Female Genital Mutilation showing vexing trend, the UN speaks out

Garfield Ekon

Staff Writer

July 30, 2024 – A call has been made by United Nations (UN) for “concerted global” efforts to end female genital mutilation (FGM), and so-called “vacation cutting” by families in the West.

The UN said transnational FGM is continuing despite many countries having stepped up efforts to eradicate the practice, and families, particularly in Europe and North America, take their daughters to their countries and communities of origin to undergo the inhumane ritual during school holidays.

“Female genital mutilation is part of a continuum of gender-based violence and has no place in a human rights-respecting universe,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said in arecent statement.

Though most countries in Africa have criminalised the practice, the report said some countries were serving as “transnational FGM hubs”, while in some cases, the cutters move across borders to carry out the procedure.

The UN children’s agency UNICEF defines FGM as “the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”.

Mr. Turk, in urging countries to addresses the root causes and the consequences of FGM, said, it can be done by harmonising legal and policy frameworks and enforcing them. 

“It must be eliminated in all its forms, and the gender stereotypes and patriarchal norms that anchor and perpetuate it uprooted,” he said.

The UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency stated that more than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM. “If the practice continues at the current pace, an estimated 68 million girls will undergo FGM between 2015 and 2030,” organisation said. 

FGM involves cutting or removing some or all of the external female genitalia. It is mostly carried out on infants and young girls, it can inflict severe immediate and long-term physical and psychological damage, including infection, later childbearing complications, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Supporting survivors of FGM remains as urgent as ever.  Many suffer from long-term physical and psychological harm that can result from the procedure, and need comprehensive medical and psychological care to heal from the scars inflicted by this harmful practice,” the UN said.