The UK Central Criminal Court recently passed a significant sentence in a landmark case physical maltreatment against women, specifically female genital mutilation (FGM). The case was against defendant Amina Noor, who was found guilty of carrying out an FGM procedure on a young UK citizen overseas. Noor has been sentenced to a term of 7 years imprisonment. The original sentencing was 9 years and 6 months, which was later adjusted to account for considerable delays in the case.
Noor, originally from Somalia, moved to Kenya to escape war. She arrived in the UK at age 16 where she was granted refugee status and later obtained UK citizenship through naturalisation. In 2006, she travelled with three-year-old Jad (a pseudonym used to protect her identity) to Kenya where, under pressure from her family including her mother, Noor subjected Jade to FGM.
Noor’s defense argued she believed the procedure was a “painless injection” and was ignorant of its actual nature. This argument was however rejected by Justice Simon Bryan; the evidence suggests Noor was fully aware of the practice. The child revealed the crime to her English teacher when she was 16.
The sentencing considered guidelines from Child Cruelty Guidelines along with section 3 of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, according to which FGM constitutes torture. The ruling also made note of the conventions against torture from several other pre-existing global conventions on human rights.
This case marks the first successful conviction of its kind under the FGM Act 2003, which outlaws the practice within UK boundaries and prohibits citizens from taking girls overseas to perform it. In 2015, the UK Parliament strengthened the law protecting girls from this harmful custom, following criticisms about the lack of convictions and a report that disclosed 5,702 new cases in England that year.
FGM is a widespread issue – as reported by the UN, around 4.4 million girls are at risk, and it’s estimated by UNICEF that at least 200 million women worldwide are victims of this crime.
Read more at Jurist.