 |
Adelaide Abankwah (born c. 1971) was a pseudonym taken by Ghanaian Regina Norman Danson when she tried to gain asylum in the United States, claiming to be fleeing female genital cutting and seeking political asylum. [1] [2]
|
Adelaide Abankwah (born c. 1971) was a pseudonym taken by Ghanaian Regina Norman Danson when she tried to gain asylum in the United States, claiming to be fleeing female genital cutting and seeking political asylum. [1] [2]
Regina Norman Danson is believed to have been born around 1971 in Biriwa, Central Ghana.[ citation needed ]
Abankwah was detained for over two years in the privately operated Queens Detention Facility in Jamaica, Queens, New York, when her application for asylum was twice rejected, first by an immigration judge, and then in 1999 by the Board of Immigration Appeals. [3]
Eventually, the INS investigation determined that the "Abankwah" was an impostor. Her real name was Regina Norman Danson. She had adopted the name of another Ghanaian woman who was living in Maryland and whose passport had been stolen in Ghana. Danson admitted that she had given a wrong name but that her story was still true, insisting her mother was deceased. Further inquiries from Ghana showed that her mother, who had never been a tribal leader, was still alive.
The case came to the attention of feminist and human rights activists who began to lobby for her release. They included actresses Julia Roberts and Vanessa Redgrave and then First lady Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem with Equality Now. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision in July 1999 and granted Danson asylum. INS continued to investigate and found "overwhelming evidence" of fraud. [4]
The U.S. Department of Justice was still hesitant to pursue a fraud conviction because of possible public furor and bad publicity but indicted her in 2001 on fraud shortly before the statute of limitations ran out. The real Abankwah, whose documents had been stolen, cooperated with INS to have the case cleared. [5] [3]
The fraud trial began on 14 January 2002. Prosecutor Ronnie Abrams stated that the bid for political asylum made a "mockery of the immigration system and real victims of genital mutilation". [6] Tribal Chief Nana Kwa Bonko V testified that Danson was not in the tribe's royal succession and that they did not practice female circumcision. [7]
Danson was to be sentenced for fraud on 23 March 2003. However, she was sentenced to time served by federal Judge Charles Sifton. (She had spent 29 months in an immigration detention center.)[ citation needed ]
Based on an amici curiae brief ("ON PETITION FOR REVIEW FROM THE BOARD OF IMMIGRATION APPEALS"), on behalf of Regina Danson Norman [sic] in 2014 by the Immigrant Defense Project, she apparently was never deported or removed from the United States. [8]
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the cutting or removal of some or all of the vulva for non-medical reasons. FGM prevalence varies worldwide, but is majorly present in some countries of Africa, Asia and Middle East, and within their diasporas. As of 2024, UNICEF estimates that worldwide 230 million girls and women had been subjected to one or more types of FGM.
Gloria Marie Steinem is an American journalist and social-political activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Efua Dorkenoo, OBE, affectionately known as "Mama Efua", was a Ghanaian-British campaigner against female genital mutilation (FGM) who pioneered the global movement to end the practice and worked internationally for more than 30 years to see the campaign "move from a problem lacking in recognition to a key issue for governments around the world."
The Tahirih Justice Center, or Tahirih, is a national charitable non-governmental organization headquartered in Falls Church, Virginia, United States, that aims to protect immigrant women and girls fleeing gender-based violence and persecution. Tahirih's holistic model combines free legal services and social services case management with public policy advocacy, training and education.
The Matter of Kasinga was a legal case decided in June 1996 involving Fauziya Kassindja, a Togolese teenager seeking asylum in the United States in order to escape a tribal practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). The Board of Immigration Appeals granted her asylum in June 1996 after an earlier judge denied her claims. This set a precedent in U.S. immigration law because it was the first time FGM was accepted as a form of persecution. In addition, this was the first situation in which asylum was granted based on gender.
Layli Miller-Muro is an American attorney and activist. She is the founder and former CEO of Tahirih Justice Center, a national non-profit dedicated to protecting women from human rights abuses such as rape, female genital mutilation/cutting, domestic violence, human trafficking, and forced marriage. Tahirih's holistic model for protection combines free legal services and social services case management with public policy advocacy, education, and outreach.
