gets his money for selling his daughter - she is no longer his responsibility - he does not care. He has other children and wives - polygamy is openly practiced by immigrants in Paris. The French Government for years has allowed African men to break the law at the expense of women and girls for fear of being accused of "interference in African traditions": It does not bother French authorities that the lives of African girls and women are destroyed. Recent activities of GAMS - a private organization that receives some financial support by the Government - are "tolerated"- but the French Government has utterly failed to clean up the criminal and illegal human rights violations in the immigrant communities in France, most around Paris. GAMS can do very little because the French authorities fail to implement the law or protect immigrant girls and women.