COVID19 RAGES ON, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS RAGES EVEN MORE

Hibo Wardere

From FGM Survivor to Campaigner and Teacher

Hibo Wardere is a Somalian-born campaigner against female genital mutilation (FGM), author, and public speaker. At the age of six, she was the victim of type 3 FGM, an event she has described as "being engulfed in pain from head to toe".

She moved to London as a teenager to flee the Somali Civil War. She works in London as a mediator and a regular FGM educator. Her testimonials and campaigning work have appeared in publications, including the Telegraph, the BBC, and The Guardian.

You can read her story in her brilliant book,

Cut: One Woman's Fight Against FGM in Britain Today

COVID-19 is raging. But so is violence against women and girls all around the world. And it has been raging since the beginning of time. 

COVID-19 is affecting us all. I miss my work so much. I miss teaching. I miss interacting with students. I miss nourishing their minds with knowledge, I miss making them ask questions, and making them look at issues they had never dreamed of looking at. I miss all those things. I miss interacting with people, in every sector I worked with. I could have taught 670 students and delivered training to 350 adults, if it wasn’t for the restrictions currently in place. My work was bigger than me, is bigger than me, will always be bigger than me. My work is much more than the sum of my experiences: it’s about 200 million women and girls who have undergone FGM. 

COVID-19 has taken the attention of the world, but what is so staggering to me is why that kind of attention is not given to the women and girls in the world who are already suffering? So many don’t have a voice, don’t have the right to say anything. They don’t have the right to anything at all – their body, their mind, or their soul. Women and girls are dying every day due to violence from their communities, and from further afield. Where is the outrage? We are the neglected ones. We are the bottom of the pile. We are the ones that are always forgotten, and always will be. As COVID-19 rages on, violence against women is raging. We’ve seen that domestic violence here in the UK has risen since lockdown and social distancing measures were implemented. Now imagine that situation in other countries, countries where FGM is more prevalent. Countries that were starting to tackle the practice of FGM are now abandoning this work, their attention entirely elsewhere. The pandemic is creating the perfect conditions for proponents of FGM and other acts of violence against women and girls, with school closures, overwhelmed healthcare facilities, and enforced social distancing. So many girls are going to be mutilated, because the world isn’t watching. How many girls have died so far? We don’t know. My head and heart will never go there, to consider how many, because it’s just too much.

We cannot, we must not abandon these women and girls because of COVID-19. The virus has sadly taken many lives, but so has violence. It has been taking lives and it will continue to do so after the virus has gone. We have to remember these women and girls. We have to be their voice, we have to fight for them; we have to be the ones that tell the world what they are going through. We have to be the ones that give the voiceless a voice. It doesn’t matter what kind of violence you’ve experienced – sharing it makes the world better. By sharing it, you’re bringing about change. You are providing people with an education they never knew existed. And that is what I do. 

I miss my work. I can’t wait to go back. But even in lockdown, when I am staying at home, my work never ends. On a daily basis, I get messages from young women who are brave enough to seek help, through Messenger, Instagram, Twitter. They ask How can I do this? How can I get help? How can I get unstitched? My heart breaks for them, but my heart also dances for them, because they have the courage to ask for help. So for me, I might be stuck in the house, and furious at the virus and the effect it’s having, but my work continues. I never stop talking about FGM on Twitter, not even for a single day, because when you have a life sentence there is no such thing as rest. You only have one desire in life. For me, it’s to get rid of this cruel, inhumane practice, that has already claimed millions of lives and continues to do so. Please, do not ignore this violence; please, do not forget these women and girls. Be their champion, be their voice; get the knowledge, and help fight the fight. Thank you. 

Thanks to Laura Freeman for her help in producing this Blog