Efua Dorkenoo

Abstract

Nurse and biosocial scientist who led the campaign against female genital mutilation. Born on Sept 6, 1949, in Cape Coast, Ghana, she died of cancer on Oct 18, 2014, in London, UK, aged 65 years. While doing a short course in midwifery in Sheffield in the early 1970s, Efua Dorkenoo cared for a young Somali woman struggling to give birth who was in agony as a result of having undergone infibulation. Dorkenoo was horrified at what she regarded as an inhumane practice and appalled at the complicity of the doctors and nurses who tolerated it. The experience was a watershed for the young nurse, who had arrived in the UK from Ghana. She spent the rest of her life campaigning against female genital mutilation (FGM). Her activities drew the wrath of traditionalists but she responded to threats by working harder. “There is no time to rest while children are being abused”, she said. Known affectionately as “Mama Efua”, she campaigned on FGM up to the end of her life. Just a week before she died The Girl Generation was launched, an Africa-led global campaign to end FGM which Dorkenoo headed, backed by a consortium of charities and organisations. Over the course of her 30-year campaign, FGM went from a largely ignored issue to become front page news. In a blog written for The Huffington Post earlier this year, Dorkenoo wrote of a “tidal wave of change” in the campaign marked by the first prosecution for FGM in the UK, in April, 2014, almost three decades after it was made illegal in 1985. “Whatever the outcome, this prosecution sends out a strong message that FGM is illegal and will not be tolerated. We are on the crest of a wave—a tipping point—in terms of ending FGM in the UK. We need to ensure that every single girl is protected and part of this means that survivors are provided with a safe space to speak to help break the cycle of abuse”, she wrote. One of 11 children, Dorkenoo was brought up in Cape Coast, Ghana, where her father was a school nurse. After moving to London in her late teens, she trained as a nurse and later went on to gain a masters degree from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a research fellowship at City University. In 1983, she co-founded FORWARD (the Foundation for Women's Health Research and Development) that played a leading part in the battle against FGM. The procedure was outlawed in the UK 2 years later, and in many other countries in the years following, but it still affects more than 120 million girls and women worldwide. Adwoa Kwateng-Kluvitse, head of global advocacy at FORWARD, valued Dorkenoo's passion and commitment: “She was extremely tenacious. She was like an iron fist in a velvet glove. She would smile and smile but she would always get you to do what she wanted. She was fearless, too. In the early days she received death threats. FGM was something not spoken about. People thought it was sacred to themselves and she was challenging their culture and tradition. But she saw FGM as an abuse of African girls and women and was determined to do something about it. She even held discussions with Amnesty about describing it as a form of torture. “To those who argued she was ignoring cultural sensitivities Dorkenoo responded by presenting FGM as a human rights violation. That view was evident in her book, Cutting the Rose—Female Genital Mutilation: the Practice and its Prevention, published in 1994, the same year she was awarded an OBE. From 1995 to 2001, Dorkenoo worked at WHO as acting director of women's health where she coordinated action plans against FGM in six African countries. WHO acceded to her view but the UN only did so in 2012. From WHO she moved to Equality Now, where as advocacy director on FGM she took survivors with her to meetings, knowing their testimony would far outweigh the arguments of her critics. In her final months Dorkenoo continued to travel to Africa to gather information and pave the way for the launch of The Girl Generation. But she was too ill to attend on the day and followed it from her hospital bed. Jacqui Hunt, director of the London office of Equality Now, said: “It was her perseverance that was remarkable. She just kept on and on. She was passionate and committed and had so much energy. She knew FGM was wrong and it was her dedication and commitment to ending it that persuaded other people.” Dorkenoo is survived by her husband, Freddie Greene, two sons, Kobina and Ebow, two stepsons, Galvin and Yanik, a stepdaughter, Fummi, and a grandson, Cassius.