Liberia has no plans to abolish Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) despite mounting demands by local and international organisations, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has said.
President Sirleaf said, “to hastily abolish the practice could spark off a serious societal crisis”.
FGM is widely practised in Liberia with thousands of young girls annually initiated in traditional “schools” known as the Sande Society in preparation for mutilation.
More than half of the country’s 16 ethnic groups in north eastern, parts of eastern, western and northern Liberia practice FGM.
Those who practise it argue that it controls a woman’s sexual urge.
“This is not a thing that you can legislate. If you try to legislate or enforce it without much sensitisation, we might run into some tension in our society that we don’t need,” President Sirleaf.
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