Comparison of FGM Advocacy in Indonesia and African Countries: Case Studies of Kenya and Nigeria
Audrey Nethania Wibowo, Jericho Julius Prabowo, Yemima Bintoro
INTRODUCTION
Advocacy, as a way to push an issue into the realm of public discussion, is often a vital step in the process of resolving an issue. This is partly because a problem is often left unresolved not because there is no solution or desire to solve it, but because the wider community lacks awareness of these issues to form a movement that is sufficient to bring about significant change. Advocacy — the act of approving, supporting, recommending, defending, or proposing something on behalf of another person — is also an important thing in influencing the formation of legislation in an area, because it can attract a large number of vocal support on an issue and put pressure on it bottoms-up. Advocacy matters can also be applied to one of the issues inherent in gender, especially women, namely female genital mutilation (FGM). FGM is an issue which, based on the latest available data, is still rife in Indonesia.
This issue is also a problem that is one of the focuses of the United Nations (UN), being one of the points covered in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) number 5.3 regarding “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.” Briefly, the United Nations defines FGM as “…all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons … ” and divide it into several types which also vary, but in principle fit the definition. However, the focus of this paper is more towards the issue of FGM and the prevalence of this issue in the domestic sphere.
Indonesia, despite being a country that is still statistically high in terms of FGM practices, lacks concern in society regarding this issue. We can see this from the FGM movement (or lack of it) which lacks the volume to seriously advocate for this issue. In addition, most of the advocacy processes that focus on increasing public awareness of this issue are still focused on FGM issues in general which are more focused on improving education and not as a movement to bring about change domestically. These two things have contributed to the lack of effectiveness in raising the issue of FGM into the public sphere or the development of the movement that we can see on other gender issues. Practically, we can see this through the lack of laws that are comprehensive and quite dependent on public interpretation, such as Permenkes № 6 of 2014 regarding the Repeal of Minister of Health Regulation number 1636/MENKES/PER/XII/2010 concerning female circumcision, which apparently contributed to the lack of enforcement of FGM practices as a whole. From the description above, we can see that the advocacy process regarding FGM issues in Indonesia is considered to be less effective in bringing about ideal results or changes for efforts to eradicate FGM globally.
However, the advocacy process on the same issue yields different results from country to country, and of course raises questions. Looking at other countries that have issues regarding the prevalence of FGM practices, for example countries on the African continent such as Nigeria and Kenya, one can see the significant changes produced by the advocacy process in bringing about change, even down to the legislative level. More or less, we can see this as one of the results that can be brought about by the success of a substantial advocacy process from the community and the components that are also involved. From this fact, this paper sets out to look at the differences between the advocacy processes of these countries and Indonesia as a comparative study. Questions that might arise like “Why doesn’t the FGM advocacy process in Indonesia have the same results as those countries?” will try to answer by looking at how the advocacy process from these countries and Indonesia took place. By looking at the different processes, momentum, and components in the advocacy process of African countries, where the result was a success in raising the issue, it can help answer why the FGM advocacy process in Indonesia was relatively less successful.
DISCUSSION
Using countries in Africa, namely Nigeria and Kenya, as a comparison of FGM issue advocacy between Indonesia and Africa, we try to explore the causes of differences in the development of FGM cases in Indonesia and Africa. Unlike in Africa, the practice of FGM in Indonesia has not received much scrutiny. Therefore, we try to see the differences in the condition variables in the two cases to see how journey FGM advocacy process between the two cases.
Movement Process and FGM Struggle Figures in Africa
In African societies, FGM is widespread and deeply rooted in community traditions. Even in countries where the practice of FGM has been banned, some mothers of daughters still find ways to manipulate the system and bring their daughters to undergo the same process.this dangerous. For victims, FGM can be described as a traumatic experience that impacts mental health and has direct, lifelong consequences, such as excessive bleeding, infection, and other genital problems. Some FGM fighters often come from FGM survivors. Three African countries were awarded the 2018 Host writer Pitch Prize at the Outriders Summit in Warsaw, Poland, for providing inspiring stories to fight for the end of FGM, namely Nigeria, Kenya and Senegal. Thus, there are many FGM fighters, both from survivors, youth organizations, and even the government who support stopping this dangerous practice.
