breast ironing

Breast ironing is extremely painful and can cause tissue damage.

All of Cameroon's 200 ethnic groups engage in breast ironing, with no known relation to religion, socio-economic status, or any other identifier.

As well as being dangerous, breast ironing is criticized as being ineffective for stopping sexual abuse.

Compared with Cameroon's Christian and animist south, breast ironing is less common in the Muslim north, where only 10 percent of women are affected.

The most widely used implement for breast ironing is a wooden pestle normally used for pounding tubers.

The GIZ survey found that 39 per cent of Cameroonian women opposed breast ironing, with 41 per cent expressing support and 26 per cent indifferent.

Breast ironing is practiced in all ten regions of Cameroon and has also been reported across West and Central Africa, in Benin, Chad, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry, Kenya, Togo and Zimbabwe.

A June 2006 survey by the German development agency GIZ of more than 5,000 Cameroonian girls and women between the ages of 10 and 82 estimated that nearly one in four had undergone breast ironing, corresponding to four million girls.

GIZ and the Network of Aunties (RENATA), a Cameroonian non-governmental organization that supports young mothers, campaign against breast ironing, and are supported by the Ministry for the Promotion of Women and the Family.