FGM: CULTURAL RITE, TORTURE OR BOTH? PART 2

FGM: CULTURAL RITE, TORTURE OR BOTH?

PART 2: HOW CAN WE HELP?

I’m still mulling over the question asked at my reading: What, if anything, should we do to mitigate the serious harm done to women subjected to FGM and other forms of torture or slavery, such as forced child marriages and battery? I spoke rather adamantly about the importance of not imposing our ideas about what people in other cultures want. Instead, I said, we should ask what kind of support, if any, local people want. We should ask what they believe they need to achieve their goals. That approach, I thought, should apply to all forms of aid. But as I reflected on that rule of thumb, I detected some hazards. All three of the books reviewed on this blog led to second thoughts about the principles I suggested, so let me begin with a situation from the grandmother book.

Grandmothers in many villages and countries have traditionally been excluded from discussions and decisions about serious health hazards. They may be excluded because of bias against the aged, or because it is true that many old women are ignorant of modern information about HIV/AIDS, FGM and other common problems. But Judi Aubel was one woman who was convinced that the grandmothers could learn and change. Founder of The Grandmother Project in Senegal, Aubel is trained in medical anthropology, public health, and adult education. The Project is devoted to educating grandmothers about the best health practices for women, who then combine their traditional wisdom with an understanding of modern medical practices, and pass on their knowledge to young women.

I had just begun to think that perhaps small, local projects are peculiarly able to resist corruption and foster transparency, whereas large NGOs are more prone to corruption. But The Grandmother Project put a hole in that theory. It is an American nonprofit, and it has cooperative relationships with many other NGOs, such as the Red Cross, USAID, The World Bank UNICEF, World Vision and relationships with organizations in a number of other countries. As far as I know there is no sign of corruption in it.

Another grandmother story exemplifies the complexity of donating to severely disadvantaged people. GAPA, Grandmothers Against Poverty and AIDS, is a South African organization run by and for grandmothers. Kathleen Brodrick, GAPA’s founder, is a white Zimbabwean, and an occupational therapist experienced in working with older people. She set up a workshop in South Africa to discuss the AIDS crisis with grandmothers, and asked what they wanted to know about the topic. They were silent. “Nobody knew what they wanted to know,” Brodrick said, “because nobody new anything. So I said, ‘Next week we’ll start and I’ll have this program for you.’”

Here we have another outsider offering help to women who didn’t understand the dire need, because the government had kept the entire subject of AIDS under wraps. The approximately 500 members of GAPA were each caring for grandchildren orphaned by parents who died of AIDS and often nursing and supporting other relatives who had HIV/AIDS, as well. Yet they were shushed from speaking of the disease. Now they have access to the best information to maximize the benefits of that care. All of it was brought to them by an outsider before the locals understood what they needed.

Here’s an example of help not being requested, yet enthusiastically embraced. It’s from the book, War Is Not Over When It’s Over. Working as a volunteer for International Rescue Committee, Ann Jones traveled to villages in several countries with a few cameras that she offered to lend to small groups of women who volunteered to take photos of whatever they chose. She asked them to “include a few shots that illustrated some blessings and some problems in their lives.” It quickly became evident that violence in intimate relationships was a major problem. The women’s stories vary widely, but in at least one village the women persuaded the elders to mandate that men stop beating their wives. As Jones put it, the project, named “A Global Crescendo,” was about “women, who speak for themselves and go on speaking long after their cameras have left town.”

In my review of Women Empowered I describe the actions of Abay, an Ethiopian young women, who photographed a genital cutting ritual, and showed the film to a committee of elders who voted to ban the practice. As the story is related, it seems as if Abay accomplished all that on her own. But she had worked for CARE for several years, and it may be that the organization offered encouragement and even practical help to her. CARE has many projects, including teaching the most productive methods of farming – techniques local people often don’t know about without outside help.  

These ruminations have led me to retract the idea that westerners should only give aid that is asked for. That position implies that people deprived of basic education, and who have been living scarcely above survival mode, are able to name what they need most. In many cases they have no idea what is available.

We in the West have much, and much of the world’s population is without basic nutrition, safety and health care. A case can be made that the foreign policies of the U.S. and other westerners have often caused or exacerbated the ills endured by other people. I am assuming I’m not the only person fretting over which organization to give to among the appeals I just pulled from my mailbox, and I’m left wondering how we can identify the best kinds of aid to offer.

Students at a school partially supported by
             foreign aid.

These two women are proud of their work
    supported by micro-loans. 

How can we find out whether a “charitable” organization is corrupt? Does it responsibly distributes its money or its hands-on aid? How much are administrators gaining from the project? Is it providing an endless supply of food, rather than teaching the people “to fish” for their own? Has it asked people what they want? Has it provided enough information to them to make decisions about what they need most? How reliably and accurately does it evaluate its programs?

Is it even reasonable to believe we can find out those things? As nearly as I can tell, there is no corruption in any of the projects I’ve read about recently. But how would I know? I’m sure there are lots of other questions we could ask, but I leave it to readers to carry on from here. Please let me know what you think.