Madam, – A picture on page 4 of last Wednesday’s Irish Times showed a strong tall African woman with her two beautiful daughters.
As I glanced at the paper initially I thought it was a picture of Michelle Obama and her two daughters, perhaps starting their new school in Washington. Then, looking closely, I realised it was a photograph of Pamela Izevbekhai with her two daughters at the High Court in Dublin, where she had just heard the legal challenge to her deportation had been dismissed. Now, unless the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights help her, she and her children will be deported to Nigeria where the girls face the threat of female genital mutilation.
We have seen so many pictures of Michelle Obama and her children in recent days embracing the new challenges now facing them, that my mistake was perhaps inevitable. However Pamela, who “looked weary when she left the Four Courts”, now faces an infinitely more difficult struggle and the difference in the futures of these intelligent women, both with two daughters of similar ages, struck me deeply.
Can the Irish Government and the Irish people help Pamela Izevbekhai and others in her position?
As Barack Obama said, “Yes, we can. . .It’s about time. It’s about change”. – Yours, etc,