Bogaletch Gebre, female mutilation opponent, dies

Bogaletch Gebre, an Ethiopian women’s rights activist and scientist who helped lead a successful campaign in her homeland against female genital mutilation, a practice she herself had endured growing up there, died Nov. 2 in Los Angeles. Her birth date is not known, but she was said to be 66.

Her death was announced by the website of the nonprofit organization she founded, KMG Ethiopia, which in its two decades has helped end the culturally entrenched practice of genital mutilation and has empowered women in that country.

The website did not specify the cause of Gebre’s death.

Gebre overcame extraordinary adversity in her youth, gaining an education and moving to Israel and the United States for scientific training, then returning to Ethiopia to focus on improving the lives of its women.

Through her efforts, the rate of female genital mutilation in the areas where KMG Ethiopia operated dropped to 3% from 100% over 10 years, according to a 2008 UNICEF study. In addition, some of these areas banned child marriage, bride abduction, polygamy and domestic violence.

The UNICEF study recommended that the KMG model be replicated in other parts of Africa.

The rebellion was not a conventional one of protest or labor strikes, but instead was rooted in community conversations designed to reach consensus and bring about cultural change.

KMG started, with the help of grants, by focusing on the practical, day-to-day needs of rural communities, like fixing bridges, digging wells and planting trees to ease the burdens of women who had to fetch water and firewood.

Then came the facilitated conversations about what needed to change.

As the KMG website described the process, there would be testimonials from parents “that they would not allow their daughters to be cut, that the men wanted to marry uncut girls, that the abuse of wives and children would be stopped, that daughters will be kept in school, that no girl would be married without her will.”

In many cases, the process empowered women while improving economic conditions.

“The societal change that KMG has triggered is substantial,” the Belgium-based King Baudouin Foundation said in 2013 in awarding its prestigious prize for African development to Gebre. Tens of thousands of women have been spared gross human rights violations, the foundation said, and their communities have become more equitable.