Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-23-Speech-1-198"
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"en.20090323.24.1-198"2
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I think it is particularly fitting that Commissioner Michel is taking part in our debate. As we know, he always pays great attention to human rights issues and tragedies in Africa. In fact, Mr Michel’s presence gives me hope that the Commission may give serious consideration to an issue that today not only affects 28 African countries and various countries in the Middle East and neighbouring countries, but is now a particularly distressing problem within the European Union itself.
The mass immigration that has taken place in recent years has brought this tragedy to EU countries. Tens of thousands of girls and young women are at risk every day of suffering a terrible practice that injures them irreversibly from a physical point of view, but also does extremely serious psychological damage. That is why – although Parliament has already condemned this practice on several occasions in previous years and in fact gave funding through DAPHNE to 14 projects to combat female genital mutilation – that is why today we again find ourselves discussing this topic, because the phenomenon has unfortunately not become less prevalent, but remains on the increase.
We must have the courage to adopt a more appropriate serious method of prevention through cultural campaigns able to make immigrant women, but also the fathers of these girls, understand that following a tribal rite, which has nothing to do with religion, is no way to integrate or create a future for their daughters.
Consider a girl who attends a French, Italian or Belgian school and suddenly, after having socialised with her peers, finds herself snatched from normality and forced to suffer a tragedy that will mark her for life. This girl is not only physically mutilated, but it is impossible for her to resume a normal relationship with other people; she feels diminished, different, and in our society we do not want people who are different. We want people who, no matter what their religion, skin colour or geographical origin, can work together to build a better Europe, closer to its citizens.
For this reason, Mr President, Commissioner, we as Parliament – and I would like to thank all my colleagues from the committee who helped me draft this report – want the laws of all Member States to be harmonised so that female genital mutilation is classed as an offence. We do not want palliative proposals such as ‘pricking’. We want women to be truly equal with men; we do not want initiation rites, but real integration instead. We want NGOs to be able to carry out their work, we want a prevention policy that involves immigrant women’s associations, we want to punish anybody who seeks to mutilate girls and drag them into a perverse spiral of desperation and marginalisation.
The report covers many areas and I think Members have had the opportunity to examine and evaluate it. I believe everyone should join in this call for a purposeful Europe that combines the efforts of its three institutions to combat this horrible crime that violates human rights."@en1
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