Cultural Relativism as Applied to Female Genital Mutilation Essay

ethnic Relativism as Applied to Female Genital Mutilation I remember the blade. How it shone in that location was a woman kneeling over me with the knife. I bit her it was in all I could do. Then three women came to hold me down. One of them sat on my chest. I bit her with all my might. These words reflect Banassiri Syllas measure of her experience undergoing female circumcision, also known as female venereal mutilation (FGM), at the young age of eight in the Ivory Coast. This worrisome description of her struggle makes it hard to understand why any refining could support much(prenominal) a practice. Yet, it is estimated that more or less 132 million women and girls in about thirty African countries have undergone the same, or at least similar, ethnic procedure as Banassiri. According to the World Health Organization, about dickens million girls undergo female genital mutilation every year and the share of women circumcised is as high as ninety-eight percent in countries such as Djibouti . Despite its popularity in Africa, FGM is under scrutiny by members of the outside(a) human rights community. In 1993, female circumcision was deemed harmful by the international Human Rights Conference in Vienna . The World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the UN race Fund have planned programs designed to completely eliminate female genital mutilation within three generations , on the basis that FGM is a human rights violation. This gives jump-start to the obvious question as to whether human rights activists and organizations should be sensitive to the heathenish practices of the people of Africa. Some human rights activists have even professed FGM as a knock-down counterargument to cultural relativism, and use the practice as an example of how hum... ...ture of others. whole shebang CitedDorkenoo, Efua and Scilla Elworthy. Female Genital Mutilation Proposals for Change. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. (1992) 3-36. Female Genital Mutilati on An Overview. World Health Organization Publications. geneva 1998. Viewed 1 Dec. 2001. http//www.who.int/dsa/cat98/fgmbook.htm2.%20Prevalence%20and%20epidemiologyFluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. Cultural Relativism and Universal Rights. The Chronicle of Higher Education. June 1995. Viewed 1 Dec. 2001. http//www.cs.org/publications/featuredarticles/1998/fluerhlobban.htmReaves, Malik Stan. utility(a) Rite to Female Circumcision Spreading in Kenya. Africa News Service. Nov. 1997. Pp 1-3.Robinson, Simon. The Last Rites. date Europe. Dec. 2001 Vol 158, No 23. 1 Dec. 2001. http//www.time.com/time/europe/af/magazine/0,9868,185799,00.html