COURSE ON ADVANCES IN SOCIAL NORMS AND SOCIAL CHANGE on 5-16 JULY 2010 (Penn-UNICEF summer programme) REPORT: “SAFETY NET” INITIATIVE FOR GIRLS ESCAPING FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION/CUTTING (FGM/C) AND EARLY MARRIAGE Florence Gachanja UNFPA-Kenya Executive summary FGM/C has been widely practiced by many communities in Kenya. Even where parents/families know of the harm it brings to their daughters, they have continued to cut them as they believe that the girl will become a good wife, brings honor and status to the family. For a long time, Kenya has had several interventions on raising public awareness. These are mainly small-scale and include, Alternative Rites of Passage (ARP), Agents of change such as community members, including religious leaders and safety nets for girls running away from home to avoid FGM/C. In the recent past, other interventions initiated include, the GOK/UNFPA/UNICEF Joint Programme on accelerating abandonment of FGM/C, a partnership of the government, media, faith based organizations, civil society organizations and local communities. The objective of the Joint Programme is to contribute to the accelerated abandonment of FGM/C in one generation, with demonstrated success in 17 countries in Africa by 2012. The strategies for implementation of the above programme include: i)Community Dialogues and Sensitization forums ii) Working with Council of elders and Religious Leaders iii) Working with the Youth iv) Capacity Building initiatives iv) Building networks v)National advocacy work with Parliamentarians vi) , Media and Government ministries 2 In spite of the above initiatives, the problem of FGM/C still persists in Kenya and this could be because empirical and normative expectations and networks were not analyzed in the initial stages of programmes. These would have assisted in the design of programmes that are community-led and address issues of concern to those communities. For example, the safety net programme was poorly designed and that is why some of the families/community continues to reject their daughters who refuse FGM/C. Programmes that have targeted girls and set up safety nets have concentrated on solving the problem of girls running away from home as a result of sensitization without involvement of influential members of the community and by so doing, they have tried to solve the problem which has resulted to another problem of the parents refusing to take their daughter back home. This happens because the initial approach was wrong and the community views the project as an outside intervention. From the strategies discussed in this course, the most successful approaches are those where communities are allowed to discuss their values, define their problems and identify their solutions in order to have a collective change of empirical expectations and avoid looking at an initiative as an outside intervention and hence are able to accept changes as this poses no threat to their values. 3 1) Background information 1.1) The situation of FGM/C in Kenya Female Genital Circumcision FGM/C is a deep-rooted traditional practice that precedes and was considered a prerequisite for marriage in some communities in Kenya. According to Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS) 2008, FGM/C prevalence is ,27% down from 32% in 2003 (KDHS). However, there are regional variations e.g. North Eastern Kenya 97.5% and western Kenya 0.8% (KDHS 2008). The age at circumcision varies from 0-20 with less % of young women getting circumcised. For example, 14.6% FGM/C prevalence for women between 15-19 years compared to 48.8% of women between 45-50 years. The KDHS 2008 also showed that prevalence of women with no education was 53.7% compared to 19.1% for women with secondary education. Reasons given for the practice include religion and culture. 1.2) Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative and the Tasaru Rescue Centre for Girls The project design and what was done Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative (TNI) is non-profit making, community-based organization in Narok District. It was started with the aim of providing a “safety net” for girls running away from their homes to escape FGM/C and early marriages. This was the result of an increase in demand for such services due to awareness creation by other organizations working in Narok in Girl Child Protection and Education programmes. 4 TNI has a rescue centre- Tasaru Rescue Centre for Girls- built by TNI friends from VDay in the USA. UNFPA has supported TNI to mount sensitization campaigns. UNFPA also supported construction of a classroom at the centre for tutoring girls who have never been to school in preparation for enrollment at the nearby schools. Currently the centre is catering for over 50 girls in primary and secondary schools. After the awareness on dangers of FGM/C in the community and in schools, some of the girls refuse to undergo FGM/C and run away from home. They either run to Tasaru rescue center, or go to the chief, DO or DC offices. Some of these girls are referred to Tasaru center while others are forced to go back to their homes. In collaboration with the Provincial and District Administrations, other NGOs/CBOs, Children Department-Ministry of Gender and Social Services, and village elders, TNI has reconciled some girls with their families and facilitated their re-integration into communities. This is a lengthy and delicate process, which requires a lot of time and commitment