FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION (FGM) IN NORWAY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 OSLO 000311

SENSITIVE

DEPT FOR S/GWI, EUR/NB: MCDOWELL
COPENHAGEN ALSO FOR DHS/ICE:MACDOWELL

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PHUM SOCI KFGM KISL KWMN KOCI XA NO
SUBJECT: FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION (FGM) IN NORWAY

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Summary
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1. Several cases over the past few months highlight the continuing
problem of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) among some immigrant
groups in Norway. While the issue has gained public notoriety, the
adequacy of the GON FGM response is questioned by some.
Particularly at issue are mandated genital examinations for girls.
There is also a wide divergence of opinion on the problem's scope,
with FGM-victim-count estimates ranging from dozens to thousands.
End Summary

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Recent Cases
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2. There have been a number of criminal complaints regarding FGM in
Norway, resulting in several open criminal investigations.

-- Somali Mother, 13-year-old daughter:
In December 2008, the NGO Human Rights Service (HRS) reported a
Somali national woman resident in Oslo to the police, accusing her
of arranging FGM for her 13-year-old daughter. According to HRS, in
the summer of 2008, the girl was taken, via London, to northern
Somalia, where FGM was performed. The girl's condition was revealed
because of the significant health problems she suffered when back in
Norway.

-- Somali Father, 10-year-old daughter:
On January 2, 2009, police in the city of Hoenefoss, arrested a
43-year-old Somali immigrant on charges of conspiring to subject his
10-year-old daughter to FGM during her visit to Somalia in the
summer of 2008. (The child's mother was not charged because she and
an older daughter are considered victims on separate charges of
assault and death threats).

-- Somali parents, 13-year-old daughter:
In late February 2009, HRS reported an Oslo Somali couple to police
for FGM of their 13-year-old daughter, as well as for having
arranged for the child's marriage in an Oslo mosque. According to
HRS, the FGM in question was the second for the girl. To alleviate
health problems suffered on account of the first FGM, the girl, on
her own, had herself "opened" at an Oslo hospital (her largely
sewn-together vagina was surgically reopened). When this reopening
was discovered by her family shortly before the planned marriage
celebration, she was sent out of Norway to another European country.
There, in FGM number two, she was "re-closed" before being returned
to Norway.

-- Gambian parents, five daughters:
In September 2008, a 41-year-old Gambia-born man was taken into
custody in Oslo on suspicion of having FGM performed on five of his
six Norwegian-born daughters. His Norwegian-resident wife (he has
two others in Gambia) was not jailed because she was pregnant.
According to police, the pair had arranged for FGM of the five girls
in Gambia in 2003. Four of these young Norwegian citizens were
never brought back to Norway and remain today in Gambia. Acting on
tips, HRS visited the family in Gambia in 2005 and confirmed the
four had been subjected to FGM. Back in Norway, Oslo police and
health officials confirmed that one of the pair's two
Norway-resident daughters was also an FGM victim

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How Many Norwegian Victims?
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3. There is a wide divergence of opinion regarding how many girls
in Norway become FGM victims.


4. For its part, the GON has no official FGM victim estimate.
Ragnhild Bendiksby, Deputy Director General at the Ministry of
Children and Gender Equality, however, pointed to the 2008 report
"Female Genital Mutilation in Norway". The report concludes, based
largely on the heretofore relatively small number of reported cases,
that there are likely no more than a few dozen FGM cases in Norway,
and that the practice is in decline among practicing populations.
Bendiksby acknowledged the report was not without its detractors,
and noted that the GON has asked for further research into the scope
of FGM from local county governments.


5. Chief among detractors is HRS founder and press officer, Hege
Storhaug, who dismisses the report as "a disaster", claiming that
among Somalis alone there are likely thousands of cases. HRS
sources, she says, suggest around 70 percent of Norwegian-born
Somali girls undergo FGM. (In 2003, there were 4,516 immigrants and
1st generation Norway-born females under 20 years old in Norway, see
paragraph 7.) Beyond citing her contacts, Storhaug points out also

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that acceptance of Norwegian norms is so limited among Somalis that
it is unreasonable to expect their view on FGM to be any different.
Supporting Storhaug's contention is the Somali-born woman Amal Adan
(pseudonym) who writes of FGM as a deeply held cultural norm in her
autobiographical novel "See Us". (Is this person in Norway?) "Female
Circumcision is not even a topic of discussion among Somalis in
Norway," she writes, "it's a given".


6. Similarly, Somali-born midwife and anti-FGM activist Suaad Abdi
Farah offered 50 percent as her estimate of how many girls, of all
FGM-practicing backgrounds, undergo FGM. Farah gave this estimate
in a 2007 interview with journalist Tormod Strand of the national TV
network NRK. Strand, in turn, went on to produce a report from
Hargeisa, Somalia regarding FGM, in which ten FGM practitioners
admit to having performed FGM upon approximately 185 girls from
Norway over the course of two years (2005-2006).


