Don't marry circumcised girls - MP

The NPP Member of Parliament for Shama, Mrs Angelina Baiden-Amissah has suggested that women who have had their genital organs mutilated through cultural practices be declared unfit for marriage. They are to be shunned by husbands-to-be as a protest, she was reported by the Graphic Showbiz as saying.

This would help stop such “barbaric” cultural practises, Mrs Baiden-Amissah who is also the Chairman of he Parliamentary Committee on Gender and Children suggested in Parliament when she was contributing to a statement to commemorate last week’s 56th anniversary of the United Nations.

She said the law banning the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) has not been effective and that if female victims remain unmarried because prospective husbands refuse to marry them, they will put an end to the practice.

Practitioners of FGM believe that they do so to make their daughters more desirable to their future husbands.

Mrs Baiden-Amissah said Ghana was the first to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child but female genital mutilation has persisted in certain parts of the country. “I feel for these girls and as a woman I can feel in my own body when a sensitive organ like this bearing a lot of nerves should be chopped off by some people of a particular tribe and some religious groups,” she said.