from players, thus necessitating the rescue center. Sometimes the reconciliation fails and girls are forced to remain in the rescue center for years In this community, FGM/C is part of a traditional initiation rite from childhood into adulthood. It involves a lot of instruction on how to conduct oneself in womanhood but unfortunately it culminates in FGM/C. Alternative Rites of Passage (ARP) has been designed to offer the same instruction without the cut. For example TNI, with support 5 from UNFPA has organized colorful ceremonies for girls in August and December every year. So far, over 500 girls have undergone Alternative Rites of Passage (ARP). TNI provides counseling for those who have undergone FGM/C and sensitizes and mobilizes religious/ community leaders, teachers, traditional circumcisers to support and advocate for the elimination of FGM/C and rehabilitation of FGM/C and forced marriage victims. In addition to this, TNI promotes basic reproductive health services and HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns. This project was designed to address the problem of girls running away from home to avoid FGM/C as a result of sensitization on FGM/C by various stakeholders in this district. Since the girls had nowhere to go, TNI decided to start a rescue center where girls would be sheltered before negotiations are carried out with families/community. The goal of these negotiations is to allow the girls to go back home, be integrated back into their communities and to convince the families to promise not to circumcise the girls. This has only worked for very few girls. Some girls would go back home only to be circumcised while others would be threatened with FGM/C and would runaway back to the rescue centre. The fact that girls are separated from their parents is not good for a community because that is not what any family would like to see but the social norm is so strong that they would rather obey the social norm than take in their daughter who has refused FGM/C. the project also organized Alternative Rite of Passage for girls in the community. 6 Another aspect of the practice is the income earned by the circumcisers, either cash or in kind. Efforts instituted to abandon the practice should therefore include ways of addressing “the loss of income” earned by circumcisers. UNFPA supported a women’s group to start income generating activity and a few former circumcisers have been incorporated in this group. Challenges/What went wrong In the initial stages of the programme, it seems the various organizations working in this area failed to perform a thorough analysis of the social networks and to use a holistic approach in implementation of the project. They may have used awareness campaigns which were not effective and this could be the reason why the social norm of FGM/C continues and that the girls who were mainly targeted for this programmme run away from home to avoid FGM/C. The community members after realizing that girls who are sensitized on the effects of FGM/C are running away from home to avoid FGM/C, are now cutting their girls at an earlier age before they can understand what FGM/C is while others have resulted to medicalization of the practice. This has worsened the situation as it is now harder to tell what exactly happens. In spite of sensitization to the dangers of FGM/C, the practice is still continuing. In the media, we still get reports of girls who are still forcefully circumcised. For example, two sisters who had run away to the rescue center to avoid FGM/C were reconciled with their 7 parents and went back home but were later forcefully circumcised by neighbours organized by their brother. The mother of the 2 girls was sensitized on the dangers of FGM/C and had opted out only for the community (with the help of the girls’ brother) to forcefully circumcise the two sisters while their mother was away in a Christian crusade. This shows the extent of the influence of individual family members and the community on the practice. As a follow up to the session on incentives and social norms by Erte, when individuals perceive an external intervention to be controlling, their intrinsic motivation to perform the task diminishes. In this case study, community members/parents of the girls running away to avoid FGM/C look at the safety net project as an external intervention that is controlling them and some have decided to fight it and refuse to take back their girls even with negotiations from a few elders and the Children Officer. They prefer to do away with their “rebellious girls” and as a result, some of these girls have been in the rescue center for over 6 years. It seems this programme did not identify influential community members/local leaders in the design stage who could have formed a critical mass to effect change. We also note that although the safety net is essential for girls, it is not sustainable as it is not linked to community structures for continuity/sustainability. 