[UK] The Guardian - Female genital mutilation: asylum seeker fights deportation to Gambia

[Picture from the same article - copyright guardian.co.uk, 6/11/2012]

 

06.11.2012. The first thought Binta Jobe has on waking each morning is of the day she was taken, aged nine, by family, into the bush and forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM). It was done without anaesthetic, by an old woman with no medical training. Now the 23-year-old Liverpool-based asylum seeker from the Gambia is fighting to save her three-year-old daughter, Aisha, from the same fate.

The World Health Organisation defines FGM as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal or injury of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons". It estimates that up to 140 million females worldwide have experienced the procedure, including 92 million in Africa.

"I dream of blood," says Jobe, who suffers recurrent infections, sexual problems and pain as a result of the surgery. "It's an abuse. I just want Aisha to be able to grow up stronger than I am. We have no choice about it in our country. I did not understand that I had rights until I came to the UK."

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