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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 -10 February 1999 Issue No. 415
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Book Fair Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Five years for Fathiya
By Mariz Tadros
When 13-year-old Fathiya was told that she was going to be married to her cousin, she was elated. Finally, she was going to get out of the house: no more bossing around by her family, no more tending the animals at home... As a married woman, she would no longer have to stay home when her married sisters went to attend festivities. Most importantly, she was going to be a bride. A bride in a new dress. Plus, she would have a house of her own, and she was going to be head of it.
Soon after the long-awaited wedding day, Fathiya was pregnant. It was the first in a long series of pregnancies that did not always end in joy and celebration. This was not the kind of escape she had hoped for. She buried five stillborn babies. With three children alive, she is pregnant for the ninth time, and praying that this one will be a boy.
Fathiya's fate is not all that different from her mother's. Of course, she has access to contraceptives, which her mother didn't; but what use are they when her husband insists that she must have a boy before she starts to use contraception?
It is the lives of women like Fathiya that the ICPD+5 NGO Forum will be discussing. Non-governmental organisations from around the world will meet in The Hague to discuss where women and men stand, five years after the International Conference on Population and Development was held and the Programme of Action drawn up. The five areas to be discussed are: links between reproductive health, population, environment and development; rights, from rhetoric to reality; the Cairo ethos in practice: implementing policies and services; partnerships and resources; and advocacy for NGOs.
If you ask Fathiya what has changed for her in the past five years, don't expect the ICPD Programme of Action to mean much. Ask her about empowerment ("tamkin" in Arabic), and she will look puzzled. And reproductive rights? Why are you preaching to her? Go to her husband instead, she replies. Her sexual rights? What is that supposed to mean? Fathiya just wants to be left alone. And you want her to be aware of her legal rights? Fathiya is more interested in you helping her find her husband -- one of the thousands of unemployed men who have no land to farm -- a means of putting bread on the tabliya at the end of the day.
But the picture, according to the NGO Regional Forum which met in Cairo last week, is not so bleak. The Regional Forum, which was organised by the Population Council and the National Council on Population and Development, discussed the achievements and constraints that have affected women's rights since the ICPD. The achievements, identified on a regional level, include increased participation of religious leaders in the discussion of reproductive rights, the creation of shelters for victims of violence, increased funding for reproductive health, and the recognition of NGOs as important social actors.
The Population Council points to a decline in the practice of female genital mutilation in Egypt as a positive indicator. A survey carried out on Adolescence and Social Change in Egypt (ASCE) indicates that circumcision rates among single girls are now 86 per cent, 10 percentage points lower than the almost universal prevalence found in the 1995 Egyptian Demographic Health Survey (EDHS) of ever-married women aged 15-49. The ASCE notes that "there is evidence of a delay and a possible reduction in female circumcision following the 1994 International Conference on Population."
This optimism, believes Fatma El-Zenati, technical director of the EDHS, is unfounded. "Bear in mind that the almost universal rate of 97 per cent referred to married women. When they were asked whether they would circumcise their girls, 86 per cent said yes. So the ASCE has only confirmed the EDHS's findings. There is no reduction in percentage because we are talking about two totally different groups, unmarried girls and mothers," explains El-Zenati. She estimates that it will take 10 years before we can observe any significant decline in the practice of female circumcision -- if only because the process of informing people, changing their attitude and the reflection of this change in their practice is a lengthy one. "This does not mean that there is no change in attitude, but it is too early to show any changes since the ICPD," she explains.
There is still a long way to go where reproductive health is concerned, too, especially with respect to youth, who will be the focus of discussions held at the ICPD+5 in The Hague. Ever since the ICPD, the idea of raising awareness of sexual health and rights among young people has been a source of heated controversy. Opponents argued that youth do not need to be informed on such matters, that awareness programmes only serve to encourage sexual promiscuity and essentially reflect Western values that are alien to Arab culture and way of life.
Heba Fahmi, from the Youth Association for Population and Development (YAPD), disagrees. "There have been many misconceptions about sexual health. People think it has nothing to do with us, and it is all about unmarried mothers and homosexuals," she said. Many people, Fahmi notes, refuse to accept that the high divorce rate among youth is partly explained by the lack of information on how to deal with certain marital problems. "Many young women, for example, expect their membranes to bleed profusely on their wedding night. When this does not happen, they get very upset, and it may affect them for months on end because they don't know that they will not necessarily bleed," she points out.
Research conducted by the YAPD showed that many young women, and even university students, know nothing about conception. Another common problem, stresses Fahmi, is that of women suffering in silence from certain complications in their reproductive system which may affect their marital relations and even their ability to have children. The reason for their reluctance to seek help? They are too ashamed.
"There have been some improvements, albeit limited, since the ICPD. We have been able to address issues of a sexual or reproductive nature more openly. We held awareness programmes on reproductive health for 3,000 young women and men in Upper Egypt, in which many issues were talked about openly. Our argument in very conservative circles is that, 'if religions talk about such issues explicitly, then why can't we?'" At the end of the day, reiterates Fahmi, it is all about context and approach. Sensitive issues must be discussed in the context of general health and respect for women as human beings.
Magdi Helmi, head of the Health Sector at Caritas, is of the same opinion. Since the ICPD, he points out, there should have been a shift away from dealing with issues separately and in a reductionist manner. "NGO practitioners and the government are beginning to understand that you can't deal with circumcision on a purely medical level. They now understand that it has to be dealt with in the context of social development. The same thing applies to women having too many children: they are becoming aware that it is no longer about providing a woman with contraceptives, but about addressing her reproductive health in toto," he asserts.
The relationship between the government and NGOs working in reproductive health has also witnessed significant changes since the ICPD, according to Helmi. "On the issue of FGM, for example, we are no longer in opposition to the government but working in partnership with it to get the message through to the people." The Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Education will also be involved in partnerships for the dissemination of anti-FGM messages.
If, however, there has been a change in attitude among some officials and NGO leaders, it may be too early to note any changes in the attitudes of lower-level government employees and NGO staff -- let alone ordinary men and women. Traditions such as rolling an infertile woman down a hill, or leaving her in the middle of a cemetery for a few hours in the belief that such experiences will shock her out of her infertility are still common. These, however, are left off reproductive health agendas.
Edited by Pascale Ghazaleh
Photo: Randa Shaath
