Disturbing new trends driving up FGM

Thirteen-year-old Salamatu Jalloh’s lifeless body was found wrapped in a shroud on an earthen floor in a village in north-west Sierra Leone in January 2023. The Conversation reports that she and two other girls bled to death after participating in a secret Bondo society initiation into womanhood. But at its core was a violent act: the cutting and removal of the girls’ external genitalia. Their tragic deaths have been highlighted in the latest Unicef report on female genital mutilation. According to the UN agency, 230m females have survived female genital mutilation, but live with the devastating consequences. Most procedures happen in African countries, accounting for 144m cases. Despite campaigns to end this practice there are 30m more women and girls globally who have undergone this form of torture than eight years ago.

Countries with the highest levels of female genital mutilation are Somalia (99%), Guinea (95%) and Djibouti (90%). In Kenya, over the last half century a remarkable transformation has occurred. Female genital mutilation was once widespread, but most of the country has now abandoned the practice. Yet among the Somali community, concentrated in the north-eastern province of Kenya, there has been little change, and the practice remains nearly universal. Somalia and Sudan face the challenge of addressing widespread female genital mutilation amid conflict and population growth. In The Gambia religious leaders have demanded that legislators revoke a 2015 law banning female genital mutilation. The Conversation notes that they reacted after three women in the northern village of Bakadagi were found guilty of mutilating eight infant girls in 2023, the first major conviction under the law. The WHO has warned that a repeal in The Gambia could encourage other countries to disregard their duty to protect these rights.