Female genital mutilation and human rights

Abstract

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The paper considers efforts by Australia and other Western nations to prevent female genital mutilation in refugee and migrant groups by enacting or using existing laws to prohibit the practice. As social workers and other community service workers may be required by law to monitor people from cultures supporting this practice, they need to develop an understanding of the language of human rights.

While debate to support prohibition has focused on the extreme forms of this practice by characterising them as barbaric and having deleterious effects on health, there has been a failure to recognise criminalisation may be counterproductive as it requires surveillance of high-risk groups and stigmatises and marginalises the women and girls from the cultures involved.

Social workers may better understand the difficulties posed for the groups affected by prohibition as a conflict between cultural relativism and the individual woman's or girl's right to bodily integrity and sexual potential, by increasing their knowledge of the language of human rights. The author proposes the profession should understand female genital mutilation as an issue within a framework of universal fundamental human rights, by comprehending how the principles and rights embodied in relevant United Nations instruments affect Australian policies and domestic law.