Canary Islands estimates that 4,500 women are at risk of genital mutilation in the Islands. This was stated by the director of the Canarian Institute for Equality (ICI), Kika Fumero, during the opening of the conference on prevention and action against the female genital mutilation in the Archipelago, which take place on March 4 and 5 in Santa Cruz of Tenerife.
“The Canary Islands Institute for Equality wants to actively listen to professionals and experts in female genital mutilation in order to avoid an ethnocentric point of view and approach this practice in a serious and contextualized way”, said Fumero, who drew attention to the use of genital plastic surgery in our Western society.
In addition, he advanced that the Canarian Institute of Equality, within the framework of the agreement established with the two Canarian Universities, is carrying out this year a diagnosis on female genital mutilation “in order to have quantitative and qualitative data that offers us an X-ray as faithful as possible on the situation of this practice in the Archipelago”.
“It is important to have information and knowledge of the negative repercussions of female genital mutilation because we are talking about practices that violate fundamental rights and threaten the women’s sexual and reproductive health, ultimately against their freedom”, indicated the director who advanced that, within the framework of the agreement with Essscan, in 2022 training will be given in this matter to the group of professionals of the network of resources for women victims of gender violence since “ genital mutilation is considered sexist violence within the Canarian law against Gender Violence, in addition to the fact that it is necessary to offer professional training to have an optimal intervention in these cases”.
How to talk about female mutilation, networking to combat it, prevention work, the importance of cultural mediation as well as workshops and talks on how to address the integration of migrant women, are some of the topics that will be addressed during the conference on March 4 and 5 at the MUNA Museum of Nature and Archeology, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, with the participation of activists, specialists, lawyers, journalists and cultural mediators.
