Uganda is seeing a surge in female genital mutilation - and it's being blamed in large part on the pandemic's restrictions.
The Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development reports that because of the Coronavirus pandemic, the East African nation is experiencing a 56% surge in cases of female genital mutilation, a practice which has been outlawed for over a decade.
Female genital mutilation is punishable in Uganda by ten years' imprisonment - or a life sentence for aggravated mutilation.
Official statistics show the COVID-19 lockdown and school closures, implemented in March 2020 as a means of curbing the spread of the Coronavirus, led to an increase in poverty according to Minister of State for Children and Cultural Affairs Peace Mutuuzo, .
"The pastoral communities who sold animals in the markets had nothing to sell because markets were closed, and for their survival they quickly prepared their children into female genital mutilation and married them off,” Mutuuzo said.
Moses Logwee, a village secretary, supports Mutuuzo's point - that schools were havens protecting girls against female genital mutilation, and closing them led to the FGM increase. "Nowadays," he said, "they identify a day where all girls of the age when they are supposed to be cut are collected and then it is done indoors. After COVID, it is too rampant, very common. I don’t know how many girls will survive,” says Logwee.
One Ugandan standing vigilant against FGM is Reproductive Health Uganda Executive Director Jackson Chekweko, who chastised the Ugandan elite who are enforcing the shunned upon practice, reminding them that they are not above the law.
Chekweko told VOA “As long as the law is in force, it will not discriminate against anybody, it will catch up with anybody. So, I am appealing to the elite community to talk to their people such that they aren’t found outside the law,”