Sensitisation workshop on FGM held in Bole

Bole (N/R), Nov. 23, GNA - A day's stakeholders sensitisation workshop on the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and other harmful traditional practices inflicted on women and young girls, has taken place at Bole in the Northern Region.

Ghanaian Association for Women Welfare (GAWW), a non-governmental organisation advocating for the elimination of all harmful traditional practices on women organised the workshop, sponsored by UBS Optimum Foundation and attended by more than 35 participants including heads of decentralised government departments, opinion leaders, chiefs, women groups and assembly members.

Opening the workshop, the President of the Association, Madam Florence Ali said more than 130 million women the world over had undergone some form of dangerous and harmful practice that put about two million of them at risk each year.

She said FGM was practised in 28 African countries including Ghana, notably in the three Northern Regions, Brong Ahafo and parts of the country where there are settlements and communities with large migrant population from the Northern Region and other West African countries. To address this deep-rooted socio-cultural practice, the GAWW had been advocating for the elimination of FGM through its public sensitisation programme and workshops.

The workshop, she said, therefore, was to offer participants basic skills on the effects of the FGM on the health of women and girls in the country.

She said the Association was affiliated to an Inter African Committee (IAC) operating in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West and the Brong Ahafo Regions where the FGM was mostly practised. Madam Ali said the Association had supported 10 ex-circumcisers with income generating activities after they had agreed to quit the job.

She said the Association was running peer education programmes on FGM in Wa, the Upper West Regional capital, Bawku in the Upper East Region and Walewale in the Northern Region.