Quote of the Day
“The only way to give finality to the evil of discrimination is to eliminate it completely.”
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela said these words in 1961, while speaking about racial discrimination and the political system of apartheid in South Africa.
There is a temptation, when something wrong has existed for a long time, to begin treating it as normal.
We learn how to live around it.
We explain it.
Sometimes we even defend it because this is how things have always been done.
But time does not make injustice right.
Think about the things that once seemed perfectly ordinary.
A girl being told that certain ambitions were not for her.
A person with a disability being kept out of school or work.
Someone being treated differently because of their tribe, race, language or where they came from.
A woman being expected to tolerate violence because preserving the family was considered more important than her safety.
Change often begins when somebody stops asking, “Has this always happened?” and starts asking a different question:
Should it continue?
That question matters in our homes as much as it does in our institutions.
Because discrimination is not always announced by a law or written on a sign.
Sometimes it sits quietly inside a joke, a hiring decision, a family expectation or the opportunities we assume belong to some people but not others.
And those quieter forms deserve our attention too.
Source: Nelson Mandela Foundation — Statement on behalf of the African National Congress, 1961
Did You Know?
More than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation.
The number is enormous.
But behind it are individual girls.
A daughter. A sister. A classmate. A child who may have had no say in what happened to her body.
The World Health Organization defines female genital mutilation, or FGM, as procedures involving the partial or total removal of external female genitalia, or other injury to female genital organs, for non-medical reasons.
WHO says the practice has no health benefits. It can cause severe bleeding, infections and problems urinating in the immediate aftermath. Longer-term consequences can include menstrual difficulties, childbirth complications and psychological harm.
FGM is often discussed as though it belongs to one religion, one country or one part of Africa.
It does not.
WHO says it is practiced mainly in about 30 countries in Africa and the Middle East, but it also occurs elsewhere in Asia and Latin America and among communities living in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.
And there is another part of the story that deserves attention.
The practice can survive because people who love their daughters may genuinely believe they are preparing them for marriage, protecting family honour or following an important social expectation.
That does not make the harm acceptable.
But it helps explain why simply telling communities that they are wrong may not be enough.
Lasting change often requires conversations with parents, young people, health workers, traditional and religious leaders—and, crucially, with the women and girls whose bodies are affected.
A tradition can carry history.
It can carry identity.
It can carry belonging.
And it can still be questioned when it causes harm.
Sources: World Health Organization — Female genital mutilation fact sheet · UNICEF — Female genital mutilation
For discussion: How do we challenge a harmful practice without turning the people and communities we hope will abandon it into enemies?
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