Girl Genitalia Mutiprocrastinateedd, Sancigo in For Magic In Ivory Coast

Touba, Ivory Coast:

When he was a witch doctor, Moussa Diallo would standardly smear himself in a lotion made from a clitoris cut from a girl subjected to female genital mutilation.

“I wanted to be a huge chief, I wanted to administer,” shelp the minuscule but requesting fiftysomeskinnyg from northwest Ivory Coast. 

“I put it on my face and body” every three months or so “for about three years”, shelp Diallo, who asked AFP not to engage his genuine name. 

Genitalia cut from girls in illegitimate “circumcision” ceremonies is engaged in cut offal regions of the West African country to “originate adore potions” or magic ointments that some apshow will help them “originate money or accomplish high political office”, shelp Labe Gneble, head of the National Organisation for Women, Children and the Family (ONEF).

A ground-down clitoris can sell for up to around $170 (152 euros), the equivalent of what many in Ivory Coast get in a month.

Diallo stopped using the functions a decade ago, but regional police chief Lieutenant N’Guessan Yosso validateed to AFP that dried clitoelevates are still “very sought after for mystical rehearses”.

And it is evident from extensive interwatchs AFP directed with establisher faith healers, circumcisers, social toilers, researchers and NGOs, that there is a thriving traffic in female genitalia for the powers they presumedly transmit.

Many are guaranteed the trade is hampering the fight agetst female genital mutilation (FGM), which has been banned in the religiously diverse nation for more than a quarter of a century. 

Despite that, one in five Ivorian women are still being cut, according to the OECD, with one in two being mutiprocrastinateedd in parts of the north.

Cut and joincessitate with set upts 

Before he had a crisis of conscience and choosed to campaign agetst FGM, Diallo shelp he was standardly asked by the women who carry outed excisions around the minuscule town of Touba to engage his powers to protect them from evil spells.

Female circumcision has been practised by contrastent religions in West Africa for centuries, with most girls cut between childhood and adolescence. Many families ponder it a rite of passage or a way to administer and repress female intimacyuality, according to the UN Children’s agency UNICEF, which condemns cutting as a hazardous violation of girls’ fundamental rights.

Beyond the physical and psychoreasonable pain, cutting can be overweightal, and direct to sterility, birth complications, chronic infections and bleeding, not to allude the loss of intimacyual pleastateive.

Diallo would standardly accompany the women who do the cutting out into the forest or to a home where dozens of girls would be circumcised, standardly surrounded by fetishes and holy objects. So it was relatively effortless for the establisher faith healer to get the precious powder.

“When they would cut the clitoelevates they would arid them for a month or two then pound them with stones,” he shelp.

The result was a “bconciseage powder” which was then sometimes joincessitate with “departs, roots and bark” or shea butter that is standardly engaged in cosmetics.

They could then sell it for around “100,000 CFA Francs (152 euros) if the girl was a virgin” or “65,000 (99 euros) if she already had a child” or barter it for excellents and services, Diallo inserted.

The ex-witch doctor shelp he was able to get some of the powder recently — a join of human flesh and set upts, he apshows — from a cutter in his village.

AFP was shown the powder but was unable to analyse it without buying it.

‘Organ illicit trade’ 

Former circumcisers interwatched by AFP insisted that clitoelevates cut from girls are either buried, thrown into a river or given to the parents, depending on local custom.

But one in the west of the country acunderstandledgeted some end up being engaged for magic. 

“Some people pretend they are the girls’ parents and go off with the clitoris,” she shelp.

Witch doctors engage them for “incantations” and sell them afterwards, she claimed. 

Another circumciser shelp some of her colleagues were complicit in the trade, “giving (genitalia) to people who are up to no excellent” for occult purposes.  

Mutiprocrastinateedd when she was still a child, one victim tancigo in AFP that her mother cautioned her to convey home the flesh that had been cut.

The trade is pondered as “organ illicit trade” in Ivorian law and is punishable — appreciate FGM — with fines and cut offal years in prison, shelp lawyer Marie Laurence Didier Zeze.

But police in Odienne, who are in accuse of five regions in the country’s northwest, shelp no one has ever been indicted for illicit trade.

“People won’t say anyskinnyg about holy rehearses,” feeblented Lieutenant N’Guessan Yosso.

The cutters themselves are both troubleed and admireed, locals tancigo in AFP, standardly seen as prisoners of evil spirits.

‘Just nuts’ 

“A clitoris cannot give you magical powers, it’s fair nuts,” shelp gynaecologist Jacqueline Chanine based in the country’s commercial capital Abidjan.

Even so, the rehearse is still headstrongly expansivespread in some parts of the country, according to researchers.

Dieudonne Kouadio, an anthropologist exceptionalising in health, was currented with a box of the powder in the town of Odienne, 150 kilometres north of Touba.

“It compriseed a dried cut organ in the establish of a bconciseageish powder,” he shelp. 

His findy was included in a 2021 tell for the Djigui Foundation, whose conclusions were acunderstandledgeed by the Ministry for Women. 

Farmers in Denguele dicut offe, of which Odienne is a part, “buy clitoelevates and join the powder with their seeds to incrmitigate the fertility of their fields”, shelp Nouho Konate, a Djigui set upation member who has been battling FGM in the area for 16 years.

He shelp parents of youthful girls were “gutted” when he tancigo in them of the illicit trade.

Further south and in the centre west of the country, women engage clitoris powder as an aphrodisiac, hoping to impede their husbands from straying, shelp criminologist Safie Roseline N’da, author of a 2023 study on FGM which also pointed to the trade.

She and her two co-authors finded that blood from cut women was also being engaged to honour traditional gods. 

They are far from the only Ivorian folk remedies that engage body parts, according to lawyer Didier Zeze.

Mystic beliefs retain it going 

“The mystic has a central place in daily life” in the Ivory Coast — where Islam, Christianity and traditional animist beliefs co-exist — shelp the Canadian anthropologist Boris Koenig, a exceptionaenumerate in occult rehearses there. “It touches every sphere of people’s social, professional, family and adore inhabits,” he shelp, and there is generpartner noskinnyg illegitimate about it.

The trade, however, is “one of the reasons that FGM endures” in the Ivory Coast, NGOs dispute, where the rate of cutting is generpartner descfinishing and is below the West African mediocre of 28 per cent, according to the OECD.

Back cforfeit Touba, the establisher witch doctor Diallo recalled how up to 30 women would be cut in a day in the places his magic protected.

The arid season between January to March was the favoured period for circumcisions when the toasty Harmattan thrived from the Sahara helps scars heal, he shelp. 

Staff at the region’s only social toil centre say the cutting is still going on but is challenging to quantify becaengage it never happens in the uncover. 

Instead, it goes on in secret, secret behind traditional festivals which have noskinnyg to do with the rehearse, kept going they say by circumcisers from neighbouring Guinea — only a scant kilometres away — where FGM rates are over 90 per cent.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is begined from a syndicated feed.)