Statement on the Government Proposal pertaining to criminalising female genital mutilation and its preparation and other matters (TAS/251/2024, issued on 22 May 2024)
Comments and notes on female genital mutilation
The Ombudsman for Equality supports the proposal to criminalize female genital mutilation and its preparation under specific provisions added to the Criminal Code. Female genital mutilation is a violation of human rights and one form of violence women and girls are subjected to, which is why including it as an offence in the Criminal Code is important. Female genital mutation is often associated with several aspects that give reason to expressly criminalize genital mutation and its preparation with specific provisions.
Female genital mutilation includes a range of actions that vary in severity and duration. The Government Proposal aims at describing these different methods and also discusses how they could be assessed legally. The proposed legislation seems to cover all possible ways in which the genitals of women and girls can be mutilated or damaged. The Proposal also states that having consent from the victim would not remove criminal liability even in less severe cases. Genital mutilation is often used in an attempt to control the victim, which is why the victim is often in a subordinate and vulnerable position, and confirming that the consent was voluntarily given is therefore impossible in practice.
Stopping female genital mutilation is also an international goal. The Proposal also takes note of the provisions prohibiting female genital mutilation included in the proposed Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on combating violence against women and domestic violence. The Proposal also extensively discusses other international agreements that are binding on Finland, such as the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (known as the Istanbul Convention), the European Convention on Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Convention) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The Proposal also discusses the statement of the Parliament of Finland’s Legal Affairs Committee (LaVM 6/2020), which pertained to a citizens’ initiative on female genital mutilation (KAA 1/2019 vp). In its statement, the Committee deemed that genital mutilation is already an offence under the Criminal Code, but required that the Criminal Code provisions related to women and girls are clarified. The Committee also stated that there is a need to adopt provisions on the circumcision of boys based on non-medical grounds, but adopting such provisions should not delay clarifying the criminal liability over female genital mutilation. The Parliament required that the Finnish Government undertakes to more clearly define female mutilation as an offence under the Criminal Code as quickly as possible (EK 44/2020).
The Ombudsman for Equality also considers it important that the legislative proposal on criminalising female genital mutilation proceeds to processing by the Parliament as soon as possible.
The abovementioned statement of the Legal Affairs Committee (LaVM 6/2020) also discusses circumcision of boys based on non-medical grounds, among other matters. The Committee deemed it justified to also assess the current state of non-medical circumcisions of boys and questions relating to criminalising it. The Ombudsman for Equality proposes that the Finnish Government starts examining these questions and whether there is a need for new legislation as soon as possible and particularly considers what is stated in the Committee’s statement on the recommendations of international bodies concerning the circumcision of boys. For example, in a 2013 resolution of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly recommended that EU countries define specific medical and other criteria for performing circumcision on boys. The Finnish Government’s action plan ‘Non-Violent Childhoods’ for the prevention of violence against children for the period 2020–2025 also states that public discussion on an age limit would be started, meaning that circumcision should be postponed until the boy can participate in making the decision.
Comments and notes on the preparation of female genital mutilation
Finland has traditionally adopted a conservative approach to extending criminal liability to cover the preparation of a criminal offence. In this case, the proposal on criminalizing the preparation of female genital mutilation seems well justified and functional. Criminalizing female genital mutilation can be expected to have a preventative effect, which would contribute to stopping the practice. To stop female genital mutilation, in addition to specific criminalization, other means must still be employed to raise awareness of the damage caused by female genital mutilation and the international treaties applicable to the practice.
Comments and notes on infanticide
In the past, the name of the offence ‘infanticide’ and laying down a lighter punishment for it has often been justified with securing the future of very young mothers, among other reasons. According to the Proposal, the provision for infanticide has been applied very rarely in modern times, which is why the Proposal proposes repealing the provision as unnecessary. In future, the general Criminal Code provisions for intentional homicide would be applied to infanticide.
This would mean that a more severe punishment could be ordered for an act corresponding to infanticide than currently, which means that repealing the provision on infanticide may somewhat increase the punishments imposed for acts corresponding to infanticide. However, postpartum fatigue, anxiety, depression and psychosis would still also be considered in the future when assessing criminal capacity. The proposed amendment therefore does not seem very significant in principle. The Ombudsman for Equality has no comments on the Proposal for this part.
Other comments and notes on the Proposal
The Ombudsman for Equality deems it important that the Proposal clearly states that the legal gender of a victim of female genital mutilation does not need to be female. The proposed provisions criminalizing female genital mutilation would be applied to all victims with female genitalia.
It should also be taken into account that a minority of people are intersex and are born with genitalia or reproductive organs based on which they cannot be unambiguously determined as male or female. Intersex people are also assigned a legal gender after examinations at the time of birth. Intersex people can consider themselves to be women, men, agender, or partly female and partly male.
In the report the Ombudsman submitted to the Parliament in 2022, the Ombudsman for Equality highlighted the fact that intersex children are still subjected to medical procedures (e.g. surgeries and other genital modification) without informed consent. The Ombudsman for Equality has proposed prohibiting genitalia-altering surgeries of intersex children that are not based on medical reasons. The Ombudsman for Equality takes this opportunity to remind that the treatment practices of intersex children should be clarified with legislation laid down on the level of an act.
18.06.2024
