Health Poverty Action on FGM - A Large Dollop of Red Herring

The Evening Standard's letters page came up trumps last night with this cracker on the subject of female genital mutilation:

It will take more than £35 million from the UK to end Female Genital Mutilation. Thousands of poor women worldwide earn their living from carrying it out and ending it will involve creating new roles for them and huge change to their societies.
Leadership at the community level must be the driving forc, and this needs to be backed up by culturally appropriate health and education services. David Cameron would make a better contribution towards ending FGM if he commited to ensuring large companies do not dodge taxes and exploit poor countries.

Martin Drewery, Health Poverty Action.

Just read that second sentence again. Then imagine someone writing "Thousands of poor people worldwide earn their living robbing old ladies. Ending mugging will involve creating new roles for them and huge change to their societies".  The logic is the same.

For a charity supposedly concerned with health, Health Poverty Action make no mention of the health effects of FGM - which can range from death to long term physical, psychological and sexual problems. As so often with charities, Health Poverty Action seems less concerned with setting out facts than with establishing a broader political agenda.

FGM has been around a long time, and is ingrained in some countries in Africa and the Middle East. That is unlikely to be an issue readily tackled by the British Prime Minister. Curiously Martin Drewery makes no mention of the historical British failures to address FGM in this country (something the Prime Minister could have done something about) but does instead raise the need for David Cameron to ensure large companies do not dodge taxes and exploit developing countries.

On one level, I agree. But how David Camerson can prevent a German based multi-national exploiting the tax system in Egypt is unclear. Indeed the problem in many developing nations is not simply that the multi-nationals pay little or no tax, it is that these nations ruling classes have never paid any taxes, and refuse to do so (See Owen Bennett Jones' classic book on Pakistan for an example of a country where no one has ever been convicted of tax evasion).

FGM continues because there are particular cultural (and, although less clearly) religious justifications that are made for it. I accept it is easier (sorry, more culturally appropriate) for Martin Drewery to talk about big companies not paying their taxes, than it is to address these cultural issues.

But what is easy, is not always correct. His letter reads like a very sharp spoof of a comedian mocking a left wing activist. It discredits the charity sector.

Comments

[MartinDrewry]

Hi Paul, good of you to respond to the Evening Standard letter even though you take a hostile view.
To be honest, I can see why you read it as you do (the Standard only included part of the letter), and it’s great that you link to the End FGM campaign. Here’s a couple of examples of Health Poverty Action’s work to eradicate FGM http://www.healthpovertyaction.org/blog/somalia-puts-an-end-to-fgm-2/ and http://www.healthpovertyaction.org/news/update-from-ethiopia/
We’ve found most success when we’ve been able to help local state services and local cultural leaders work together – adapting roles to become positive and health-seeking rather than problematic. Some of the women performing FGM for example are Traditional Birth Attendants, and a really successful approach there has been to provide training for them to refer cases to the local clinics (which similarly need to provide services that incorporate some local cultural requirements or people won’t use them).
Our point about tax was about successful change being dependent on their being decent local health and education systems. We felt it was a bit rich for David Cameron to imply he was a champion of FGM eradication when he’s undermined it in so many other ways, such as the positions he’s taken on trade policies and taxation. For instance we’d like to see the UK government support a multilateral agreement requiring tax authorities all over the world to exchange information about the assets of companies and individuals in their jurisdictions with tax authorities in other countries, and similarly to support a new international accounting standard requiring multinational companies to report on their profits made and taxes paid in every country where they have subsidiary companies.
Best wishes and good to debate with you. Martin Drewry

[Dr Llarregub]

FGM poses a health threat and is illegal, but no prosecutions have been made. Is it now racist to suggest that barbaric practices have to be tolerated in order to meet local cultural requirements?