one can read in the newspapers advertising such as thisone: "we can ridyou from the burden of girls."

This gives evidence that scientific progress is not a guaranteeof more human rights. Throughout history, on has seen that science canalways provides the theories that are needed by gouvernments in power.Example: in Soviet Union, Lyssenko was used against Mendel's theories.In Germany, the Nazis had no trouble finding anthropologists to support their racism. In France, when our government, under catholic pressure,redused contraception, many doctors and physicians agreed to ban the Pillas dangerous. They dismissed US experiences as not reliable. etc

Last example: China where baby-girls are still murdered. Thereasons have changer. It's not because families  hgave too many children,but not enough. Under Chinese law, only one child is allowed and getshelp from the state for education. If that first child is a girl, familiesare tempted to "let it die", in order to have a secon d try and maybegive birth to the precious boy, who will later support his family andmaintain the ancestors-worship. Mrs Pai Yang, Minister of Family Planning,had to modify the law for peasants, who need manpower for agriculture.If their first child happens unfortunately to be a gril, they may havea second child without losing the help of the State. "Our purposes, saidMrs Pai Yang, is to diminish the drowoing of newborn girls, which isstill carried on in China."

I have too short a time to approach the question of sexualmutilation that is going on in numerous countries through  Africa.The estimation is that million women are presently mutilated in theircountries or in the countries where they emigrate. If will juste evokethe trial that has taken place in Parl's a weel agp; against a young mother from Mali, years old, children. The eldest of haer daughters had been taken to hospital when days old for an infectionafter huoaving her clitoris and labia cut off with a razor blade by anAfrican matron who had come from Mali to "purify" all the female childrenof the district where the blachk immigrates live. She was sued by Rightsof children and Rights of Women associations, who denounced the fact that little girls have been mutilated during the recent years in Parisand its suburbs in spite of the French Law. Black doctors and Africanfeminists came to testify, underlining the disaster of excision and infi-bulation, (which is the complete sewing of the vulva) for the health ofthese women and their fecundity. It was a symbolic trial, especially forthe African nations, such as the Burkina Faso, which have began a difficultcampaign to change the traditional custom in the name of the dignity ofthe human being and the right to integrity of one's body.

Since  WHO had condemned female  circumcision years ago in the Khartoum Colloquim, France could not dismiss the