Brussels, 19/09/2001 (Agence Europe) - Presenting the Maria Elena Valencciano Martinez-Orozco report (Spain, PES) to the press on Wednesday on "Female genital mutilation", which the European Parliament's plenary should adopt on Thursday, Italian Radical Emma Bonino (former Commissioner for humanitarian assistance) stressed the "complexity of this debate that has taken several months".
Then, explaining the ins and outs of her report, Ms. Valenciano considered that "the report will have great impact on the future" and that "female genital mutilation (FGM) is a sign of the position of inferiority women occupy in society.". She then went on: "I am trying to get European institutions and Member Sates to come up with an integrated strategy in view of eradicating this practice and which broaches this issue from a educational, political, legal, development policy and asylum policy point of view". For Ms. Valenciano, "the EP must be the amplifier of the pain of the victims of FGM. We are calling for the right of asylum to be recognised for women who could suffer such aggression. This point has already been the subject of a rejection by the EPP, which has announced that it would abstain from the vote if this request for the right of asylum was maintained in the report", said Valenciano, stipulating that "it's the only one-off question that the EPP rejects", and that, "given its importance," she "did not want to abandon it in her report".
Thanking Emma Bonino and Elena Valenciano for their work - "who are valiant combatants for the women of Europe and Africa" -, the wife of the President of Burkino Faso, Chantal Compaore, OAU "Goodwill Ambassador" for female genital mutilation, recalled that FGM was a "very important subject from the point of view of the psychological and physical health of African women and little girls. FGM is a barbaric, violent and painful practice aimed at rendering women even more inferior and submissive". Stressing the intense lobbying among international partners and United Nations institutions for the mobilisation of financial and material resources necessary to implement plans and programmes to eradicate this practice "which continues and is still too widely practised", Ms. Compaore said that "the levels of prevalence remain high, ranging from 98% in Djibouti and Somalia, 94% in Mali, 90% in Guinea, 66% in Burkina Faso, without forgetting the persistence of the practice within African communities in Europe and mainly in the United States". Concluding Ms. Compaore called on "female political leaders to plead within their governments and decision-makers for a real commitment, manifested notably through galvanisation and the placing at disposal of the resources necessary for the actions of the structures engaged in this fight in Africa and elsewhere, and by the alignment of legal texts in European countries."