VMMC abductions
As VMMC mobilisers are compensated per head, children and other vulnerable groups become frequent targets. Our investigation found that VMMC mobilisers regularly recruit children from schools without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
At a 2017 press conference in Berlin, Luo anti-VMMC activist Kennedy Owino Odhiambo recalled confronting the medical personnel at Ober Health Centre in Homa Bay County, where his 10-year-old nephew was circumcised against his family’s wishes and cultural beliefs: “The doctors refused to give my lawyer a medical report that would be used to sue them.”
While at the health centre, Odhiambo witnessed pickup trucks delivering more Luo schoolboys for circumcision by the dozens. “I could not contain my anger,” he reported.
The Luo tribe has resisted child genital cutting practices for centuries.
Many parents from non-circumcising cultures report their devastation, and are ill-prepared to provide care during the recovery process. Examples below (Uganda):
Another means of bypassing parental consent is to recruit children who do not have parents:
Unwilling children
A 2017 PLOS One summary of the VMMC campaign attributes the influx of 10- to 14-year-old boys – who comprise almost half of VMMC subjects – to greater acceptability of circumcision among this age group. However, eyewitness reports reveal that many of these children were unwilling participants.
A USAID-funded VMMC mobile clinic near Pretoria, South Africa.
Dr. Jutta Reisinger, a medical doctor working with Aktion Regen, discovered the problem while volunteering at a health centre in Kisumu, Kenya. Every Friday afternoon, busloads of 10-year-old boys were delivered from primary schools to be circumcised.
“I saw children crying, screaming,” Dr. Reisinger reported in Berlin. “When they found out what the operation was, they started to cry. The children were very frightened. They wanted to go home, but it was not allowed.”
The health centre coordinator informed Dr. Reisinger that with the ambitious VMMC quotas imposed on the region, it was necessary to target children before they were old enough to provide their consent – otherwise they wouldn’t consent, and the quotas would not be met. “I was really shocked about how they recruit the children,” Dr. Reisinger told the press.
Dr. Reisinger comforts a schoolboy circumcised unwillingly under the VMMC programme in Kisumu, Kenya.
UNICEF defends its child circumcision policy
On 21 July 2017, the VMMC Experience Project partnered with international medical professionals to issue a joint response to UNICEF condemning its child and infant circumcision programmes. We informed UNICEF of the problem of school abductions conducted under the VMMC campaign, and included painful testimonies from victims and families.
On 15 August, UNICEF Director Anthony Lake replied that the children’s rights organisation will continue to implement the African circumcision programme as endorsed by WHO and UNAIDS. No safeguards were added to ensure consent from children or parents for the operation.