Unicef Report Finds Female Genital Cutting to Be Common in Indonesia

Female genital cutting has always been seen as an ancient ritual practiced in Africa and to a lesser extent in the Middle East, but a new global assessment documents for the first time that it is widespread in one of the most populous countries in Asia: Indonesia, where almost half the women are estimated to have undergone it.

There has long been anecdotal evidence of the practice there, but the United Nations Children’s Fund estimated Thursday that 60 million women and girls there have been cut based on national survey data collected by the Indonesian government. The addition of Indonesia is largely responsible for raising the global tally of women and girls who have undergone the practice to 200 million from 130 million, and the number of countries where it is concentrated to 30 from 29.
“We knew the practice existed but we didn’t have a sense of the scope,” said Claudia Cappa, a statistics specialist for Unicef, which released the report. She said the new data from Indonesia showed that cutting was not just “an African problem.”
Experts in Indonesia said the practice there had largely involved a less drastic version of cutting, usually a surface scratch or nick, as compared with more severe disfiguring. The Indonesian government’s survey asked parents if their young daughters had undergone circumcision. Ms. Cappa said it was possible that there were some more severe cases in Indonesia, but she said the official Indonesian government definition of female circumcision was “an act of scratching the skin that covers the front of clitoris without injuring the clitoris.”

The Indonesian data is part of Unicef’s latest global update on female genital cutting, which shows that over all the practice is declining worldwide. For example, the percentage of girls ages 15 to 19 who have been cut has declined from 51 percent in 1985 to 37 percent today in the countries where the practice is concentrated.

Some countries have shown rapid and significant declines. In Egypt, where 97 percent of 15- to 19-year-olds were circumcised 30 years ago, the rate is now 70 percent. Burkina Faso has dropped from 89 percent to 58 percent, and Liberia from 72 percent to 31 percent.

Still, even as the United Nations advocates an end to cutting — and Unicef surveys report that men, women, boys and girls in many of the countries agree it should be eliminated — the practice persists. The Unicef report says that “current progress is insufficient to keep up with increasing population growth” and if trends continue the number of girls and women being cut “will rise significantly over the next 15 years.”

The data from Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, provides a snapshot of the prevalence of genital cutting in a country where secular and religious attitudes toward the practice are increasingly in conflict. Indonesian authorities tried to ban cutting 10 years ago, but religious authorities who consider it important for girls to undergo the ritual before marriage objected. In response, the government softened its stance, issuing regulations that directed cutting should be done only by medical professionals in a noninvasive way that does not injure girls and women.

The Indonesian survey reported that 49 percent of girls age 11 and younger had undergone female circumcision, mostly as infants, and more than half of the procedures were performed by midwives or other health professionals.

The practice is “regarded as part of our culture, or a confirmation that they will be officially ‘Islamized,’ ” Jurnalis Uddin, the chairman of the Center for Population and Gender Studies at Yarsi University in Jakarta, said in an email, adding that the practice “in Indonesia is mostly symbolic (no cutting at all).”

For Unicef and others who seek to eliminate the practice in all its forms, the fact that medical providers are performing the procedures is unwelcome because it can confer legitimacy on the practice. “We are very concerned with medicalization,” said Francesca Moneti, a child protection specialist with Unicef. “Medical personnel are looked up to and are seen as knowing what’s good for your girl.”