History
The IAC began at a seminar in Dakar in 1984 with a focus on fighting harmful practices relating to female genital mutilation (FGM), childbirth, nutrition and food, early marriage; and promoting traditional practices considered beneficial, such as breastfeeding and baby massage. Fighting FGM is the main focus of their work. Now based in Addis Ababa, the IAC also has 32 national branches (known as National Committees) in 28 countries in Africa. It has a liaison office in Geneva and 15 affialiates in Europe, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and USA.
In 1990, the IAC adopted the term "female genital mutilation" to describe the procedure previously referred to as "female circumcision". According to a 1995 publication, the main focus of their strategy for eliminating FGM is through education.
Read more about this topic: Inter-African Committee On Traditional Practices Affecting The Health Of Women And Children
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)