The efforts made in Ibadan, Nigeria, to increase the awareness of the African community regarding FGM can be said to be quite creative. African society is shown in a 25-minute film called “Bleeding Flower”, which tells the story of a Nigerian family and the battle of tradition against modernity. This film was produced in February 2018 which seeks to break down old traditions deeply rooted in African society regarding the harmful practice of FGM. The film’s anti-FGM campaigner and producer, Ekene Odigwe, said the film was a joint effort by 149 young people from various African countries participating in the Young African Leaders Initiative. According to him, education remains the main key in educating and creating social awareness in Nigeria about the need to end the practice of FGM. The film begins to have an impact. The women victims of FGM are starting to have the courage to speak up and join the anti-FGM movement. The State of Enugu in Southeastern Nigeria, where the film was first shown to the public, is considering implementing the VAPP (Violence Against Persons Prohibition) law signed in 2015, which seeks to end violence against people in private and public life , including harmful traditional practices. In 2015, Nigeria banned the practice of FGM and provided prison terms for violators. However, five years after the ban, the practice is still ongoing, especially in rural communities. Interestingly, according to Odigwe, the practice has been “medicalised”. Odigwe departed from his personal wounds, where he had lost two people he loved for life, as a result of the practice of FGM. Since then, he has contributed to ending the practice of FGM through his community.
The fight against FGM in Kenya was carried out by an FGM survivor named Sadia Hussein. He underwent FGM when he was 10 years old. Stemming from an experience that left her scarred and traumatized for life, she ventured across the remote region of southern Kenya, determined to protect the girls in her community from suffering a similar fate. Ignoring the pain, he has set out to free the region from this outdated practice. Along with 20 other female wound survivors, Hussein, now 35, has been voicing the anti-FGM message in the area with impressive results. The most formidable result to date has been making Hola City, an urban area located in the district, FGM free for 10 years, after successfully convincing the cutters to abandon the practice and turn to farming activities. She started speaking out against FGM in 2008. However, it was only in 2013 that Hussein was joined by women who had the same thoughts, intentions, and goals to stop the high prevalence of FGM among Kenyan Somalis. This group works under the Dayaa Women’s Group, an entity that is now actively involving traditionalists (cutters), religious institutions, and the community in fighting FGM. Sadia Hussein, as Coordinator of the Dayaa Women’s Group, protects young girls and creates awareness about this practice in Kenya. The group is successful in reducing the practice of FGM through regular events on the Tana Broadcasting Station and Tana FM. They invite like-minded people to speak out against the practice of FGM, and use songs that highlight the dangers of FGM. In addition, with group members who are predominantly Muslim, it can help and facilitate educating the public that Islam does not encourage FGM at all. Dayaa Women’s Group is a partner of the Government of Kenya’s Gender Affairs Department and the national body against the practice, the Anti-FGM Council. The Kenyan government outlawed FGM in 2001 but it wasn’t until 2011 that the FGM law came into effect after the 10th Parliament passed it. The Anti-FGM Council was created after the enactment of this law.
Through the stories of the two African countries above, Nigeria and Kenya, the process of fighting for the end of the practice of FGM began with a painful experience. The anti-FGM fighters in Nigeria and Kenya departed from the wounds of being left behind by loved ones as a result of the practice of FGM, also having trauma and scars that will last a lifetime as a result of having experienced the practice of FGM. From their courage as FGM fighters, other people who feel the same way, such as victims of FGM, are also brave and open their voices to stop this practice of FGM. Not only that, their government is also supportive in supporting the cessation of this practice. The challenge for FGM fighters in Africa is to face the cutting or perpetrators of this FGM tradition, as well as the mothers of daughters who are still old-fashioned or still perceive the practice of FGM as a practice that must be carried out in order to respect tradition and medical interests, which in turn in fact, there is no medical benefit to the practice of FGM.
Process, Movement, and Struggle Figures of FGM in Indonesia
FGM which is still found in almost all regions of Indonesia is predicted to occur due to misconceptions about FGM. Many people still practice this because they follow family traditions or religious beliefs. They do not understand that FGM is not part of Islamic teachings and is not an obligation. People who still believe the practice is good for their babies and don’t think that the practice of FGM is not completely without negative effects. In this section, advocacy will play a big role.
Focusing on advocacy in Indonesia, several things allow advocacy messages to reach the target community, one of which is with the help of organizations, campaigns or movements. In Indonesia, advocacy regarding FGM was championed and voiced by a women’s rights organization, namely Kalyanamitra, in 2011. In the advocacy policy advocacy regarding FGM, public awareness-raising (raising public awareness), and discussions at the community level. This of course aims to make Indonesian people better understand everything about FGM and reduce the percentage of FGM in Indonesia.
The government has also implemented a long overdue campaign to eradicate the practice of FGM. In 2016, Yohana Yembise, Minister of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, led a campaign spreading scientific evidence with the aim of discouraging religious groups and women’s groups who still support the practice of FGM. This was done because between 2010 and 2015, around 49 percent of girls, who were born up to the age of 14, were found to have undergone FGM. This campaign is one form of government attention to this issue, even though this campaign is only the latest attempt to end FGM.
