FGM: government is in breach of legal obligation to shield children, say QCs

Fahma Mohamed, 17, is major a campaign towards FGM supported by the Guardian. Photograph: Patrick Hoeschler

An influential group of the UK’s leading human rights QCs has told the Commons residence affairs committee that the government is in breach of its legal obligation to defend children by failing to quit girls turning out to be victims of female genital mutilation.

The bar human rights committee has described current measures taken by the government to tackle FGM as inadequate and is calling for a wide-ranging package deal of policies – including mandatory reporting by teachers, protection orders, and a focused FGM unit – to tackle the crime.

A lot more than 66,000 females are thought to be living with FGM in England and Wales, with 24,000 women underneath 15 believed to be at danger, but in spite of the practice getting outlawed in 1985 there is yet to be a single prosecution in the United kingdom. The director of public prosecutions, Alison Saunders, lately announced that ten situations have been beneath investigation, and mentioned the Crown Prosecution Service was hopeful of bringing the first situation to court inside months.

A campaign led by the 17-year-old student Fahma Mohamed, and backed by the Guardian and important FGM campaigners, is calling on the education secretary, Michael Gove, to write to all headteachers in the country telling them to inform teachers and parents about the hazards of FGM. The petition has gathered practically 200,000 signatures on the campaigning site Adjust.org.

Fahma, a trustee of the anti-FGM charity Integrate Bristol, has also made a submission to the committee. She has written informing them that FGM is a concern for her and her classmates, and calling on the education department to become component of the remedy.

“You would not believe that British youngsters have to fret about FGM but we do. I know of people who have been lower – any person who understands women from FGM-affected communities will know women who have been cut,” she mentioned. “The incredible response I have acquired from my petition demonstrates how strongly the public want to see action from the Division for Schooling doing work with colleges to handle FGM.”

In a submission to the home affairs select committee – which is for the initial time gathering evidence on the crime and the way it is tackled in the Uk – the bar human rights committee argues that securing a conviction is not adequate to meet the UK’s legal obligations, and calls on the government to take even more measures to defend women.

“It is our see that the United Kingdom has been in breach of its obligation below international law by failing to safeguard ladies from FGM in the United kingdom since laws have been passed in 1985,” stated Dexter Dias QC. “In the subsequent three decades a lot of thousands of United kingdom national women have been reduce both in the Uk or abroad and the failure to defend them has been a serious breach of the UK’s duty of care. As far as we are concerned the state will remain in breach of worldwide commitments unless of course and until finally it develops an anti-mutilation mechanisation that is comprehensive and coherent.”

Worldwide agreements such as the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Ladies and the UN convention on the rights of the kid mean the United kingdom government has to be proactive, he additional.

“You cannot just sit back and then prosecute when a person does some thing. The United kingdom has a positive duty – you have to be proactive and generate mechanisms that are going to avoid and defend.”

The attorneys are calling on the government to set up an FGM unit equivalent to the Foreign Office’s forced marriage unit, which assisted 250 Uk children in 2012. Other suggested measures consist of:

• Mandatory reporting, so teachers and health pros would be legally obliged to inform police and social services if they believed a kid was at chance

• The introduction of prevention orders so ladies at chance from obtaining FGM overseas could be prevented from leaving the nation

• Educating about FGM in the nationwide curriculum

• Closing of a loophole which means young children in the United kingdom with no safe immigration can be taken overseas and mutilated.

Dias said the state ought to also offer reconstructive or reversal surgical treatment and counselling for survivors. “These are not discretionary factors that are a function of great political will or convenient style since of a variety of campaigns,” he explained.

“These are international obligations of the nation and people, whether activists, survivors or girls at threat, have the appropriate to demand that the state does this. It truly is not an optional extra – it truly is indispensable and vital for the proper safety of girls and girls.”

FGM: government is in breach of legal obligation to shield children, say QCs