On Thursday, April 25th, Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-12) (pictured center) joined elected officials. Equal Rights Amendment advocates challenge a current US Department of Justice decision to no longer shield a federal regulation banning FGM/C, call for Speaker Pelosi to step in to defend the regulation, and phone for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Congresswoman Maloney is the sponsor of H.J. Res. 35, a bill to restart the ratification process of the ERA.
While the Trump Administration has determined not to protect the 1996 law banning FGM/C, the House or the Senate should achieve this. Accordingly, Congresswoman Maloney wrote a letter nowadays (partial text underneath) to Speaker Nancy Pelosi to urge her to guard the U.S. Court of Appeals regulation.
In light of a federal district courtroom in Michigan’s November 2018 ruling that Congress does not have the constitutional authority to criminalize FGM/C, the advocates nowadays highlighted the want to ratify the ERA. Without this constitutional bedrock protective ladies rights, courts can roll returned the legal guidelines Congress passes.
“As a survivor of female genital mutilation, I am deeply disenchanted by the decision of the Department of Justice,” said Aissata M.B. Camara, Co-Founder, There Is No Limit Foundation. “These final results undermine a long time of progress made via activists like me to cease this harmful practice. It sends a bad message approximately the price of our bodies and experiences. The time to act is now—protecting girls’ and women’s rights must be a concern. I applaud everybody breaking their silence because FGM influences all of us, and it’s a violation of human rights. Ending this exercise requires collective movement rooted in community schooling and strong policies. I know we will obtain a world without FGM so women and girls can reach their full potential.”
According to Kate Kelly, Program Officer of Women’s and Girls’ Rights at Equality Now, “Positioned, FGM is a human rights violation. It’s a form of gender-based violence and child abuse. The technique may be deadly and is continually dangerous. The decision by the DOJ to no longer pursue the selection in the Nagarwala case tacitly says that the federal government can’t pass legal guidelines to forestall human rights violations. This isn’t real. Congress does have the authority to enact an FGM law. In truth, it’s miles below a global obligation to accomplish that. Currently, 19 states do not have legal guidelines for FGM. In this very case, girls had been taken throughout the nation’s borders to be reduced. This alarming lack of federal enforcement and gap in the kingdom’s legal guidelines is placing American ladies and girls at risk today.”
Background
In 1996, Congress criminalized the exercise of girl genital mutilation (18 USC §116), which is recognized across the world as a violation of the human rights of women and girls. The World Health Organization states that the procedure has no health benefits for women and girls and can cause extreme bleeding and problems urinating, and later cysts, infections, headaches in childbirth, and an increased chance of newborn deaths.
In the first federal case (U.S. V. Nagarwala), added under the FGM/Claw, a Michigan federal district courtroom choose to overturn the regulation because Congress lacked the authority to legislate on this area. The decision rejected the idea that both the Commerce Clause or global treaties had been enough to provide Congress jurisdiction. Last Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it might not defend the regulation.
5 of the nine victims inside the case had been transported across the kingdom’s lines to undergo FGM/C. More than 500,000 girls and women within the United States have undergone or are susceptible to undergo female genital mutilation to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 000 women and women who live in the 19 states that lack laws banning FGM/C are at risk without the federal FGM regulation.
