In Somalia, over 90 per cent or more of girls and women, have been subjected to female genital mutilation, or FGM. Despite the practice having devastating health ramifications for women and girls – including pain, bleeding, permanent disability and even death – discussion over how to end the harmful tradition, remains taboo.
The United Nations has called for collaboration at all levels, and across all sectors of society across the world, to protect millions at risk from FGM every year.
As the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation is marked on 6 February, the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA, continues to lead the UN effort to end FGM.
Dear Daughters
Last fall, and in collaboration with the Ifrah Foundation, the UN agency launched the Dear Daughter campaign, as part of the effort to end FGM once and for all. The idea is to get individual parents not to cut their daughters. Through letter-writing, they pledge instead, to protect them, and support their right to govern their own bodies.
‘Dear Daughter’ works towards ending FGM in Somalia, which has one of the highest prevalence rates of the practice in the world. To date, 100 Somali mothers have signed the pledge.
By targeting rural and urban individuals and communities, that are making an extraordinary commitment, to change the FGM narrative. For Nkiru I. Igbokwe, gender-based violence specialist at UNFPA in Somalia, it is “accelerating the voices of women and men alike, to end FGM in the country”.
As part of the campaign, women living in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp on the outskirts of the capital Mogadishu – home to 280 households that fled Danunay village nearly 250 kilometres away, due to insurgent violence – have been learning about the harmful effects of FGM.
Halima*, 50, a mother of five daughters and five sons, was among them. As a camp gatekeeper and a community member with influence, she was identified as someone who could advocate to help end the harmful practice that she and her first daughter had also endured.
