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She is a Somali woman born in Aden (South Yemen). Her area of expertise is in primary health care, which began by her gaining a diploma in health care in Aden. After gaining her diploma she worked as a women and children’s health carer in Aden and fought for the educational rights of girls.

In 1967 Shamis arrived in the U.K, where she trained and was awarded a diploma in community and social care. Since then she has been active in establishing numerous women’s and Somali voluntary agencies in the U.K. In 1982 she set up Black Women’s Health And Family Support.

After 36 years in the U.K, in 1993, Shamis paid a visit to the Republic of Somaliland where she founded the Somali Rehabilitation Development Agency. In 1994, whilst continuing to work at Black Women’s Health and Family Support she completed a Social Work (Practice Teacher’s) Course at North London University. In 1999 Shamis re-visited Somaliland and founded the Barako Family Health Care Centre. She currently lives in East London with her two sons.

The following interview conducted by Chloe Connel, a former volunteer of the organisation, focuses primarily on Black Women’s Health and Family Support. It documents the formulation, vision, development and achievements of the charity over the past 20 years.

Did you found this charity?
Yes.

When?
In 1982.

How did the idea come to you?
At the time, I was working with other organisations. This organisation is not the only one I founded. Before Black Women's Health I had also founded the Somali Women’s Association and an organisation called Somali Community and Cultural Association. I later co-founded an organisation called MLS -Maternity Liaison Services. Already being part of the community, I thought of the Female Genital Mutilation problem, which was then only associated with circumcision. At the time the idea of creating this charity came to our minds, a young girl died in Highley Street following a FGM. We talked to women around us within the Somali community and decided that the foundation of the organisation was needed.

So did you found this organisation on your own?
At the beginning, yes. I came up with the idea, prepared a leaflet about the project and circulated it to friends. By the end of this process, we had decided that the organisation was needed.

Did you get the funding through the Somali community?
No, we applied for funding from the GLC Women’s Committee. This governmental organisation provided funding for a great number of non-profit organisations at the time. Finally we obtained the funding in 1982 and employed three people. At the beginning, our aim was to stop FGM and inform families about FGM. In those days, it was not a subject that was talked about.

Was it was taboo?
Yes, it was a taboo subject. So we wanted to talk about the subject and see what people felt about it. It was very difficult at the beginning because people did not want to talk about FGM at all. Women were very angry because no one talks about the genital area in our culture. The first three years were very difficult. But after a while, it became easier and we managed to talk not only about FGM itself but about the issues surrounding it. In 1985, a bill was passed forbidding female circumcision in the UK. When the Female Circumcision Act passed, we had to work really hard with the government and with the community. We worked hard with the government explaining that it was a difficult time to pass the bill because we had not really had the possibility to raise awareness on the subject yet, and that we needed time to explain to the community why the bill was going to be passed, although we did get funds we needed more time for the bill to become effective. Unfortunately the bill was passed.

What does the bill state exactly?
It states that women are not allowed to circumcise their daughters in this country, and that if they were to do so, they could be sentenced for up to two years detention and two thousand pound fine. But nobody acted accordingly to be honest.

Because it needs to be reported basically.
Yes, it needs to be reported: some people were not aware of the existence of the act and the others just circumcised their children outside of the country.

So when did you realise that this project could not only concentrate on FGM?
In 1987, Somalis refugees started coming into the country following the civil war. As a consequence, the Somali community in the UK diversified in kind and became larger. They needed help with housing, health, immigration papers, and all kinds of different problems that could not wait to be dealt with. We started expanding the scope of the work of our charity to answer to the new needs of the community; we started providing English language classes, we started to help in education related matters, we started developing new projects adapted to those new needs. We now have nine fields we concentrate on altogether; education, women’s health and so on. In conclusion, we widened our scope to answer the demand and we now not only work on FGM related cases but on helping people to deal with urgent daily problems. We now have a holistic approach of FGM. We have to deal with the other problems that the community faces before being able to prevent the practise of FGM properly.

