Search

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a major global health challenge. Extant literature shows that CSA is prevalent in Kenya. As a signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Kenyan government is mandated to ensure that children are protected from sexual abuse through sound laws and policies. This paper reviews existing laws and policies on CSA and highlights their strengths and weaknesses. Our findings indicate that laws on child protection exist and are protective to a large extent, as harsh penalties are outlined for sexual offences. Survivors of CSA are entitled to free legal and medical services. However, there are no reparations offered to survivors in criminal proceedings. Moreover, there is no legislation on age-appropriate comprehensive sexuality education which plays an important role in cultivating positive gender norms and describing what constitutes CSA and reporting procedures. The national standard operating procedures for the management of sexual violence against children lack CSA screening procedures. There is urgent need for review of these laws and policies and development of multisectoral protocols at the national and county level, that outline roles and responsibilities for various service providers, supervisory and accountability measures and referral networks.

Under what circumstances should a citizen be able to avoid the penalties set by the citizen's home country's criminal law by going abroad to engage in the same activity where it is not criminally prohibited? Should we view the ability to engage in prohibited activities by traveling outside of the nation state as a way of accommodating cultural or political differences within our polity? These are general questions regarding the power and theory of extraterritorial application of domestic criminal law. In this Article, I examine the issues through a close exploration of one setting that urgently presents them: medical tourism. Medical tourism is a term used to describe the travel of patients who are citizens and residents of one country, the "home country," to another country, the "destination country," for medical treatment. This Article is the first to comprehensively examine a subcategory of medical tourism that I call "circumvention tourism," which involves patients who travel abroad for services that are legal in the patient's destination country but illegal in the patient's home country--that is, travel to circumvent domestic prohibitions on accessing certain medical services. The four examples of this phenomenon that I dwell on are circumvention medical tourism for female genital cutting (FGC), abortion, reproductive technology usage, and assisted suicide. I will briefly discuss the "can" question: assuming that a domestic prohibition on access to one of these services is lawful, as a matter of international law, is the home country forbidden, permitted, or mandated to extend its existing criminal prohibition extraterritorially to home country citizens who travel abroad to circumvent the home country's prohibition? Most of the Article, though, is devoted to the "ought" question: assuming that the domestic prohibition is viewed as normatively well-grounded, under what circumstances should the home country extend its existing criminal prohibition extraterritorially to its citizens who travel abroad to circumvent the prohibition? I show that, contrary to much of current practice, in most instances, home countries should seek to extend extraterritorially their criminal prohibitions on FGC, abortion, assisted suicide, and, to a lesser extent, reproductive technology use to their citizens who travel abroad to circumvent the prohibition. I also discuss the ways in which my analysis of these prohibitions can serve as scaffolding for a more general theory of circumvention tourism.

This paper discusses the eradication challenges of female circumcision in Ethiopia. It argues that despite an overall decline in the practice nationally, eradication efforts have caused significant quandaries for girls and their families. The most common justification by far for its continuance is that circumcision confirms a girl's social place by proving her readiness for marriage and adulthood and thereby ensures her protection against material want. Hence, intervention has often resulted in the transformation, rather than the elimination, of the practice, the exchange of one type of risk for another, or even increased risk to girls. In discussing policy, the paper argues that there has been a misapplication of the risk concept in the promotion of change in Ethiopia. It calls for risk definitions and interventions that are more holistic, correspond more closely with children's social realities and take into account the phenomenological dimensions of experience.

The issue of whether medical practitioners should perform "ritual nicks" as a method of meeting demand for female genital mutilation (FGM) has recently been debated in the United States and Australia. Due to increasing numbers of people arriving and settling in Australia from African nations in which FGM is customary, demand for FGM in Australia is present and may be increasing. Australian law clearly prohibits performance of any type of FGM. FGM is also prohibited by the most recent policy of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG). For legal, medical and social reasons, the RANZCOG policy is sound, and medical practitioners should not administer FGM in any form. Development of an evidence base regarding incidence of and attitudes towards FGM, and the need for post-FGM treatment, would help inform sound policy and practical responses. Strategies adopted in African nations to abolish FGM may assist in refining educational and supportive efforts.

Umhlanga is a ceremony celebrating virginity. In South Africa, it is practiced, among others, by the Zulu ethnic group who live mainly in the province of KwaZulu Natal. After falling into relative disuse in the Zulu community, the practice of virginity testing made a comeback some 10 years ago at around the time of the country's first democratic election and coinciding with the period when the HIV pandemic began to take hold. In July 2005 the South African Parliament passed a new Children's Bill which will prohibit virginity testing of children. The Bill has been met with outrage and public protest on the part of Zulu citizens. Traditional circumcision rites are also addressed in the new bill but are not banned. Instead, male children are given the right to refuse to participate in traditional initiation ceremonies which include circumcision. This paper asks why the practice of virginity testing is regarded as so troubling to the new democratic order that the state has chosen to take the heavy-handed route of banning it. The paper further asks why the state's approach to traditional male circumcision has been so different to its approach to virginity testing. Finally, the paper asks what these two challenging cases in the country's new democracy tell us about the nature of liberal democratic citizenship in South Africa 10 years after apartheid's formal demise.