Jaha Dukureh - The right to Self-determination
She was a child free to play,
without fear
without shame.
She was shaped as a girl.
What a beautiful word girl.
What a beautiful shape girl.
What a beautiful game,
the freedom of a girl child.
Shaped like a girl,
what a beautiful shape
received as a gift of birth.
As a gift, every cell,
each body part given to the girl,
belonging to the body.
As a perfect girl child.
In the eyes of the girl, the innocent hope, a prayer, of a child's heart
for the wisdom of the parent.
That prayer to an adult,
where I end, that's where the space for the boundary to begin and then for you to you start, that's my right, my inviolability.
I am a child,
give me freedom to love,
that freedom will grow
as a seed in our boundary.
It grows in the boundary in my heart into respect
between two people,
starting with respect for myself.
So that I can grow from a child to a teenager, admiring the birth of the curved shapes of my body, in safety.
The perfect body received
as a birth gift,
every part of it in the transformation
of growing into a woman.
Fancying my peers with infatuation.
Growing from a teenager
into an adult.
Becoming a woman.
Free for love,
between two people.
For sexual pleasure,
without shame
without fear
Without pain.
Without guilt.
To start a family if I want
and by my own decision.
From self-love, so that I can give my spouse the love needed through
self-respect as a woman,
so that I can get the love I need.
To give birth to my child into this world if I wish, from this love,
so that I can be a loving mother
to my child.
So that I can be the change
I want to see in the world,
in future generations.
The girl who wasn't mutilated
who lived a playful childhood,
lived a free adolescence
growing into a woman.
To become whole.
To become perfect.
To become the right shape.
To become happy.
To become free from fear,
shame, guilt,
giving others the same freedom
to make choices
from their own heart.
What a beautiful
realized human right,
the growth of a playful girl child into the gentle strength
of womanhood.
Into the greatest hope
of humanity becoming whole.
Minna Pietarinen
2022
Jaha Dukureh
"As long as I'm alive, I will wake up every single day and shout to the world that Female Genital Mutilation is wrong, and I will shout to the world that child marriage is no different from rape. We all have a moral responsibility to ensure that violence against women ends. We can do it through advocacy. We can do it through individual work. We cannot be silent."
Jaha Dukureh is a goodwill ambassador of UN Women in Africa. The well-known activist has herself survived genital mutilation and child marriage. For years, Dukureh has been actively campaigning around the world to promote work to end all forms of violence against women and girls, including harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage.
Dukureh is the founder and executive director of an organization called Safe Hands for Girls. The organization works across Africa to help girls and women who have had to go through various forms of gender-based violence, such as genital mutilation or child marriage.
"We need to make sure that we support communities so they can lead the change themselves. Because if we do anything other than let the communities lead the change themselves, 20 or 30 years from now we'll be back in the same communities talking about ending FGM, ending violence against women and girls and all these things we've been talking about for decades," Dukureh has stated.
Female genital mutilation and child marriage are fundamental violations of the human rights of girls and women, often with lifelong effects. UN Women, together with activists, experts and local actors like Dukureh, works around the world to end human rights violations against women and girls. Genital mutilation affects up to 200 million women and girls globally. Changing the laws to criminalize mutilation is the first step, but in addition to that, it is necessary to ensure that the decision-makers and authorities are also committed to implementing the laws and ensuring that harmful practices such as mutilation and child marriage are truly a thing of the past. Thanks to inspiring women like Jaha Dukureh, we are getting closer every day to a world where no girl or woman is a victim of female genital mutilation or child marriage.
UN Women works with several partners in Liberia, for example, to end female genital mutilation and other forms of gender-based violence. In Liberia, UN Women has established, among other things, various service centers, as well as developed projects that aim to provide training and information to community leaders, who play a key role in ending female genital mutilation and other harmful practices.
The artworks
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