An Assessment of the Alternative Rites Approach for Encouraging Abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya

“Maendeleo Ya Wanawake (MYWO), with technical assistance from the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), has been implementing an Alternative Rite of passage programme as part of its efforts to eradicate the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in five districts in Kenya. Although the approach has been implemented since 1996, and is a continuation of anti-FGM efforts that started a few years earlier, the approach itself has not yet been systematically documented or assessed. This study addressed the factors that influence some families and individuals to adopt the alternative rite while others, exposed to the same messages discouraging FGM, decide not to. It also evaluated the effect of the training component of the Alternative Rite on the girls who participated.

The study was undertaken in three districts (Tharaka, Narok, and Gucha), where MYWO/PATH have been implementing the approach and which cover four ethnic groups. A comparison was made of knowledge, attitudes, and practices concerning FGM and reproductive health among households and individuals who had participated in the alternative rite and those who had not. Data were collected through 37 focus group discussions, 53 key informant in-depth interviews, a household survey of 634 parents, 1,068 girls and 364 boys, and nine case studies of families who have participated in the Alternative Rite.

FGM practices vary among the four sites. Type 1 (clitoridectomy) and Type 2 (excision) are practised in all four sites. There are indications of changes in the way FGM is practised in all sites, and particularly a move towards reducing the harm caused through medicalisation, particularly in the predominantly Abagusii and Maasai ethnic group sites, and the use of individual instruments.

Those families choosing for their daughters to participate in the Alternative Rite are somewhat different than those not choosing to do so, in that they are slightly more likely to have ever attended school, more likely not to be members of the Catholic or Pentecostal churches, slightly less likely to be labourers or farm workers, more likely to be of higher socio-economic status, slightly more likely to have females with more positive gender attitudes, and more likely to already not be cutting their daughters and to express regret for those already cut.

The Family Life Education (FLE) training that girls who adopt the Alternative Rite are exposed to does have an effect on the girls’ awareness and knowledge about reproductive health issues, but it also appears to engender somewhat less positive attitudes towards the practice of family planning among unmarried partners and adolescents, including condom use.

The MYWO sensitisation activities that preceded and accompanied the Alternative Rite have played a role in the behaviour change process among those who have decided to discontinue the practice and who have adapted the alternative rite. It is also clear, however, that these sensitisation activities have not functioned in isolation from other influences operating in the communities, notably the stance taken by certain churches as well as individuals’ existing beliefs that the practice should be discontinued. The contribution that an Alternative Rite intervention can make to efforts to abandon the practice depends on the socio-cultural context in which FGM is practised. For the approach to be replicated successfully in other situations will require a good understanding of the role of public (as opposed to familial) ceremonies in that culture, and a judgement as to what format for the ritual is the most appropriate means of helping those that have decided to abandon the practice to actually do so.”