2016 Theses Master's

Uncontrolled Women: Coloniality, Human Rights And The Eradication Of Female Genital Mutilation In Kenya

Onsando, Aisha Kwamboka

The elimination of the cultural practice of FGM has been a priority for governments and the ‘international community’ from colonial times. A number of approaches have been employed including; community activism, rehabilitation support, education and awareness raising and criminalization. All these approaches are rooted, in strategy or in rationale, in colonial conceptions of personhood, modernity and civilization. A close reading of the intra-Agency statement reveals that harm is mainly conceived by consensus; the question remains whose consensus and the frame within which the consensus is reached. Because Black African Women, African Muslim Women and Black African Muslim Women stand at the intersection of race, gender and sexuality special attention must be paid to the nuances of the effects of coloniality on the various forms of protection. My thesis explores colonial interventions in Kenya in native reproduction and parallels them with modern human rights inflected interventions.