We are committed to ending all forms of forced non-therapeutic genital cutting.
This includes female genital mutilation (FGM) and ritual circumcision of boys.
A child's right to bodily autonomy must not be overridden by other people's religious or cultural beliefs.
The National Secular Society supports a person's most fundamental right to grow up with an intact body and to make their own choices about permanent bodily modifications.
All forms of forced cutting on children's genitals breach basic child rights and safeguarding guidance.
Several communities have genital cutting traditions, often rooted in religious beliefs. But children, and particularly babies and young infants, are incapable of giving consent to such medically unnecessary, harmful, painful and permanent procedures.
Sometimes health benefits for non-therapeutic genital cutting are claimed despite the evidence to the contrary. All forms of forced genital cutting risk serious emotional, sexual, and physical harm – including death.
Child safeguarding must always be prioritised above the desire of adults to express their belief through forced cutting of children's genitals.
Female genital mutilation (FGM)
"It is irrelevant whether or not a person believed the operation to be necessary in the child's best interests as a matter of custom or ritual."
We are committed to the eradication of forced genital cutting of girls and women known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in all its forms.
There are thought to be well over 100,000 women and girls affected by FGM living in the UK. We work with like-minded organisations to protect girls from the harm of forced genital cutting.
FGM practices vary. Some forms involve a pinprick or the removal of a small amount of tissue from the clitoris. Other forms include complete removal of the clitoris and labia, and stitching the vulva closed. Communities which practice FGM often cite religion as a motivation.
All forms of FGM are child abuse and are rightly illegal in the UK. But some British girls are still unprotected. Some have been sent abroad to undergo the procedure and others are having it performed secretly in this country.
There has been only one successful prosecution for FGM since it was banned in 1985. We are concerned that fear of upsetting cultural and religious sensitivities is preventing authorities from tackling FGM effectively.
"...a right specifically for African families who want to carry on their tradition whilst living in this country"
As with all forms of forced genital cutting, those who speak out against FGM are often accused of disrespecting their parents or cultural heritage, and of over-dramatising a 'minor' procedure that others 'don't complain about'. Together with the perceived humiliation of speaking about one's own genitals, these factors combine to ensure that many sufferers are reluctant to speak out.
Ending FGM requires sustained civil society action to change attitudes and inform girls of their rights.
Male circumcision
While all forms of FGM are rightfully banned, non-therapeutic circumcision of boys is permitted in UK law.
The foreskin is a normal body part with physical, sexual and immunological functions. Removing it from non-consenting children has been associated with various physical and psychological difficulties. These are likely to be greatly under-reported because people who have experienced sexual harm are often reluctant to reveal it as societal dismissal or stigmatisation may compound the harm.
Circumcision is excruciatingly painful. When performed on babies, little to no anaesthesia is used. Even when performed under anaesthesia on older children, the recovery entails weeks of pain and discomfort.
The procedure is also dangerous. Between 1988 and 2014, there were 22,000 harms recorded by the NHS resulting circumcision. They included scarring and full penis amputation. In 2011, nearly a dozen infant boys were treated for life-threatening haemorrhage, shock or sepsis as a result of non-therapeutic circumcision at a single children's hospital in Birmingham. In 2007, a newborn baby went into cardiac arrest minutes after he was circumcised in a London synagogue, and subsequently died.
Any claims of marginal health benefits of circumcision are extremely contested. No national medical, paediatric, surgical or urological society recommends routine circumcision of all boys as a health intervention. There is now growing concern among doctors that existing ethical principles of non-therapeutic childhood surgery should no longer include an exception for non-therapeutic circumcision.
62% of Brits would support a law prohibiting the circumcision of children for non-medical reasons. Only 13% would oppose it.
There is very limited regulation of non-therapeutic circumcision in the UK. We do not know how many such procedures are performed annually or the degree of harm, as there is no requirement for any follow up or audit and the boys themselves are too young to complain.
It is now being recognised more widely that non-therapeutic religious and cultural circumcision is a breach of children's rights. We want to see the same protections for girls' bodily autonomy extended to boys.
Take action!
1. Write to your MP
Ask your MP to support an end to non-consensual religious genital cutting
2. Share your story
Tell us why you support this campaign, and how you are personally affected by the issue. You can also let us know if you would like assistance with a particular issue.
3. Join the National Secular Society
Become a member of the National Secular Society today! Together, we can separate religion and state for greater freedom and fairness.
Latest updates
NSS calls on Parliament not to ignore religious infringement on children’s rights
Posted: Mon, 10 Oct 2016 12:16
In a submission to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the National Secular Society warned that religion's role in state education is impeding the rights and freedoms of children and young people growing up in the UK.
In a response to the Committee's inquiry into the UK's record on children's rights, the NSS recommended the repeal of exceptions to the Equality Act that permit discrimination on grounds of religion or belief in certain circumstances.
Earlier this year the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child urged the UK to repeal laws requiring the provision of 'broadly Christian' worship in UK schools – and also called for pupils to be given the independent right of withdrawal.
The Society expressed its alarm over the Government's refusal to address this issue, pointing out that in the overwhelming majority of cases, school communities are made up of pupils from a variety of religion and belief backgrounds. This means that even with limited withdrawal rights, requiring acts of "broadly Christian" worship in which pupils by law are required to "take part" undermines young people's freedom of religion and belief.
It was recently reported that a school in Scotland had punished non-religious pupils for refusing to attend mass.
Another area of blatant discrimination is in school admissions, and the NSS said it remained "deeply concerned about the UK's failure to address religious discrimination in 'faith' school admissions."
