Uganda-Kenya move to include boys in fight against FGM, Child Marriages

At least 31 girls who flee their homes for fear of child marriage and Female Genital Mutilation in Amudat district have found a home at Kalasi Girls Primary School.

According to Agnes Igoye, the Deputy Chair of the National Prevention of Trafficking in person office in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, originally, they had 159 girls at the school but authorities reached out to some parents who took their children back home.

Last week, Igoye and her team visited Amudat district and held a meeting with the district leadership as well as their Kenyan counterparts to forge a working relationship, since the vice is mostly practiced by the Pokot.

She however says some parents pretend to want the children back but later cut the girls.

“In our meeting, we also realized that some parents can pretend for a very long time that now they have understood and that they are receiving the girls back. But then they will take 2-3 years and it happens again, because this is a cultural practice” Igoye noted.

She pointed at a case where a girl was reunited with her family after 5 years at Kalasi Girls but they still went ahead and did the FGM. Igoye noted that the older women cut girls in the middle of the night.

The meeting also made a decision to include boys in the fight against child marriage and pregnancies to ensure that they understand the problems that come with these issues.

She says that when schools resume, the two parties have agreed to ensure that all boys are taken to school and reduce redundancy that causes boys to rape the girls.