Besides the government, there is an organization fighting for the elimination of FGM practices in Indonesia, namely Kalyanamitra. For more than 30 years, Kalyanamitra has struggled to maintain respect and fight for the fulfillment of women’s rights, one of which is being in a position against all forms of FGM practices. One of the movements carried out by this organization was on February 6 2020, where every February 6 is commemoratedInternational Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) or International Day of Zero Tolerance against Female Genital Mutilation. At this moment, Kalyanamitra urged the government to take firm action in eliminating the practice of FGM in Indonesia. This organization intends to remind the government’s commitment and responsibility regarding this matter.
At the same time, Kalyanamitra encourages the government to take passive actions that are comprehensive and involve stakeholders. Actions that can be taken include forming policies, programs and budget allocations, as well as education to increase public awareness of the risks of FGM practices. This is said to be in line with the government’s spirit of realizing Superior Indonesia in 2045 with a golden generation that is free from all forms of discrimination and violence, one of which is also free from the practice of female circumcision.
Previously, in 2014, several non-governmental organizations, one of which was Kalyanamitra, formed a coalition to sue the government for a ban on female circumcision. The organizations that worked together at that time were Kalyanamitra together with Watch Indonesia! and Berlin-based Terre Des Femmes. At that time, the practice of FGM was still very high even though there were already laws and several international conventions ratified by the government. The coalition criticized regulations that authorize medical personnel to perform female circumcision as long as it is safe to do so.
Terre des Femmes, Kalyanamitra, and Watch Indonesia! demand the enactment and adoption of comprehensive laws to eradicate all forms of genital mutilation and provide for penalties for violators. This coalition also demands a government ban on all agencies, institutions, or people to promote and provide female circumcision services. In addition, the emphasis is on procuring advocacy for the community to build national awareness among religious groups, cultural representatives, political leaders and the community. Advocacy is carried out by organizing outreach events, education, and campaigns so that cultural perceptions and beliefs about FGM can be changed.
In Indonesia, there has been no FGM survivor who has voiced support for the ban on FGM practices or taken part in the advocacy movement regarding FGM. When compared to Africa, the situation of victims of FGM in Africa who suffered greatly physically and psychologically prompted voices from the direct survivors or the victims’ families to stop the practice. Meanwhile, in Indonesia there have been no reports of victims of FGM who were considered to be so severe that they died like in Africa. This shows that the implementation of FGM practices in Indonesia is probably not as severe when compared to Africa, so that the effects are not as terrible as in Africa.
FGM is widely practiced in Indonesia, but reports that the victim suffered so much that it had an adverse impact on the people around him, specifically, have not been found, so there has not been a single figure voicing a ban on FGM like in Africa. The struggle to reduce the practice of FGM in Indonesia is supported by the existence of several non-governmental organizations that only press the government.
Laws that actually take firm action against perpetrators of FGM practices in Indonesia do not show legal certainty. This fact is proven by several laws and regulations which have drawn protests from a group of people so that a reference is needed in the context of reforming the law regulating female circumcision.
In 2018 and 2019, the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection established a guideline, namely the Roadmap and Action Plan for the Prevention of Female Genital Injury and Cutting (FGM) and Guidelines for Health Workers in Preventing the Practice of FGM/C. Besides that, The Indonesian Midwives Association conducted an extensive and comprehensive outreach regarding Permenkes Number 6 of 2014 concerning the revocation of Permenkes № 1636 concerning Female Circumcision and the Dangers of FGM/C Practices to all midwives at the Regency/City and sub-district to village levels, as well as discussing materials related to FGM/C, and communication strategies related to FGM/C. However, these regulations and movements have not really confirmed the existence and prohibition of FGM.
Analysis of Advocacy in Indonesia Fails to Raise FGM Issues to Public Attention
In the previous section, we can see that the effectiveness of the advocacy process for FGM issues in African countries tends to be higher than in Indonesia. Therefore, we can assess what are the important factors that contribute to the discrepancy in the results of the advocacy process for the same case in these different areas. The author identifies three factors that may contribute to differences in the progress of this advocacy. This section will refer to the journals of Christopher Bail et al, which examine advocacy organizations, cognitive-emotional flows, and public conversation. Although this journal is more inclined towards research on the rise of the field computational social science, several sections can be used as a basis for analysis regarding the effectiveness of advocacy in this paper. These 3 factors are public competition, cognitive-emotional current, and social contagion.