In which way do you help the community with housing, health and refugee status? Do you have lawyers working for you?
We have people working with us who liase with other people. When refugees arrive in the UK, we set up a meeting to talk about their problems, try to help and deal with the Home Office. When they are homeless, we liase with the housing councils, when it comes to education related problems, we get in touch with schools and help them in solving their problems. In order to help children who are ostracised at school, we opened a training school and started Saturday schooling.

What do you mean by Saturday schools? Is there someone from your team teaching Saturday classes?
Yes, we have teachers who come on Saturdays and educate the children to prevent exclusion from schools. When a refugee child arrives in the country, he has a lot of work to do to catch up with the other children in his class.


Are they given English classes for example?
English classes, Somali classes, and Maths classes.

Are there cultural activities organised too?
Yes. On Saturdays and Sundays we organise outings for the children. We also train parents to become school governors for example so they can deal with their children’s education and help them. We also teach them to look after their children properly, and we also have English language classes for women so that they can be more independent.

How do you deal with the FGM problem? Do you still have sessions where you talk about it with women?
Yes, we have sessions where we talk about FGM and workshops teaching them how their bodies work, what are the consequences of a genital mutilation on the body. In many cases, women do not know much about how their body functions and their genital area in particular.

Besides counselling, do you provide legal help?
Yes, we do. We offer our assistance in legal matters. Because our organisation is trying to stop FGM, people come to us and ask for help. We have approximately 1000 cases of girls who have been sent outside the country by their families in order to circumcise them.

You mean they come to you for health problems and psychological problems?
They come to us for psychological and health problems.

Do you have a psychologist working for your organisation?
Yes.

Did you ever have for example the case of a young girl or a young mother who brought her child after a fight with her family and asked you to provide help in being independent from her household?
First of all, we do not encourage women to leave their household. We have to think about cultural appropriateness in the help we provide in such situations. We exist to protect these young girls and their families but not to separate the family. We like families to stay together. Everyday, young girls phone us to say they suspect their families are planning to take them to Somalia for circumcision. What we do then is go to the family, talk to them and inform them of British laws concerning FGM, we underline the consequences of FGM on the body and the psychology of their child. We insist upon the fact that what they are planning to do is illegal in the UK and that if they proceed in doing so, we will have to inform the social service and their child will be taken away from them.

Have you witnessed an evolution in mentalities in the last ten years?
Yes, a very important evolution. Although we still have a lot of cases of young girls fearing to be sent to Somalia, circumcised and married by force. We are hoping that more young girls will be helped with the new bill that is passing now.

What does the new bill state?
The new bill states that if a parent circumcises her daughter outside the country and brings her back, they are liable to go to prison for between 10 and 14 years. Once parents realise this, they will think harder about taking their girls abroad for circumcision, and hopefully be put of. The bill will also help organisations like ourselves that are working with children because it gives us the opportunity, when discussing the implications of FGM with families, to make them understand the seriousness of this bill and consequences of FGM in this country.

Are young girls in these cases supported by the British State or only by your organisation? Are they isolated without the support of their family or community?
There is no support from the British State for young girls that have been circumcised other than the passing of bills. Some girls do become isolated, our project tries to counter this isolation, our organisation understands the culture and language of the community we are therefore equipped to support every angle of the family. We have different services that support the families. We also have a project in Somaliland which links to our project here and allows us to follow up cases of girls that are sent back to Somalia and Somaliland and give support and report back about their situations and sometimes liase with the families of these girls.

What is the name of the organisation?
Barako Family Health and Education Centre. This centre allows us to link the cases. For example, if a girl has been taken to Somalia and Somaliland by her parents and married there, she can go to our partner organisation to ask for help. We then go to the Home Office where there are projects taking care of similar cases, and think together of a way of getting those women back to the UK. When I go to Somalia, I meet so many girls who say that they have been brought there without their consent. We manage to return a great number of girls back to the UK though.

