Egypt’s parliament is to vote on tougher penalties for FGM

The Egyptian government has proposed stricter punishments for those performing or subjecting women to genital mutilation.

Egypt’s cabinet of ministers approved a draft bill to increase prison time for the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), health minister Ahmed Emad announced on Sunday. The procedure has been banned in Egypt since 2007.

It is now punishable in Egypt by between three months and two years in prison under a 2008 law, which was enacted after an 11-year-old girl died following an FGM procedure.

The bill, which still has to be ratified by parliament, raises the penalty from a misdemeanor to a felony. “The amendment provides for harsher punishment for a period not less than five years and not more than seven years”, he told a press conference. Activists say the campaign to end the practice may have suffered a setback with the 2011 overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak, whose regime imposed the ban.

Under the new bill, if the FGM procedure results in permanent disability or death, the penalty for the offender will be up to 15 years in prison, according to Gulf News.

As reported by Ahram Online, there is a widespread belief in Egypt that women who do not undergo FGM are unable to control their sexual urges. The girl’s mother, the doctor who performed the fatal procedure and two other people have been accused of “involuntary manslaughter” and are awaiting a trial, AFP reported.

After the latest FGM case in Suez, the governor had ordered the shutdown of a private hospital in May, in which a young girl undergoing FGM died due to severe bleeding. He served only the three-month sentence.

It is practised by both Muslims and Christians in a number of African countries and in parts of the Middle East.