On 28th June, 2018, NAFIS organized a Consultation Meeting for the Civil Society Organizations (CSO’s) that work to end Female Genital Mutilation FGM/C in Somaliland. The objective of the Meeting was to discuss the drafted FGM/C Bill in order to start forwarding it to the parliament for enactment.
The meeting also aimed to select group of civil society leaders to work closely with the parliament for the process of the Bill enactment.
The meeting was officially opened by NAFIS Network Executive Director Mr. Abdirahman Gaas. He welcomed and thanked the participants for attending the meeting. Mr. Gaas briefly discussed Draft FGM/C policy process its current status and Fatwa. “NAFIS facilitated the religious leaders dialogue to come up consensus which ban all forms of FGM, this resulted to draft good consensus but the Minister miss-leaded”, but he added that as NAFIS not happy the conclusion from the Ministry “Fatwa” but immediately approached with the Minister and he agreed to revise the Fatwa to support a law banning all forms of circumcision.
Abdirahman added that; “Anti-FGM policy was drafted 7 years ago and still it’s in draft that means nothing going on and we cannot wait more than that, we should come up another ways to solve this challenge and safe our girls”
He suggested to the civil society leaders to discuss this issue openly and come up new energy which we can combine our efforts, resources and agendas to end FGM in 2030 which is relevant to the global agenda.
Guled Dafac (Legal expert) from the Human Rights Centre discussed the difference of the Policy and a Bill, how they go in different channels for approval/enactment, but can complement each other when approved/legislated. Guled also presented the content of the Bill, he mentioned that the current draft is a good base and we can start working to improve it.
The participants start discussing about the proposed task as they all seem very optimistic and ready to work to enact the FGM/c bill. On the other hand, most of the participants agreed that there is a poor coordination and legitimacy of the civil society organization’s work in Somaliland; as they need to improve it in order to enable them smoothly work on their mandates. The participants welcomed and pledged that they will work on this Bill until enactment and nominated several persons to be the people who will lead this process based on their experience and accessibility to the parliament and other officials from the government.
The participants also suggested that, the importance of making to working groups (small and wider groups), in which the small working group will be responsible day-to-day activities while the wider platform which all the organization are members will meet monthly and give advices and back up to the small working group.