And the expenses are covered by your charity?
No, they are covered by the parents because we negotiate the return of the child with the parents. We tell them that if they do not agree to return their daughters, our duty is to inform the Home Office about the case. So we give them the choice: "You either return this young girl, or we will take the matter to the Home Office. They will return the girl, but the girl will never return to you." Sometimes, they choose not to return the girl and let the procedure be handled by the Home Office, sometimes they accept to return her to the UK. We recently had the case of a young girl who returned to the UK from Somaliland and told us that things were now better between her family and her.

Are you sometimes perceived as troublemaker by the Somali people?
Oh yes, absolutely. Most families would say to you that we are bad people, an evil organisation. But the ones who understand our work would say that we are doing a very good job because we do not take away children from their families like the Social Services. We don’t do that. We negotiate with the family, we negotiate with the girl, and we negotiate with the father. We have procedures.

You said that FGM was less taboo in the UK within the Somali community in the last ten years. Do you think the fact of being in a foreign land and the threat of loosing traditions encourages mothers to circumcise their daughters?
Yes, the problem with FGM is that it has been associated for many years with religion and Islamic law. Most people in Africa thought it was a religious obligation to circumcise their daughters. In particular the Somalis, who in 99% of the cases practise infibulation. Because most people have not studied Islamic law, they do not know what is what. FGM is not in the Koran. Since more people are studying now, women and young girls included, people are starting to understand that FGM is not an Islamic practise; a lot of people are now opening their eyes.

Do you mean young couples?
I mean young couples and young people in general. Sometimes even elderly people open their eyes. Yet there is still lot of confusion because some people say that cutting the clitoris off (Sunna) is not Islamic but that a little cut on the clitoris is recommended and others say that cutting the clitoris off is recommended.

Is infibulation rare nowadays?
Infibulation happens in our country, even in the cities. In nomadic settings, it is still very much in practise.

Does anyone representing Islamic religious authority work with you to help you gain some credibility?
There are several people who are able to talk about Islam who work with us. Yet in order to really have an impact on the public, debates about FGM should be held in the media by some influent spokesman. In 2001, we held a big conference in Somaliland. Our guests were from various countries, and amongst them, there were even people from countries that practise circumcision. We brought all these people together and debated around the subject of FGM. We then realised how confused people were about the whole issue of FGM being religious or not. A lot of women are afraid to stop the practise fearing it is a religious duty. We decided at that conference that we would follow up the debate on the relation between Islamic law and FGM in 2003 with a second conference, and that religious personalities would be present. Campaigns aiming to clear this ambiguity about FGM being a religious obligation will help people to open their eyes on the issue. It is very important to concentrate on educating the women in particular. Education will help them to understand that FGM is not a religious obligation. We still have a lot of cases of young girls who come back from Somaliland infibulated; most cases depend on the family of the girl, on how strong and educated the mother is.

I heard you were going to retire?
I am going to Somaliland to work, not to retire.

And concentrate on Barako?
Not only Barako, but to concentrate on the people, and to do something to help people living in rural areas so that FGM practise is prevented there too. To limit our battle to the UK and city dwellers in Somalia would make our work useless.

Do you only work with the Somali community?
No, we work with a variety of people. In the UK, we have Sudanese, Ethiopians, Arabs and people from other African countries coming to us for help.

Is FGM an African tradition?
People say it is African tradition. Historically, it comes from the Egyptians pharaohs. But it was also practised by slave merchants to prevent their ‘goods’ being spoilt by rape –in that particular case, infubilation was practised. Yet the debate on FGM being African is still open.

Did you have anyone coming to you for help who was not from Africa?
Yes, we have all types of people coming up. Another big problem with the FGM issue is that a lot of people come to us for help saying that they fear being mutilated in order to obtain a visa and stay in the UK. So we have a lot of applicants, particularly from Nigeria. This situation needs to be cleared, in order to find out who is really in danger of FGM, and who is using it as an excuse.

Thank you very much.