Human Rights For All Women, One Step At A Time

The death of a 12-year-old Egyptian girl at the hands of a doctor performing female circumcision in the country's south has sparked a public outcry and prompted health and religious authorities to ban the practice.

The girl, Badour Shaker, died earlier in June while being circumcised in an illegal clinic in the southern town of Maghagh. Her mother, Zeniab Abdel Ghani, told the Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper that she had paid $9 dollars to a female physician to perform the procedure. The mother also told the paper that the doctor later tried to bribe her to withdraw a lawsuit accusing the physician of murder, in return for $3,000, but she refused. A forensic investigation into the case showed the girl's death was caused by an anesthesia overdose during the procedure.

The case sparked widespread condemnation and was closely followed in Egyptian papers, which also reported that Shaker had passed out sweets to pupils in her class earlier on the day of her death, to celebrate her good grades. In response to the public outcry, the Egyptian Health Ministry issued a decree on female circumcision, stating that it is "prohibited for any doctors, nurses, or any other person to carry out any cut of, flattening or modification of any natural part of the female reproductive system, either in government hospitals, non government or any other places."

It warned that violators of the ban would be punished, but did not specify the penalty. The ban is not as enforceable as a law, which requires passage in the national legislature.

There are signs that Shaker death could move the parliament to pass a new bill banning female circumcision, especially after Egypt's First Lady Suzanne Mubarak asked a Cairo conference on violence against children to mark a moment of silence in Shaker's memory, just days after the girl's death.

Shaker was a victim of "the most vicious practice committed against women," Mubarak said publicly. "Badour's death is the beginning of the end for female circumcision in Egypt." Shortly afterward, the country's supreme religious authorities stressed that Islam is against female circumcision. "It's prohibited, prohibited, prohibited," Egypt's Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said on the privately owned al-Mahwar network.

See the AP article here for more background and details.