Khalid Misri Adem is an Ethiopian who was both the first person prosecuted and first person convicted for female genital mutilation (FGM) in the United States, stemming from charges that he had personally excised his 2-year-old daughter's clitoris with a pair of scissors.
Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Abudu, 485 U.S. 94 (1988), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court shifted the balance toward adjudications made by the INS and away from those made by the federal courts of appeals when aliens who had been ordered deported seek to present new evidence in order to avoid deportation. The Court ruled that courts must review the Board of Immigration Appeals's decision to deny motions to reopen immigration proceedings—the name of the procedural device used to present new evidence to immigration officials—for abuse of discretion.
International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation is a United Nations-sponsored annual awareness day that takes place on February 6 as part of the UN's efforts to eradicate female genital mutilation. It was first introduced in 2003.
Jurisdictional arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of discrepancies between competing legal jurisdictions. It takes its name from arbitrage, the practice in finance of purchasing a good at a lower price in one market and selling it at a higher price in another. Just as in financial arbitrage, the attractiveness of jurisdiction arbitrage depends largely on its transaction costs, here the costs of switching legal service providers from one government to another.
The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom applying to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It replaced the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, extending the ban on female genital mutilation to address the practice of taking girls abroad to undergo FGM procedures, and increased the maximum penalty from 5 to 14 years' imprisonment. The Act does not extend to Scotland: the corresponding legislation there is the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005.
Comfort Iyabo Amah Momoh, is a British midwife who specializes in the treatment of female genital mutilation (FGM). Born in Nigeria, Momoh is a member of the British FGM national clinical group, established in 2007 to train health professionals in how to deal with the practice. Until 2017 she served as a public-health specialist at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London. She is the editor of Female Genital Mutilation (2005).
Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting (FGC), female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision, is practiced in 30 countries in western, eastern, and north-eastern Africa, in parts of the Middle East and Asia, and within some immigrant communities in Europe, North America and Australia, aswell as in specific minority enclaves in areas such as South Asia and Russia. The WHO defines the practice as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons."
The campaign against female genital mutilation in colonial Kenya (1929–1932), also known as the female circumcision controversy, was a period within Kenyan historiography known for efforts by British missionaries, particularly from the Church of Scotland, to stop the practice of female genital mutilation in colonial Kenya. The campaign was met with resistance by the Kikuyu, the country's largest tribe. According to American historian Lynn M. Thomas, female genital mutilation became a focal point of the movement campaigning for independence from British rule, and a test of loyalty, either to the Christian churches or to the Kikuyu Central Association, the largest association of the Kikuyu people.
Hulda Jane Stumpf was an American Christian missionary who was murdered in her home near the Africa Inland Mission station in Kijabe, Kenya, where she worked as a secretary and administrator.
The Queens Detention Facility (QDF) is a federal prison in the Springfield Gardens neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens, New York City, and operated by the private prison company GEO Group.
Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female circumcision or female genital cutting, includes any procedure involving the removal or injury of part or all of the vulva for non-medical reasons. While the practice is most common in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, FGM is also widespread in immigrant communities and metropolitan areas in the United States, and was performed by doctors regularly until the 1980s.
Female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone is the common practice of removing all or part of the female's genitalia for cultural and religious initiation purposes, or as a custom to prepare them for marriage. Sierra Leone is one of 28 countries in Africa where female genital mutilation (FGM) is known to be practiced and one of few that has not banned it. It is widespread in part due to it being an initiation rite into the "Bondo," though initiation rite-related FGM was criminalised in 2019. The type most commonly practised in Sierra Leone is Type IIb, removal of part or all of the clitoris and the labia minora. As of 2013, it had a prevalence of 89.6%.
Nigeria has the highest rate of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the world in total numbers. It is usually experienced by girls aged 0 to 15 years old. It involves either partial or complete removal of the vulva or other injury to the female genital organs and has no medical benefit.
Aminata Diop is a Malian woman who in 1989 fled to France to escape a female genital mutilation (FGM) procedure. She applied for asylum in October 1990, and is believed to have been the first woman to cite FGM as a reason for seeking refugee status. Both Diop's initial application and an appeal in September 1991 were denied on technical grounds, as she had failed to seek help from the Malian government before fleeing the country. However, she was subsequently allowed to stay in France.