8 The coordinator of the safety net programme has been accused of being at logger heads with many local leaders who believe FGM/C makes women good wives in the same way it turns boys into responsible men for the country and this has made them look at the coordinator as an outsider.. The incentive given to girls in terms of going to school and having a home at the rescue center is good but sustainability is a problem because the upkeep and education of girls at secondary and university level is expensive and not many donors are willing to fund. It has been found that circumcisers if not compensated well will go back to cutting. For example, this project introduced 2 women circumcisers to the women group and being in the group does not guarantee them getting the same income as that they got from FGM/C. According to Erte’s presentation, it is either you pay enough or not pay at all. It also shows that incentives can backfire especially when individuals perceive an external intervention to be controlling hence their intrinsic motivation to perform a task diminishes. 4.1) Modified strategy/suggested solutions According to the session on social norms by Cristina, we have to understand why people obey a social norm and under which conditions they will disobey it. In this programme, an analysis of the social norm was not done to inform on why people practice FGM/C in order to identify the best approach/strategy to help people disobey the norm. The design 9 of the project was therefore wrong as it would have started with looking at people’s values versus the practice. There is need to pay attention to the social norm and let the community members discuss issues/values of importance to them and through that address the issue of girls running away from home. A good example is the KMG programme in Ethiopia where the programme built capacity of core groups and engaged in organized diffusion and worked with all sector. This led to organized abandonment of FGM/C. This was also emphasized in Gerry Mackie’s session that it is important to start with an influential group of people in the community and with time, this influential group will reach out to the other members of the community who are empowered eventually. Gerry further said abandonment will be accelerated if there is organized diffusion where value of not cutting for an individual will depend on proportion of others choosing not to cut. In this programme, a critical mass to influence other members of the community not to cut their daughters was missing hence the choice by parents to reject their own children when they disobey them and decide they do not want to be cut. From the game theory presented by Gerry on coordinated strategy, individual abandonment would make a family’s daughter worse off because it denies her marriageability and status. Collective abandonment makes each individual better off as the daughter of the typical family preserves her marriage-ability and status but does not undergo the health and human rights harms of FGM/C. Therefore abandonment is 10 possible but typically only by coordinating a collective abandonment within intramarrying group. This programme can replicate the non-directive strategy used by KMG programme of Ethiopia and ask questions from community values such as, how can we have the girl healthy, untouched and re-categorize the image of the uncut girl--- and explain why cutting of girls is not good [or why not cutting girls is good, why uncut girls are good, marriageable, etc.] instead of what is happening now where the girl is running away from home yet this is where she belongs. It is also important to note that effective abandonment requires community discussion, decision and commitment which can eventually lead to a public declaration. It is also necessary to increase awareness on FGM/C and human rights in order to make progress towards the realization of those areas they consider immediate concern e.g. education and health. The community discussion will then contribute to a new understanding that girls would be better off if everyone abandoned the practice. Since the rescue center is not sustainable, it is important for the programme to identify the existing community networks/structures which could take care of the girls running away from home and engage in community dialogue with council of elders, religious leaders, young men and women and other local leaders on how to accelerate abandonment of FGM/C. 11 As a follow up to the session on incentives and social norms, the section on procedural justice indicated that people are likely to comply to law if they view the law is just. Punishment through jailing like it has happened to perpetrators of FGM/C may not result to abandonment of FGM/C. It could reverse gains made as cultural conservatives can make sure the practice continues. It is important for laws to be put in place and obeyed but at the same time, prevention measures at the community level must take preference. Kenya has a children Act that prohibits FGM/C but it has not been effective as the fine is only about $600 and one year imprisonment, which is not enough to deter perpetrators of FGM/C. An FGM/C Bill has been drafted and will be introduced to parliament by male Parliamentarians. An FGM/C Policy has been developed and was approved by cabinet recently. This is a step towards the right direction. 5) Conclusion The safety net programme will need a review of the strategies used in order to have a community –led programme. It will also be necessary to concentrate efforts in high prevalence areas and have organized dialogues with communities that will accelerate abandonment of FGM/C. It will also be important to build the capacity of implementing partners to be able to use the tools and modified strategy from this course specially those partners in the GOK/UNFPA/UNICEF Joint Programme on accelerating abandonment of FGM/C. The 12 strategy will also be recommended to other implementing partners working with different communities using different strategies. 13