04/06/2004

Like many women in Sierra Leone, Ami (not her real name), a Sierra Leonean refugee living in Liberia, was inducted into a “secret society” at puberty.  She and a group of her female friends were initiated into these societies through a ritual called “cutting”.  It’s also known as excision, female genital cutting (FGC), or female genital mutilation (FGM).  Excision involves the removal of the clitoral hood with or without removal of all or part of the clitoris.  It is generally performed without the use of anesthesia. Some estimates place the percentage of women and girls in Sierra Leone who undergo this procedure at 80 percent.

Girls take an oath when they are initiated that they will not reveal anything that happened during the puberty rite.  This initiation into the secret society is an important passage into womanhood and membership is forever.

As UNHCR begins voluntary repatriation of refugees back to Sierra Leone, some refugees are unable to return to their homes.  Ami is afraid to return to Sierra Leone.  During her time at the refugee camp, she went through an awareness-raising program about FGM. While completing training in gender-based violence, Ami was encouraged to talk about the secret societies and to reveal “women’s secrets”.  Although she was assured confidentiality and told by the NGO working in the camp that they would be working to eradicate FGM, somehow her identity got out to the other women in the secret society.

“I do not want to leave Liberia, ” she told Refugees International.  “I have been ostracized from society and can no longer be with the women’s group. They have refused to initiate my daughter so she has no future in Sierra Leone.  There is no way I can return to the society now. I wish I had never talked about it. ” She told us that the women in the society took her out into the bush where they do the initiation rites and told her that women have already returned to her home community and informed others. “I am afraid to go back.  According to our society’s law, if you violate the secrecy, it is tantamount to death.”  As we spoke by her hut, surrounded by her sisters who have also been ostracized from the society due to her candor, the chanting and cheers of hundreds of women engaging in a fertility ritual for a pregnant woman about to give birth to her first child echoed in the background.

Compare her case to Agnes (name also changed), a devout Catholic refugee from Sierra Leone who works in the camp.  She finished her secondary education and began work as a nurse’s assistant. She resisted being initiated into the secret societies. Non-members of the secret societies are considered to be children and are not accepted as adults by society. Although she has worked her way up through the society of the refugee camp, she would be barred from taking up any leadership positions if she returned to Sierra Leone, she told us. Children who come of age and have not gone through the puberty rite are liable to be forcibly seized to undergo the procedure. 

Agnes pulled me aside after I interviewed her with her coworkers in the camp. She wanted assurances that we could talk in private without her coworkers overhearing. As we walked, she confided, “I am afraid for my life. I have talked to people about getting asylum status but I have heard nothing back. I can stay here in Liberia although there is no work. But I cannot return to my own country. They [the secret societies] have told me that they will force me to become a woman. I am afraid to return to Sierra Leone. Even Liberia is not safe. The societies operate here as well.  I do not know what I will do.” 

In Sierra Leone, the power of secret societies is great. In the campaigning for elections in Sierra Leone, politicians have been careful not to offend members of the secret societies. Women from all walks of life are members and it continues to be a powerful force in the country's politics, despite controversies in the past few years over its practice of FGM.

In Liberia, many believe that the civil war caused a reduction in this practice, estimating that the incidence has dropped to as low as 10 percent. The war caused most of the population to flee to neighboring countries or become internally displaced. Social structures and traditional institutions, such as the secret societies that often performed this procedure as an initiation rite, were also undermined by the war.

With the civil war ended and traditional societies re-establishing themselves throughout the country, practices such as FGM/FGC are expected to increase again in rural areas for those groups for which it has been a significant and important rite of passage. The extent to which these practices might be revived to pre-war levels is yet known.

In other countries, NGOs that have worked with ex-child combatants found that a number of the female ex-combatants sought membership in the secret societies as a form of self-protection and evidence that they were reintegrating into society. As Liberians begin the process of reintegration, it is essential that NGOs keep in mind the harmful nature of FGM while promoting traditional cleansing ceremonies.

RI Advocate Sarah Martin recently returned from a mission to West Africa.