Gebre dedicates life to fight FGM

In 1997, Gebre and her sister Fikirte founded KMG Ethiopia, also known as Kembatti Mentti Gezzima-Tope, a vehicle to end FGM. Today, KMG is credited with eliminating FGM in Gebre’s Kembatta Tembaro zone of southern Ethiopia. On the international stage, her efforts have also been recognised.
But the journey has not been easy. Gebre had to fight to rise above the condemnation of being born a female.
Even as a child, Gebre knew women were not equal to men, but she fought it, even in little ways such as climbing trees with the boys while out grazing cattle in the fields.

“The day a girl is born, she is disqualified from personhood. One day, my aunt came to visit and my mother asked her what her daughter had given birth to. I will never forget the answer. My aunt said, ‘She has given birth to a human-like person.’ If it had been a boy, there would have been celebrations.”
That was the time this woman, who carries an assumed age because she believes she was born sometime in the early 1950s, decided to redefine herself.
“In Zaato, my village, education for girls did not exist but there was a mission school boys attended. I always wanted to learn the alphabet but my mother said my father would not allow it.”

Education for girls was a taboo, but the determined girl began playing a game of hide and seek. Very early in the morning, while the village still slept, she would carry a pot and leave the house. She would head to the mission school to attend class - the only girl among boys.

“By the time people woke up, I would be walking back to the village with a pot of water or a heap of grass for my father’s mule and horse on my head. When my father discovered my secret, I had finished second grade.”
By then, neighbours were bringing their court documents for Gebre to translate and her father, taking pride in her new role, allowed her to continue attending school. She won a government scholarship to complete primary school.

Then, at the age of 12, culture came calling. “All the girls and women had gone through it. My mother didn’t want to do it. She and my sisters were crying but she felt she had to because she thought it was part of our culture and our religion.”
At the ceremony, a man held Gebre down as two women held her legs apart. A third woman sat between her legs and using a razorblade cut off the unwanted pieces. The young girl nearly bled to death. It took two months for her wounds to heal.

Unlike other girls who were given off in marriage after the ‘rite of passage’, Gebre was lucky to continue with her education in Addis Ababa. After representing Ethiopia in an international Bible contest, the Israel government awarded her a scholarship to study physiology and microbiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
She used her stipend to build for her father a tin-roof house. This gesture opened the way for other girls to attend school in her village.
“Everyone came to see the house! It was the first in a village of huts. One elder told me I had taught the men that there is a concrete benefit in sending girls to school.”

Gebre is an alumni of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied parasitology and protozoology at the former and attempted a PhD in the latter.
In graduate school in the USA, a fellow student, Susanna Dakin, asked Gebre about the prevalence of FGM in Ethiopian and if she had been ‘cut.’
“I was angry that she had asked. In my culture, it was taboo to talk about it. But, she gave me books about the impact of FGM on women’s health and I read them. Suddenly, I wanted to do something to stop it.”
A few years earlier, when Gebre was in high school, she lost her elder sister to birth-related complications she believes were brought on by FGM.

“We were two years apart and very close. She was pregnant with twins and at 7 and a half months, she had a fall. She was bleeding profusely. The birth attendant started to treat her but failed. Even today, that scene is etched in my memory.”
In 1997, after 13 years in the USA, Gebre abandoned her PhD studies and returned to Ethiopia, but because speaking about FGM was a taboo, she began by speaking out against other issues affecting women such as illiteracy, unemployment, bride abduction, and widow inheritance.

“To fight FGM, you have to know the culture of the people, respect it, and know the language to use when discussing it. Also, FGM is just one aspect of gender-based violence and it cannot be tackled alone.”
The baseline study KMG carried out in Kembatta Tembaro zone showed that 100 per cent of the girls and women had been subjected to FGM. When she spoke about FGM and HIV at her village church, people were shocked. Her organisation began its crusade by holding discussions in villages.
“In our work, we create community consensus. Usually, if there is a problem, male elders sit under a tree, discuss it, and resolve it. We took the same concept by bringing 25 men and 25 women in a facilitated discussion every two weeks.”

True to culture, even today, in the discussions, FGM always comes last, but when the topic comes up, the women start crying.

“We tell the community the effects of FGM. It doesn’t really take much because they can see those effects in the number of women and girls who die in childbirth. They have just not connected it to FGM. But, the traditional birth attendants know and they talk about the girls who have died in their arms.”
On September 12, 2002, KMG held the first public wedding of an uncut girl. On October 31, 2004, KMG publically celebrated 25,000 uncut girls. This was a bold move, at a time when cut girls were celebrated by their mothers, aunts and grandmothers as being marriageable, and when handsome young men sought their hands in marriage.

With perseverance, though, this celebration – Whole Body Healthy Life, Freedom from FGM – has now become an annual festival. “Today, we have uncut girls groups in the districts we work in and we have established anti-GBV groups in the regions we work in. There are areas such as my zone that are totally free of FGM by community consensus.”
With five-year funding from the European Union, KMG’s work spread to 24 districts. Some of the funds were used to build the Mother-Child Health Centre.
With more funding, Gebre hopes to take the fight against FGM to the rest of Africa. As she once said, “In the long run, stronger women create stronger communities, stronger women create a stronger nation, and stronger women create a stronger Africa.”

Some of Gebre’s awards
• The North-South Award, 2005
• Unsung Heroes of Compassion, 2005
• French Légion d’Honneur, 2007
• Jonathan Mann Award for Global Health and Human Rights, 2007
• Larissa Award-African Child Policy Forum Pan African Award, 2007
• Human Rights Prize of The French Republic, 2012
• King Baudouin International Development Prize, 2013
• The Bruno Krensky Prize for Services to Human Rights, 2013
• Women of the decade in Community Leadership, 2018

A survivor and activist’s tale
“When I was 16, I was abducted by my husband’s family. I was not yet circumcised at the time. As part of the pre-wedding ceremony, they held me down and an old woman cut me. I bled for six hours. As a result, I do not have any sexual desire.
I have two children and for both their deliveries, I was in labour for a long time. I had to have many stitches after the births. One time, two activists from KMG came to my village, Arsi Negelo, and held a discussion against FGM. I decided to join them and in my work so far, I have managed to convince 10 girls, including my daughter, not to get circumcised.
However, FGM and bride abduction are still rampant in my region.
Meshu Gemeda, 42,
Oromia region,
Ethiopia.

FGM in Uganda

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is illegal in Uganda. In 2010, The FGM Act, 2010, was signed into law and prohibits the practice. However, communities in Karamoja and Sebei regions still carry out the practice.
Among the Pokot and Tepeth communities of Karamajong, young girls are taken to Kenya, through Amudat district, to be circumcised. After a lull of many years, the deep-rooted practice of FGM is picking up in the Sebei region, especially in Kween District where girls openly request to be circumcised to avoid cultural and social stigma.