Djénabou Bélla Diallo learned to mutilate girls' genitals during university nursing practices, in a private clinic in the city of Labé, in the central west of Guinea-Conakry. “There is a lot of social pressure. All past generations did it, absolutely all women were mutilated. In an environment where everyone does one thing, it is very difficult not to do the same thing,” she explains.
Diallo, 35, who also underwent FGM as a child, talks about her work practicing female genital mutilation (FGM) in a rather introverted way, although answering all questions. “At the clinic we stopped mutilating the little girls when we understood the physical and psychological damage it causes, and we began to provide training to stop this gender violence,” she recalls. Two years ago she stopped practicing ablation to work as a midwife in a public health center in the district of Pelel, near Labé, which is also the commercial epicenter and capital of one of the eight regions into which Guinea is divided. . Since 2021, a military junta has governed this country of 14 million inhabitants, where more than 41% of the population is under 14 years old according to the United Nations Population Fund.
Female genital mutilation or clitoral cutting of girls is practiced mostly in countries in Africa and the Middle East, despite being prohibited in many of them. At least 200 million girls and women alive today in 31 countries have been subjected to it, according to Unicef data. In general, this organization says, the practice has been decreasing in the last three decades. This is not the case of Guinea-Conakry, which is the second country in the world, after Somalia, where more girls and women suffer this form of gender violence: 95% of them, according to the feminist organization Equality Now.
At the clinic we stopped mutilating the little girls when we understood the physical and psychological damage it causes, and we began to provide training to stop this gender violence.
“In our case [en la clínica]“We only cut off a piece of the clitoris,” recalls Diallo. “Although there are more types of FGM. The most widespread type in Guinea, especially in rural areas, is type three, in which the clitoris, major nerves and upper lips are cut. In private clinics it is practiced with sanitary utensils. If not, it is done with scissors, cutters or knives, very common in rural areas.” Aissatou Diallo, a Guinean feminist activist based in Barcelona, adds that this practice has no direct relationship with religion. “Muslim, Catholic and animist girls are mutilated,” she says.
Every month, Nurse Diallo mutilated two girls between approximately five and six years old, for 50,000 Guinean francs (about five and a half euros). In Guinea, the percentage of families that mutilate their daughters in private clinics is very low, since not the entire population can afford it, he points out. “There are what are called community mutilators, who go through rural towns, and in exchange for little money, they offer to perform FGM. In these cases, they do not mutilate the girls inside the house, but rather they take them and mutilate them in the middle of the forest, for example.”
Every month, Nurse Diallo mutilated two girls, approximately five and six years old, for 50,000 Guinean francs (about five and a half euros).
The consequences of FGM are varied: psychological trauma, serious complications during childbirth and deprivation of sexual pleasure. “It is a sexist practice, which is used to make women more vulnerable from a young age,” underlines Aissatou Diallo. “It is a tool of domination, to weaken us,” says this woman, whose brother is married to nurse Djénabou Diallo and who serves as president of AHCAMAan association that works against sexist violence.
Djénabou Diallo assures that there are more and more women, especially of her generation, who refuse to practice FGM on their daughters. And she recognizes that a fairly popular strategy is to dissemble and claim that the girls have completed the ritual, without it being true. “Even they think they are, and when they grow up they discover that they are not,” she admits. When asked about her own daughter, Diallo responds quickly: “We are not going to mutilate her.”
The practice of FGM is not the only problem that Guinean women face. Only 31% of the country's women were literate in 2021, according to World Bank data, and access to healthcare or basic resources such as drinking water is very scarce or non-existent, details Boubacar Sylla, from the Guinean NGO. Club des Amis du Monde (CAM). The situation is especially difficult in rural areas, where today approximately 62% of the Guinean population.
Added to FGM are other problems, such as forced and early marriages of girls. In 2021, 47% of women in Guinea were married before turning 18, according to a study of the Wassu-UAB Foundation, of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, which concluded that a community that legitimizes FGM is more likely to, in turn, lead its sons and daughters to contract forced marriages.
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