Italy plans to launch a campaign to focus attention on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in a bid to stem its practice in the country, Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna said on Wednesday.
Some 150 million women are victims of the practice world-wide, with an estimated 35-40 thousand cases in Italy by foreigners living in the country, said Carfagna who called FGM ''torture, a barbaric action''.
The government plans to run a series of ads on state-run television in a bid to convince parents to end the practice.
It is also setting up a committee to deal with the problem, which Carfagna said is ''an underestimated phenomenon''.
''I plan to use my ministry's funds to combat and prevent a practice which violates human rights,'' she told a news conference.
The government has already earmarked some 3.5 million euros and plans to add another four million to back 21 projects set up to deal with FGM.
Foreign Minister Franco Frattini announced last month that Italy is strongly committed to promoting a declaration by the United Nations which would ban the practice throughout the world.
Addressing a conference celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Frattini said FMG was ''one of the worst and most common violations of the Declaration''.
Frattini said the commitment to ban the practice was one of the key issues addressed by the government's foreign policies along with promoting UN moratoriums on capital punishment and against religious intolerance.
FGM, which is also known as female circumcision, covers a number of different practices, usually involving either removing the clitoris or sewing up the vagina. The most severe form, infibulation, entails both, and accounts for around 15% of all procedures.
An estimated 150 million women around the world have undergone genital mutilation, while some 6,000 girls are mutilated every day, according to the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International.
It is practiced in at least 28 African countries, and is also common in some Middle Eastern states, including Egypt, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates.
The physical effects are numerous, resulting in death from haemorrhaging and damage to surrounding organs in the most severe cases. Chronic infection, intermittent bleeding and abscesses are more common side effects.
Infibulation generally causes even more problems, often giving rise to kidney damage and infertility.
Women often have to be cut open for intercourse the first time, with unskilful cutting by husbands causing further injury. Childbirth can also require cutting.
Italy passed a law in January 2006 outlawing FGM.
The law lays down jail terms of up to 12 years for those who carry out the procedure on adult women and up to 16 years if it is carried out on a minor or in exchange for money.
Doctors caught carrying out FGM are banned from their profession for up to ten years.
The law is applicable even if the woman or girl is operated on abroad.
