In Uganda, elders work with the UN to safeguard women's health.

• Author: Eliah, Elaine
• Position: Sabiny Elders Assn

Uganda's Sabiny Elders Association (SEA) has been awarded the 1998 United Nations Population Award for its work in combatting female circumcision among the Sabiny people in Eastern Uganda's Kapchorwa District.

Established in 1992, the Association drew elders from throughout the district and represented 161 Sabiny clans. The elders' goal was to document local history and preserve the rich cultural heritage of Sabiny society while promoting changes in various cultural traditions that were inconsistent with modern ways of living. Working together and in cooperation with other organizations, the elders also aimed to promote education, especially among girls, to protect the region's environment and wildlife, and to develop its traditional medicine. They also desired to help the needy, especially the elderly, and to work with victims of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) - both those infected and the orphans AIDS sufferers leave behind.

"When I was a young man growing, still young, I used to support circumcision of girls very much", admitted Mr. William Cheborion, the Association Chairman. "When I grew up, became a teacher, I found out that circumcision was a wrong practice."

About 150,000 Sabiny people live in Kapchorwa District, where rugged mountains led to comparative isolation. The Sabiny are one of the few groups in Uganda who continue to practise female genital cutting (FGC) or female genital mutilation. In 1996, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) launched its Reproductive-Educative-and-Community-Health, or "REACH", Programme in Kapchorwa to help the Sabiny community initiate its own social change and to work with them to eliminate FGC. For the first time, outsiders were helping to bring about cultural change by working with the community, rather than imposing foreign standards from above.

"The problem with the previous attempts to stop the practice", according to Jackson Chekweko, REACH Programme Manager, "was that they were coercive and it undermined the community's ability to reason for themselves."

When the Ugandan Government considered outlawing the practice, officials faced a storm of Sabiny protest. Ever younger girls thronged to be circumcised lest some outside agency suddenly make the practice illegal. Even older women who had thus far avoided the practice were pressured to be cut in order to defend their cultural rights and identity. REACH Programme's innovator...