Dubai Telegraph - Genitalia from girls mutilated in I. Coast sold for magic

EUR -
AED 3.897588
AFN 71.62565
ALL 97.2537
AMD 411.203272
ANG 1.913552
AOA 968.293905
ARS 1058.745012
AUD 1.627557
AWG 1.911648
AZN 1.807819
BAM 1.955455
BBD 2.143822
BDT 126.883565
BGN 1.95804
BHD 0.399961
BIF 3075.191117
BMD 1.061143
BND 1.421016
BOB 7.363046
BRL 6.140859
BSD 1.061762
BTN 89.662386
BWP 14.445129
BYN 3.47465
BYR 20798.394027
BZD 2.140123
CAD 1.480899
CDF 3044.418227
CHF 0.936171
CLF 0.037916
CLP 1046.211864
CNY 7.674607
COP 4713.329932
CRC 543.329624
CUC 1.061143
CUP 28.120278
CVE 110.729863
CZK 25.391006
DJF 188.586074
DKK 7.45901
DOP 63.933705
DZD 141.600995
EGP 52.213665
ETB 128.927564
FJD 2.404653
GBP 0.833113
GEL 2.907297
GHS 17.418672
GMD 75.870655
GNF 9158.721715
GTQ 8.204937
GYD 222.11867
HKD 8.254453
HNL 26.592299
HTG 139.651911
HUF 410.802767
IDR 16762.975014
ILS 3.985736
INR 89.551307
IQD 1390.096744
IRR 44679.406949
ISK 147.498979
JMD 168.710198
JOD 0.752456
JPY 164.232506
KES 137.417871
KGS 91.474118
KHR 4302.933102
KMF 488.523524
KRW 1494.624597
KWD 0.326418
KYD 0.884785
KZT 526.901752
LAK 23302.690344
LBP 95078.373015
LKR 310.479784
LRD 196.6824
LSL 19.280981
LTL 3.133278
LVL 0.641875
LYD 5.162473
MAD 10.527599
MDL 19.005538
MGA 4923.70171
MKD 61.609117
MMK 3446.549617
MOP 8.506897
MRU 42.335075
MUR 49.990475
MVR 16.405298
MWK 1841.082561
MXN 21.872228
MYR 4.708282
MZN 67.833584
NAD 19.281345
NGN 1774.951722
NIO 39.023514
NOK 11.770787
NPR 143.459418
NZD 1.793877
OMR 0.40856
PAB 1.061762
PEN 4.000181
PGK 4.260222
PHP 62.350627
PKR 295.050664
PLN 4.354234
PYG 8295.534619
QAR 3.863355
RON 4.976865
RSD 116.971889
RUB 104.249364
RWF 1445.806728
SAR 3.987149
SBD 8.850728
SCR 14.422986
SDG 638.273057
SEK 11.587852
SGD 1.421194
SLE 24.247182
SOS 605.912547
SRD 37.389344
STD 21963.508396
SVC 9.290797
SZL 18.707922
THB 36.991474
TJS 11.2858
TMT 3.72461
TND 3.339947
TOP 2.485304
TRY 36.467135
TTD 7.215065
TWD 34.443094
TZS 2824.618246
UAH 43.973732
UGX 3901.494647
USD 1.061143
UYU 44.764202
UZS 13614.459211
VES 47.430329
VND 26899.963703
XAF 655.872046
XCD 2.867791
XDR 0.799896
XOF 645.174431
XPF 119.331742
YER 265.099936
ZAR 19.251725
ZMK 9551.56176
ZMW 28.906256
ZWL 341.687469
  • RBGPF

    0.0300

    60.22

    +0.05%

  • BCC

    -2.0100

    141.13

    -1.42%

  • CMSC

    -0.1800

    24.54

    -0.73%

  • BCE

    -0.1600

    27.69

    -0.58%

  • RYCEF

    -0.1700

    7.16

    -2.37%

  • SCS

    0.0200

    13.67

    +0.15%

  • CMSD

    -0.2100

    24.75

    -0.85%

  • NGG

    -1.2400

    62.9

    -1.97%

  • RIO

    -1.4000

    61.2

    -2.29%

  • JRI

    -0.3000

    13.22

    -2.27%

  • GSK

    -0.8300

    35.52

    -2.34%

  • RELX

    -1.2100

    46.59

    -2.6%

  • AZN

    0.4000

    65.19

    +0.61%

  • BTI

    0.0900

    35.24

    +0.26%

  • BP

    -0.7600

    28.16

    -2.7%

  • VOD

    -0.8500

    8.47

    -10.04%

Genitalia from girls mutilated in I. Coast sold for magic
Genitalia from girls mutilated in I. Coast sold for magic / Photo: Issouf SANOGO - AFP

Genitalia from girls mutilated in I. Coast sold for magic

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

Text size:

"I wanted to be a big chief, I wanted to dominate," said the small but charismatic fiftysomething from northwest Ivory Coast.