7. The FGM-vulnerable: Below is an overview of the size of the
main FGM-practicing groups in Norway, immigrants and 1st generation
Norway-born (from the government's report, 2003 data).

Home Country Females age 0-19 Homeland FMG rate

Somalia 4,516 90%
Eritrea 506 98%
Ethiopia 554 70%
Sudan 196 45%
Gambia 189 70%
Sierra Leone 86 90%
TOTAL 6,047

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Where it happens: Home Country, UK, NL, and Norway
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8. FGM, says Storhaug, is typically is carried out during girls'
visits to the home country, but also happens elsewhere in Europe,
and less frequently, even in Norway. The UK and Netherlands,
countries with large FGM-practicing populations of their own, are
the chief European destinations for FGM-bound girls from Norway.
According to HRS and media, some FGM practitioners have also carried
out their work in Norway. These practitioners include visitors from
elsewhere in Europe and from Somalia, as well as a couple of
Norway-based healthcare professionals of immigrant background.
According to HRS, some Somalis also prefer to send their daughters
to Somalia because a more severe form of FGM they favor, what the
World Health Organization (WHO) calls a "type III" procedure
(removal of the clitoris and labia minora, and the sewing shut of
most of the labia majora),is not readable available in Europe.

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The Effort Against FGM
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9. The criminal FGM cases cited above are all are being pursued (or
considered) under the terms of Norway's 1995 law against FGM. The
law provides for three years imprisonment for performing, or causing
to be performed female genital mutilation; six years if there is
severe bodily harm; and eight years if the FGM leads to death. To
date, there no cases have been brought to trial under this law.


10. One reason for the lack of trials has been the lack of cases
reported to the police, with the first one coming only in 2006.
Notable too, is that it has been largely an NGO (HRS),and not arms
of the State that have generated what caseload there is. One reason
for this is the set of FGM reporting rules the GON has imposed upon
itself. Under current guidelines, medical professionals and child
protective services staff are not required to break patient/client
confidentially rules if they discover an existing case of FGM, so
long as the victim is receiving "adequate care". They are, however,
required to notify authorities if they discover someone is about to
be subjected to FGM. (One physician told Conoff she made such a
notification when she learned that the younger sister of an FGM
victim was scheduled to visit Somalia during summer school break.
And what happened?)


11. HRS suggests another reason for what it sees as the
government's sluggish use of criminal law is that FGM-in-Norway
stories present a narrative at odds with the government's own about
the benefits of multiculturalism. Rita Karlson, HRS Managing
Director, goes further, describing the GON's deference to immigrant
sensitivities, as "cultural relativism to the point of racism". No
white ethnic-Norwegian girl, she claimed, would ever suffer anything
approaching FGM without very aggressive intervention from Child
Protective Services and criminal prosecution by the State. Comment:
Post notes that two girls from one of the families under
investigation were, in fact, removed from their parents' care. End
Comment.

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12. What the Government has done is launch a multi-ministry "Action
Plan for Combating Female Genital Mutilation 2008-2011" which lays
out 41 different measures against FGM in six different areas: Law
Enforcement; Competence Building for persons working with FGM;
Healthcare Services; Extra Effort at Holiday Times; and Stronger
International Efforts. Among the more notable measures is
consideration of extending the statute of limitations to ten years
beyond the child's 18th birthday, seizure of passports when
FGM-travel plans are suspected, distribution of FGM information to
visa applicants and arriving immigrants, and cooperation with
relevant NGOs and religious communities.

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The Islamic Community's Engagement
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13. The religious community with the most FGM victims in Norway is
Islam. Though FGM's origins may be cultural and not religious; the
FGM-practicing groups in Norway, with the exception of Ethiopians,
are overwhelmingly Muslim. Several Muslim leaders and
organizations have spoken out against the practice. The Islamic
Council of Norway, for example, has issued a press statement stating
that FGM has no basis in Islam. The Islamic League puts out a
similar message. Additionally, several prominent Muslim politicians
of different parties have spoken out and written against FGM. Not a
single Muslim politician or cleric has publically voiced support for
the practice.


14. Clouding the issue of the role of religious and ethnic
community leaders, however, is skepticism about whether public
rhetoric always matches private counsel. Some of the doubt dates
back to 2000, when the TV station TV2 interviewed two Oslo imams
about FGM. The clerics, from Gambia and Somalia, voiced disapproval
of the practice, but later privately advised a young
Somali-Norwegian woman, Kadra Yusuf, that she should undergo FGM if
that was her parents' wish. Unfortunately for the imams, Ms. Yusuf
wore a TV2 microphone to her counseling session. The resulting
expos became a major media event, source of controversy, and even
basis for litigation (one of the mosques involved unsuccessfully
sued TV2). More recently, an NGO leader complained of double
dealing by community leaders on FGM and other problematic cultural
norms, claiming one "moderate" Somali leader actually participated
in the mosque wedding of the 13-year-old bride noted above. A
policy-level GON official confided similarly that there are some
immigrant community leaders whom cannot be considered honest brokers
regarding FGM. In the FGM book "Suaad's Journey" which Tormod
Strand wrote following his TV report, he cites an unnamed Somali
woman community leader who served as a GON liaison on FGM, yet also
traveled to Hargeisa to tell FGM practitioners to keep quiet about
girls from Norway.

