“No More Circumcision Hereafter,” W/ro Eniyat Chane
According to the 1999 report of the National Committee on Traditional Practices of Ethiopia, the main harmful practices in Amhara region included child marriage and Female genital mutilation (FGM). Amhara Region has FGM prevalence of 62 percent of women aged 15-49 who are circumcised.
W/ro Eniyat Chane (34) lives in Angot kebele, Libokemkem Woreda, Amhara Region. She was circumcised at early age, and she was married at the age of 9. This creates s score on her sexual organ and latter creates difficulty at the time of sexual intercourse and child delivery. Actually, she did not recognize the impact of circumcision except its traditional myth about it. She was amazed when trained about the negative impact of it from ORDA Ethiopia’s Accelerating Engagement of Youth in Policy Advocacy and Reporting for the Prevention of Harmful Practices and Violence against Children in Their Communities Project, which is funded by UNICEF.
She has five children and three are girls. She did not circumcise the daughters for the sake of preventing unintended sexual relations traditionally. According to her, if they have matured, she would have circumcised them. Later, after she had trained by the project about FGM, she knew some girls in her village were exposed to fistula due to genital mutilation & early marriage. Eniyat’s daughter Meseret (12) who is grade seven and Tewabech (9) who is grade four are now free of FGM and early marriage. And she made an oath to herself to not bring these kinds of problems on her kids, and her husband Belay (40) well recognized the FGM related problems.
“I would not practice neither FGM nor early marriage to my daughters. My daughters are attending their education and they are happy,” W/ro Eniyat said.