Tanzania female circumcision shock

BBC World Service, Thursday 2 September 1999

A human rights group in Tanzania says that female genital mutilation is on the increase in some areas, despite government attempts to ban it.

A spokeswoman for the Centre for Human Rights, Helen Kidjo, said the group had discovered that female circumcision was being secretly practised in areas like Kilimanjaro, and that girls particularly from the Kuria tribe were being taken across the border into Kenya where the practice had not yet been banned. Mrs Kidjo was responding to a report by the World Health Organisation, which regards female circumcision as a human rights abuse. The Tanzanian group is promoting an experiment begun with the Maasai in Kenya, where circumcision has been abandoned but an initiation ceremony maintained.