To eliminate female genital mutilation by 2030, progress would need to be 27 times faster. Understanding shifting trends behind this practice is a start.
An anti-FGM protester holds a placard outside the National Assembly in Banjul on 18 March 2024.
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Social norms, practices and attitudes in African societies hinder the lives, survival and development of girls.
An Egyptian doctor gives medical advice to a woman about female genital mutilation during an awareness campaign in Giza, outside the capital Cairo.
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An estimated 2000 million women have undergone female genital mutilation and millions more are at risk. The practice is carried out mainly for cultural and economic reasons.
Mothers iron their daughters’ breasts as a way of preventing early marriage and keeping their daughters in school for longer.
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Close to 4 million teenage girls are subjected to breast ironing worldwide. This harmful cultural practice, which is most prevalent in West and Central Africa, needs to stop.
Efforts to end female genital mutilation are mostly designed by global and national agencies and risk ignoring change agents like the youth who are against the practice.
Circumcision of both boys and girls is practiced by the Maasai in Tanzania.
Dai Kurokawa/EPA
Hollywood’s sexual predation scandals are just the tip of the iceberg. One in three women worldwide has been physically or sexually assaulted, and many girls’ first sexual experience is forced.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s record on women’s rights has been mixed.
REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri
The international media and her supporters continue to hoist Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf up as the matron of African women’s rights. But she does not deserve this title.
Intersex people are born with sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit binary notions of male or female bodies.
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Until we safeguard every child from all forms of violence, opposition to genital cutting will not be an Australian value.
By agencies working together, we can prevent female genital mutilation, which new research confirms is happening in Australia.
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Female genital mutilation is largely hidden in Australia and other high-income countries. But the United Nations says it is a global concern – and our research found it does affect girls here.
In Sudan, female genital cutting is common among many communities. The use of movies that debate this question could change people’s opinions about the practice.
Pokot girls in Kenya wait for an ceremony that marks their passage into womanhood – and means they’re ready for marriage.
Reuters/Siegfried Modola