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Emory International Law Review

Abstract

This article applies a thesis favoring strong cultural diversity to defend a subject-centered policy regarding female genital surgeries (FGS). That idea posits that cultural variation holds an intrinsic value that should be presumptively respected when setting policy and creating law. Correlatively, cultural homogenization, especially by force, should be resisted.

Taking as a starting point the recent celebration of the United Nation’s Day of Zero-Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, the paper reviews the context of FGS practices in various societies and critiques the inconsistencies of U.N. arguments to advance its goal of total elimination by 2030. Especially problematic for the U.N. rhetoric depicting the evils of FGS are the facts that comparable surgeries provided to American women go uncriticized, and that while female genital surgeries of any kind are often criminalized, comparable procedures on males are legally shielded, as happened recently in Germany.

Despite the enormous expenditure and effort exerted by the United Nations, its strategy has resulted in only incremental decreases in the practice. What it has accomplished, however, has been to shame and disparage a great number of women.

We recommend a middle course, one built on the expressed priorities of the women involved: that the procedure be relocated into a medical setting to minimize health sequelae that can accompany any surgery, with informed consent. More importantly, however, we urge that attention be given to the underlying factors to which FGS is but a response. Greater work to improve the economic and social prospects for women would reduce much of the pressure for a woman to find a suitable husband and financial security via a proven gateway, one which the West has arbitrarily identified as the world’s most severe human rights violation.

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