Radhakrishnan PriyancaPRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you Madam Speaker. As I said just before it's with great pride that I rise to take a call and a contribution on the third reading of this bill because as I mentioned again earlier female genital mutilation (FGM) is a global issue. There are a number of girls around the world who have been affected by FGM and who are at risk of being affected as well.This became an issue in New Zealand in the mid-1990s after the settlement of people from countries where FGM is or was practised. However it's not an ethnic issue. It's not a cultural or religious issue per se—and I'll come back to that point in a second. However I want to pay tribute at this point to the FGM Education Programme which was established back in 1997 in response to the growing need for intervention as we saw an increasing number of women being affected potentially by FGM here in New Zealand.The FGM programme aims to improve the sexual and reproductive health outcomes of women affected by FGM and also to contribute to the prevention of FGM being practised here in New Zealand. They have achieved gains over the years through the implementation of a national FGM community awareness programme education activities the development of national FGM resources guidelines and recommended best practices as well.I also want to commend them for the way in which they've done that. The women I've met the two women who lead the programme in New Zealand Nikki Denholm and Ayan Said have worked for years within communities that are affected by FGM—and therein lies the key to addressing issues of violence against women and human rights issues. The key lies in actually working with communities who are affected to support them to stop those practices. And I want to commend them for that.We see that they have made progress over the years through the three longitudinal surveys that they have undertaken in 1997 in 2007 and in 2017. These are surveys that were undertaken with communities affected by FGM here. The aim of the surveys was to assess community attitudes and beliefs towards FGM and how that's changed over time and the findings from those surveys were then used to inform future strategies around child protection and education initiatives to reduce the incidence of FGM as well.The 1997 survey indicated strong community support for FGM a lack of FGM knowledge and skills among health professionals in New Zealand and poor maternal healthcare experiences. In 2007 the survey indicated a significant decrease in support for FGM and improved healthcare experiences in Auckland. The 2017 survey though showed a further decrease in support for FGM more broadly but an increase in support for type four FGM—and therein lies the crux of this bill because this bill will expand the definition of FGM in the Crimes Act to cover all forms of FGM including type four. The 2017 survey also showed that there was less satisfaction with maternal healthcare in regions that have received minimal FGM health education activities which points to the fact that we need to continue the awareness raising and the education function of the FGM education programme. Consultations with communities that are affected by FGM also present a strong argument to support this bill.Back in 2019 last year the FGM Education Programme undertook community consultations with key community leaders and educators across the five largest communities that are affected by FGM here in New Zealand to get a little bit of feedback about this bill. I want to thank them for doing that as well because here in the House we were incredibly clear that we wanted to get this right and that we wanted to ensure that we did it with the support of the communities that are affected by FGM.The findings of that consultation were that this bill reflects a global movement towards zero tolerance of FGM and it better aligns New Zealand's legislation with international best practice as well. There was unanimous support for this bill because it will better protect their communities. They highlighted that legislation is incredibly important because it is a strong deterrent and has protected at-risk girls to date. Those consulted expressed a strong support for the proposed bill and the inclusion of the World Health Organization (WHO) definition which is what this bill does. They also highlighted that FGM has actually been made illegal in many of the countries that they came from and so felt that their wider communities would accept legislative change here in New Zealand as well.Last year I travelled to Kenya to attend the Nairobi Summit in my capacity as the chair of NZPPD—the New Zealand Parliamentarians' Group on Population and Development. The year 2019 marked the 25th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo where 179 Governments adopted a landmark programme of action which set out to empower women and girls and to benefit families communities and nations. The Nairobi Summit was co-convened by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and the Governments of Kenya and Denmark and it began with a very strong statement by the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta who committed to ending FGM in Kenya by 2022. And I just want to acknowledge Minister Poto Williams who presented New Zealand's statement at the Nairobi Summit last year.This is a bill that will align our legislation with international best practice and what the WHO has asked member states to do. Some of the changes—very quickly—that were suggested or recommended by the select committee were really to just tighten up some of the wording in the legislation to ensure that the definition was fit for purpose and consistent with other parts of the bill.There was quite a bit of discussion at the select committee stage around ensuring that this bill didn't inadvertently include cosmetic enhancement procedures and criminalise those. There was a fair bit of discussion there in terms of how we altered the wording to ensure that that didn't happen. So the new section 204A(1)(b)(iii) which prohibits pricking and piercing scraping and cauterising—that could actually include genital piercing tattooing and labiaplasty for example—was changed to include a section with a new paragraph that said does not include a procedure carried out [on female genitalia] for cosmetic or enhancement purposes only."There were a few other suggestions or recommendations by the Health Committee including providing national guidelines or recommending to Government that we have national guidelines—for example for police so that if there was a case there could be prosecution. Oranga Tamariki at the moment has such guidelines to respond to FGM but of course they're not the agency that's responsible for prosecuting FGM as a criminal offence.There were a few matters that lay outside the scope of this bill that did come up and were raised by submitters and those were issues around male circumcision and also intersex surgeries that are performed often on children without their consent. Those were considered by the Health Committee but were considered to lie outside the scope of this bill. There was consideration I guess or acknowledgment that these are issues that require some further consideration and potentially legislation of their own. But including that in this legislation would be a significant policy change or a step outside of what this bill intended to do.In the time that I have remaining I just want to point to the fact that this is a hidden issue like many other forms of violence against women and girls and many other human rights violations that exist. As I mentioned previously FGM Education worked with affected communities to look at how societal norms have changed and the fact that some practices that may be carried out with the best intentions of those practising them actually have no health benefits and have actually complications that result from them and working with communities to change their own societal norms as well.We need to be very clear as I said that this is not a religious or a cultural issue per se; it's a women's rights issue. It's a human rights issue that's often perpetrated under the guise of culture or religion. But there's no justification for it and as we've seen from the work that FGM Education and others like refugees and survivors have done we have seen that there are many from within affected groups who stand against it as well. We need to be careful though that we don't vilify specific communities because this causes them to feel further marginalised and further silences women who need support and those who are working within those communities towards change.I end with an African proverb: "When sleeping women waken mountains move." Can I acknowledge my co-sponsors the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians the FGM Education Programme and women from affected communities who continue to stand against this. Thank you Madam Speaker."