Government proposals to allow new free schools to discriminate in all of their admissions "will serve to increase levels of faith-based discrimination against children in our education system", the submission said.
Aside from the state education system, the NSS said new efforts were required to identify unregistered schools, including the granting of new powers and resources which may be required by local authorities to take effective action.
Other recommendations made to the Joint Committee on Human Rights included the creation of a statutory duty on all schools, including faith schools, to teach age-appropriate sex and relationships education.
Evidence submitted by the Society also included concerns over the UK's lack of progress in tackling FGM and ritual circumcision.
"We remain seriously concerned at the UK's failure to successfully prosecute a single case of female genital mutilation (FGM)," the Society wrote.
"Most alarmingly, 30 years after FGM was made illegal in the UK, a 2016 Home Affairs Committee report found that 'some clinicians are ignoring the duty on frontline healthcare professionals, social care workers and teachers to record data on FGM incidence'."
It also urged the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) to address the finding of Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division of the High Court, that if "FGM Type IV amounts to significant harm, as in my judgment it does, then the same must be so of male circumcision."
"While girls are at least theoretically legally protected from non-consensual non-medical circumcision, the same protections do not extend to boys. Non-medical male circumcision (usually for religious reasons) is almost entirely unregulated in the UK," the NSS said.
UK must honour equality and human rights obligations, NSS tells UN
Posted: Thu, 22 Sep 2016 15:54
The National Secular Society has urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to recommend to the UK Government that it abolish religious discrimination in faith schools' admissions procedures.
The call came in a wide-ranging submission for the UK's periodic review by the United Nations in which the NSS highlighted a number of areas where individual rights are being restricted by undue religious influence.
The NSS said that previous recommendations on human rights and equality had not been acted on by the UK.
The submission highlights the UK's failure to address religious discrimination in 'faith' school admissions and employment practices – and is highly critical of Government plans to increase levels of discrimination by allowing more religiously selective schools by removing the existing 50% cap.
The submission also highlights a number of other areas where the UK's record of upholding human rights is poor, including abortion access in Northern Ireland, caste discrimination, and FGM.
Discrimination in faith schools
The NSS raised serious concerns about the UK's failure to address religious discrimination in 'faith' school admissions procedures and employment practices.
Equality Act exceptions permit schools designated as having a religious character to select pupils by reference to faith where the school is oversubscribed. The Government has recently announced plans to remove a 50% cap of faith-based admissions for newly established schools ('free schools') enabling them apply 100% religious selection in admissions.
The NSS submission noted that whilst the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child had previously called on the UK to "actively promote a fully integrated education system" (in the context of Northern Ireland), the UK's response has been to facilitate greater levels of religious segregation in English faith schools.
The Government has recently acknowledged that in minority faith schools in England the ethnic make-up is overwhelmingly formed of pupils from predominantly similar ethnic (and very likely religious) backgrounds.
Our submission recommended that the UK eliminates religious selection in admissions procedures to publicly-funded schools and amend legislation to ensure that religious discrimination in employment at faith schools is limited to positions where there is a genuine occupational requirement.
Freedom of thought, conscience and religion
The Society urged the Human Rights Council to echo the recommendation of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and call on the UK to repeal legal provisions for compulsory worship and Religious Observance in UK schools and ensure that young people have the independent right to opt-out of any acts of worship held in schools.
Right to education
The NSS raised concerns about children in the UK being schooled in unregistered and sometimes illegal settings, and being denied their right to a broad and balanced secular education.
Our submission recommended that the UK develops a more robust strategy for protecting the rights and interests of children, including instituting a system to ensure it has accurate information about where every child is being educated and regularly reporting on the number of children missing from the formal education system either through home-schooling, supplementary, or illegal unregistered 'schools', taking investigative steps where children are unaccounted for, and closing down illegal schools.
Gender-based violence
The NSS raised serious concerns at the UK's failure to successfully prosecute a single case of female genital mutilation (FGM).
Alarmingly, 30 years after FGM was made illegal in the UK, a 2016 Home Affairs Committee report found that "some clinicians are ignoring the duty on frontline healthcare professionals, social care workers and teachers to record data on FGM incidence".
The submission urged the UN to question the UK Government on the current state of their strategy and stress to the UK that the universality of individual Human Rights should be upheld and not overridden on the grounds of religion, tradition or culture.
Abortion in Northern Ireland
Our submission highlighted the UK's failure to act on an earlier Human Rights Council recommendation to "Ensure by legislative and other measures that women in Northern Ireland are entitled to safe and legal abortion on equal basis with women living in other parts of the United Kingdom."
Since 2012 the situation in Northern Ireland and the UK Government's failure to act has, if anything, become more concerning.
The NSS called on the Human Rights Council to reiterate recommendations on abortion access in Northern Ireland
Freedom of expression
The submission was also an opportunity to raise concerns about the Government's apparently stalled proposals for 'extremism disruption orders'.
Ill-thought out measures with an ill-defined notion of non-violence extremism "risk capturing a whole range of behaviour and speech", the NSS warned.
"The UK already has sufficient legalisation in place to combat hate speech, including incitement to violence or hatred. Additional restrictions on free speech can only further jeopardise and chill freedom of expression."
Caste discrimination
The NSS took the opportunity of the UPR to restate its criticisms of the Government on the issue of caste discrimination.
"We recommend the UK legislate to implement its international obligations in respect of caste, in line with its human rights obligations, as recommended by the UN, and indeed as required by the UK Parliament," the NSS submission said.
This issue of caste-based discrimination was additionally raised at the United Nations Human Rights Council by the NSS this week.
