Female Genital Mutilation - Classification and Health Consequences

Classification and Health Consequences

The age at which the procedure is performed varies. Comfort Momoh, a specialist midwife in England, writes that in Ethiopia the Falashas perform it when the child is a few days old, the Amhara on the eighth day of birth, while the Adere and Oromo choose between four years and puberty. In Somalia it is done between four and nine years. Other communities may wait until adulthood, she writes, either just before marriage or just after the first pregnancy. The procedure may be carried out on one girl alone, or on a group of girls at the same time. It is generally performed by a traditional circumciser, usually an older woman known as a "gedda," without anaesthesia or sterile equipment, though richer families may pay instead for the services of a nurse, midwife, or doctor using a local anaesthetic. It may also be performed by the mother or grandmother, or in some societies—such as Nigeria and Egypt—by the local male barber.

The WHO divides FGM into four categories (see image right for types I–III). Around 85 percent of women experience Types I and II, and 15 percent Type III, though Martha Nussbaum writes that Type III nevertheless accounts for 80–90 percent of all such procedures in countries such as Sudan, Somalia, and Dijbouti.