The Morale of the Prohibition of Female Circumcision in Kikuyuland 
This article applies the ethical approach to the prohibition of female circumcision in Kenya. First, I describe the ethical approach and define the concepts of ethic and ethos (or local morality). Then, I highlight the moral elements at stake in the historical process of the prohibition of clitoridectomy. To do so, I present the Kikuyu ethos and show how the circumcision ritual was intimately embedded in the Kikuyu local morality. In Kikuyuland, Missionaries projected to eradicate clitoridectomy at the turn of the 1930s. I show how their protestant ethos collided with the Kikuyu ethos and explain how – after Independence – the ethic of Human Rights reinforced the protestant ethos and conducted the Kenyan President to ban the female circumcision. I conclude underlining the difficulties to provoke a dialogue between the two ethoses and with the ethic of Human Rights. Finally, I evoke the social consequences of the prohibition of clitoridectomy on the status of women.