Not once, not twice, I have heard children, mostly young girls talk about how they want to be lighter and beautiful when they grow up. Society has instilled the mentality of light being beautiful and dark being ugly. Look at it this way, while growing up, dark was mostly associated with evil or bad. Now the same was instilled in terms of skin complexion. Darker skinned children were often the ones on the wrong. Now this kind of ideology has gotten many ladies and even men going for skin lightening procedures. The black child has noticed this and now wants to be lighter.

One particular celebrity has come out to encourage the black child to embrace his or her skin color. Lupita Nyong’o’s book Sulwe, aims at giving confidence back to every child. Through her twitter account in 2019, Lupita says, “colorism, society’s preference for lighter skin is alive and well. It’s not just prejudice reserved for places with a largely white population. Throughout the world…there is a popular sentiment that lighter is brighter.” That was her motivation to write the book Sulwe.

Lupita encourages parents to teach their children and build the confidence of loving their own skin just the way it is. This may be hard for some of them, considering their knowledge of society’s preference. Lupita’s book however, doesn’t give two hoots about this kind of prejudice. All it aims at is giving back the lost confidence that our colored girls have lost over generations.

Children need to be taught that their skin is beautiful no matter the color. Examples of great men and women who have made it despite the color barrier should be mentioned to the kids who still feel like their skin is not as beautiful. Society is changing and so is the notion of black prejudice. Change starts with us, and to do away with the colorism issue, we need to educate the young ones on acceptance, confidence, positivity and respect for all.

In a statement released to mark the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation on February 6, the organizations’ director Mr Samuel Norgah, called on states to strengthen the enforcement of the already available laws that criminalise FGM.

“Plan International therefore calls on governments across the continent to adopt specific protections for girls and women against FGM and implement laws that prohibit and criminalise the practice in line with States’ obligations under the relevant regional and international treaties”. Read part of the statement

The organization further noted that FGM dismisses the rights and dignity of girls and women which required strong accountability mechanisms and measures to enforce existing legislation to avert violation of rights of Millions of girls and women, globally.

According to UNFPA report, at least 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone a form of female genital mutilation (FGM) and if current trends continue, 15 million additional girls between ages 15 and 19 will be subjected to it by 2030.

A report published by Plan International and the African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) in 2020, established that, FGM is on the rise in many parts of the continent due to COVID-19, especially in countries where it was already a common practice. The lockdown has provided an opportunity for practitioners to carry out the cut on girls, because community and government accountability systems are operating at minimum levels.

FGM is practiced mainly in Africa, with the highest prevalence in Somalia, Egypt, Mali and Sudan, where more than 80% of all women between 15 and 49 years of age have undergone FGM. In Africa, more girls are cut between 0 and 14 years of age than any other age bracket. Prevalence rates range from 15% to over 95% for girls and women aged 15 to 49 years, with select countries in the Central and Western Africa regions accounting for a large part of the figures. About 1 in 5 girls who have undergone FGM were subjected to the procedure by a trained medical professional. In some countries, this number is as high as 3 in 4 girls.  

FGM is a violation of the human rights of girls and women, and a form of gender based violence, as stated in the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the African Charter on People and Human Rights and its Protocol on the Rights of Women (the Maputo Protocol), the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and numerous regional and international human rights instruments.