The first factor, public competition, in short refers to the efforts made by advocacy organizations in raising an issue. It is argued that bringing an issue into the public domain always has the goal of increasing public awareness of the issue and/or opening the necessary discussions to find solutions to existing problems. Advocacy can happen in any of these domains, just like scaling up awareness or open a discussion about a solution, but usually this is adapted to the stages needed to resolve the issue. In this section we can see that the first obstacle to the advocacy process is often in the space used to reach the audience, or conversational fields. In conversational fields these, not just 1 or several advocacy processes that are running, but can be very many. From here we can draw the first assumption that the advocacy process will experience difficulties if it decides to useconversational fields which are also used by various other advocacy processes. Furthermore, the journal exemplifies the location of these spaces, such as salons, city halls, and community centers. However, with technological advances, new spaces such as space are formedop-ed (contains the author’s opinion) in newspapers and social media (a relatively free space for opinions). In this case, we can draw a second assumption regarding the trend: advocacy processes carried out in more traditional spaces tend to be more effective, but have a minimal audience. While the more modern ones, on the other hand, are less effective but have a very wide audience. From these two assumptions, we can apply them to the case of Indonesia and comparative countries. First, we can see that the advocacy process in Indonesia will have internal competitionconversational fields which is quite tight when compared to Kenya or Nigeria. This is because, even though there are many general advocacy issues in these countries due to various important issues, gender issues are still at a fundamental stage and have not progressed to a higher level due to the nature of gender issues which usually follow the development of a country. Meanwhile, Indonesia, which is relatively more advanced than the two countries, has more gender issues which are also more diverse conversational fields which exists. Second, considering that Indonesia’s more advanced environment also contributes to conversational fields existing ones (relatively more modern / less effective but more massive). This means that in general, the advocacy process for an issue that occurs throughout Indonesia is more often done in the mass media. Even though its reach is very broad, the issue of advocacy for FGM has the potential to be covered up by advocacy efforts for other issues because conversation fields which is “full”, causing a lack of attention for the issue of FGM to prioritize other issues that are felt to be more problematic.
Second factor, cognitive-emotional current, is a combination of two main views in the contributors to the success of the advocacy process: cognition (logic, rationality) and emotion (compassion, fear). In essence, the journal sees that both have complementary roles because society, as the target audience, does not have an unlimited capacity to digest just one aspect (both cognition and emotion). Therefore, there is a need for synergy or the availability of materials that meet these two aspects to support the success of an advocacy. From this, we can draw the case of Indonesia and comparative countries. What I want to highlight in this section is the availability (or lack of) emotional aspects in the advocacy process in Indonesia. On the one hand, we can see the similarity in the fulfillment of FGM cognition requirements by the two cases (through the WHO-sponsored codification of medical science that determines the adverse effects of FGM). On the other hand, there is an imbalance in the emotional aspect. We can see in Kenya that there are direct survivors who speak out on this issue and more or less become symbols of resistance to the continued practice of FGM in their country. In Nigeria there is also a similar case, although not a direct survivor, it remains a prominent figure in efforts to eradicate FGM in that country. From the two cases above, we can see actors who played an important role, because their testimonies carried a large emotional burden on the issue of FGM. Then if we look at Indonesia, the figures that become the symbols are minimal. This is of course a lack of deep emotional aspectscognitive-emotional current. The lack of direct or indirect survivors who can be highlighted in the FGM advocacy process in Indonesia is something that cannot balance the cognition side that is often echoed by anti-FGM activists in Indonesia. Although not a few voices speak out about the issue of FGM in Indonesia, in contrast to Kenya and Nigeria, the voices of activists do not carry an emotional burden that can be compared to those who are victims or suffer loss due to the practice.
third factor, social contagion, explained in the journal that this is not something independent, as previously seen, but runs continuously. This means that if something happens to a community, it has the potential to spread its impact to other communities. Through this, we can draw impact comparisonssocial contagion this is our 2nd case. In short, Indonesia will be lacking when compared to Nigeria or Kenya in this aspect. Indonesia, unlike countries in Africa, finds it difficult to have a movement regarding FGM that synergizes with one another, because advocacy in Indonesia does not occur across countries. The advocacy process in Africa can bring about substantial movement, one of which is because of thissocial contagion in which each region that has the same concerns on the issue of FGM can interact and work together in achieving the same goals. In contrast to Indonesia, whose movement only occurs in one country and receives less attention, it certainly contributes to the lack of effectiveness of advocacy due to the lack ofsocial contagion from surrounding countries that do not have or perceive FGM as a substantial issue.
CONCLUSION
FGM in Indonesia is an issue that has different advocacy processes and outcomes. This can be attributed to the different variables that exist, both in Indonesia and African countries, such as figures in the anti-FGM movement, the number and scale of reports from victims of FGM, the level of progress in society, to the level of strict written law. The differences in these variable conditions play a major role in the existing advocacy process, because many things should be able to work together in raising the issue of FGM into the public domain, even though they have relatively the same basic problems. In short, the difference in conditional variables is a substantial thing that differentiates Indonesia from Kenya and Nigeria, which is the answer to why the FGM advocacy process in Indonesia does not have the same results as Kenya and Nigeria.
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