"I put it on my face and body" every three months or so "for about three years", said Diallo, who asked AFP not to use his real name.

Genitalia cut from girls in illegal "circumcision" ceremonies is used in several regions of the West African country to "make love potions" or magic ointments that some believe will help them "make money or reach high political office", said 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 earn in a month.

Diallo stopped using the unctions a decade ago, but regional police chief Lieutenant N'Guessan Yosso confirmed to AFP that dried clitorises are still "very sought after for mystical practices".

And it is clear from extensive interviews AFP conducted with former faith healers, circumcisers, social workers, researchers and NGOs, that there is a thriving traffic in female genitalia for the powers they supposedly impart.

Many are convinced the trade is hampering the fight against 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 mutilated in parts of the north.

- Cut and mixed with plants -

Before he had a crisis of conscience and decided to campaign against FGM, Diallo said he was often asked by the women who performed excisions around the small town of Touba to use his powers to protect them from evil spells.

Female circumcision has been practised by different religions in West Africa for centuries, with most girls cut between childhood and adolescence. Many families consider it a rite of passage or a way to control and repress female sexuality, according to UN children's agency UNICEF, which condemns cutting as a dangerous violation of girls' fundamental rights.

Beyond the physical and psychological pain, cutting can be fatal, lead to sterility, birth complications, chronic infections and bleeding, not to mention the loss of sexual pleasure.

Diallo would often accompany the women who do the cutting out into the forest or to a home where dozens of girls would be circumcised, often surrounded by fetishes and sacred objects. So it was relatively easy for the former faith healer to obtain the precious powder.

"When they would cut the clitorises they would dry them for a month or two then pound them with stones," he said.

The result was a "black powder" which was then sometimes mixed with "leaves, roots and bark" or shea butter that is often used 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 goods and services, Diallo added.

The ex-witch doctor said he was able to get some of the powder recently -- a mix of human flesh and plants, he believes -- from a cutter in his village.

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

- 'Organ trafficking' -

Former circumcisers interviewed by AFP insisted that clitorises 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 admitted some end up being used for magic.

"Some people pretend they are the girls' parents and go off with the clitoris," she said.

Witch doctors use them for "incantations" and sell them afterwards, she claimed.

Another circumciser said some of her colleagues were complicit in the trade, "giving (genitalia) to people who are up to no good" for occult purposes.

Mutilated when she was still a child, one victim told AFP that her mother warned her to bring home the flesh that had been cut.

The trade is regarded as "organ trafficking" in Ivorian law and is punishable -- like FGM -- with fines and several years in prison, said lawyer Marie Laurence Didier Zeze.

But police in Odienne, who are in charge of five regions in the country's northwest, said no one has ever been indicted for trafficking.

"People won't say anything about sacred practices," lamented Lieutenant N'Guessan Yosso.

The cutters themselves are both feared and respected, locals told AFP, often seen as prisoners of evil spirits.

- 'Just nuts' -

"A clitoris cannot give you magical powers, it's just nuts," said gynaecologist Jacqueline Chanine based in the country's commercial capital Abidjan.

Even so, the practice is still stubbornly widespread in some parts of the country, according to researchers.

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

"It contained a dried cut organ in the form of a blackish powder," he said.

His discovery was included in a 2021 report for the Djigui foundation, whose conclusions were accepted by the Ministry for Women.

Farmers in Denguele district, of which Odienne is a part, "buy clitorises and mix the powder with their seeds to increase the fertility of their fields", said Nouho Konate, a Djigui foundation member who has been fighting FGM in the area for 16 years.

He said parents of young girls were "gutted" when he told them of the trafficking.

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

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

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

- Mystic beliefs keeps it going -

"The mystic has a central place in daily life" in the Ivory Coast -- where Islam, Christianity and traditional animist beliefs co-exist -- said the Canadian anthropologist Boris Koenig, a specialist in occult practices there. "It touches every sphere of people's social, professional, family and love lives," he said, and there is generally nothing illegal about it.

The trade, however, is "one of the reasons that FGM survives" in the Ivory Coast, NGOs argue, where the rate of cutting is generally falling and is below the West African average of 28 percent, according to the OECD.

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

The dry season between January to March was the favoured period for circumcisions, when the hot Harmattan wind from the Sahara helps scars heal, he said.

Staff at the region's only social work centre say the cutting is still going on but hard to quantify because it never happens in the open.

Instead it goes on in secret, hidden behind traditional festivals which have nothing to do with the practice, kept going they say by circumcisers from neighbouring Guinea -- only a few kilometres away -- where FGM rates are over 90 percent.

H.Yousef--DT