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Exams
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15. A subject of intense debate is the potential use of the state
health service exams as a weapon against FGM. The exams, required
for school enrollment, currently do not include a check of girls'
genitalia. Such checks were formerly a standard part of the exam,
but were discontinued in 1993 in the wake of a scandal in which
numerous false accusations of abuse were built upon what turned out
to be inexpert gynecological observations. Genital checks for boys,
on the other hand (a manual examination for un-descended testes)
remains part of the state examinations.


16. Hege Storhaug and others argue that genital checks on girls
should be reintroduced. Such checks are the only sure way of
catching and preventing FGM, and of learning how widespread it is.
They point to success against FGM by a local government in France
that mandated such exams. In 2005, a majority in Parliament
actually voted in favor of bringing back girls' checks, but the
center-right coalition government in power at the time rejected the
idea.


17. Arguing against the exams, then Minister of Local Government,
(and current Conservative Party leader in the opposition) Erna
Solberg criticized the proposal as an unnecessary strong remedy,
intruding into the privacy of hundreds of thousands of Norwegian
girls for the purpose of ferreting out a relatively small number of
FGM cases. The Norwegian Physicians Association supports this view,
adding that due to normal anatomical variance, it can be hard to
detect FGM. The fielding of gynecological specialists to perform
school-enrollment checks normally carried out by general
practitioners or even nurses, would be logistically complicated and
very expensive.


18. Storhaug and pro-exam allies counter that genital checks on

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girls are no more intrusive than those done on boys; less so
actually, since the proposed girls check would not involve manual
examination. Also, the idea that the cure is disproportionate to the
problem, assumes very few Norwegian FGM cases - an assumption at
odds with the evidence. Further, she says proportionality would not
even be discussed if it were "white Norwegian girls who were being
cut up". Finally, regarding detection expertise, Storhaug says that
for some types of FGM carried out against girls in Norway- the
damage is so apparent that anyone with functioning vision could do
the screening.


19. To date, Storhaugs's view has not been shared by enough of the
Norwegian elite to bring about a reintroduction of universal girls'
exams, but there has been movement in her direction. In the current
center-left government, opposition to exams was taken up by former
Labor Party Minister of Health Sylvia Brustad of the Labor Party.
Under her successor Bjarne Haakon Hanssen of the Labor Party (and
importantly after the 2007 NRK TV report on FGM and the follow-up
book in 2008),however, a modified exam policy was announced in
November 2008. Beginning with the exams for the 2009-2010 school
year, parents of 10 yrs old girls with "risk-zone" backgrounds
(countries with more than a 30 percent FGM rate) would be offered
voluntary genital check as part of the overall exam. Should parents
decline the checks, then health officials would consider whether to
report the case to child protective services. Storhaug criticized
the proposal because the criminal-reporting obligations of health
officials vs. privacy rights were not clearly spelled out in the new
policy, and that officials have proven too willing to defer to
privacy rights in the past. She would prefer universal checks on
girls and mandatory criminal-reporting.

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Outlook
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20. Attention to the FGM issue, which has ebbed and flowed here,
appears headed for another high tide. With five open criminal
cases, there could be an FGM trial this year. The tabloid-ready
unpleasant testimony and First-Ever-in-Norway status of any FGM
trial should help it garner significant media attention. One factor
slowing prosecution of the criminal complaints, however, may be a
shortage of prosecutors. A Justice Ministry official said there
were only four attorneys available to prosecute "national" cases
likean FGM case.


21. The effectiveness of the new girls' exams policy in uncovering
or disproving widespread FGM will also be factor into the intensity
of the FGM issue. Exams begin in earnest in the fall.


22. Yet another factor in the FGM spotlight wattage is a trip to
Somalia Hege Storhaug says she is planning for later this year.
Storhaug says she plans to look up Norwegian-born children and young
adults whom she says have been "dumped" to Somalia for various
reasons, while the parents remain in Norway. There, these former
Norway residents are said to have suffered various types of ill
treatment, including FGM. Actual HRS proof of these allegations
could produce some searing media coverage.

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Comment
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23. What any increased FGM attention portends politically,
particularity for the upcoming September 2009 parliamentary
elections, is harder to predict. FGM should be a harder issue to
mismanage than others related to immigration, integration and Islam,
which have vexed Norwegian politicians lately. FGM is bad, everyone
opposes it, and disagreements are largely about problem scope and
remedy. Nevertheless there is room for the opposition, particularly
the immigration-restrictionist Progress Party, to gain slightly from
the issue, if for no other reason than almost any FGM story is more
unpleasant information related to immigration and multiculturalism.
End Comment.