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Paper short abstract:

FGC policies prioritize interventions with limited effect while investing little in evaluations and research that to improve their efficacy. The acceptance of claimed change of type, continued support to non-working interventions and avoidance of major motivation, thus contribute to lack of change.

Paper long abstract:

Despite decades of work against FGC is decline limited. Moral outrage and the desire to demonstrate action may lead to prioritizing interventions that are; simple – providing health information and the passing laws; measurable – change of attitude; and marketable – photos of circumcisers “dropping the knife”. These methods have limited effect. Information about health complications have limited effect on abandonment, and can in diaspora contribute to shame and humiliation of those affected. Change of attitude have limited consequences on action. And many marketable interventions such as alternative rites of passage, conversion of excisers and religious leaders have little if any effect on practice. In general, ethnographic knowledge show find many nuances and complexities in power-relations, decision making and underlying motives and meanings that are often overlooked. I will illustrate with three important topics that are commonly silenced or avoided in interventions. First, that the claimed change from a more serious to a less invasive form of FGC that is claimed in Somalia and Sudan, is interpreted as success, whereas empirical evidence suggests this to be more often than not a form of equivocation, i.e. that the term and claimed motivation and meaning is changed, whereas the procedure continues much as before. Secondly, that a strong emphasis on religion and religious leaders may actually be counterproductive, in providing new and stronger religious legitimation than what was common traditionally. Third, interventions tend to target religious underpinning while ignoring sexual concerns that commonly lies at the heart of the practice.