Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): When « Protecting » a Girl Means Mutilating Her
In Sudan, a poet recites her verses at weddings and public gatherings, not to celebrate, but to sound the alarm. Each stanza is her way of saying out loud what many families never dare to question: that cutting is neither a religious obligation nor a proof of love. She even pays tribute to the doctors who gave her the knowledge she needed to carry on this fight. Her voice reflects a battle that, to this day, is fought largely on African soil. That battle is female genital mutilation (FGM).
What Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Actually Involves
According to the definition used by the WHO, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) covers all procedures involving the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or any other injury to the female genital organs, carried out for non-medical reasons. In other words, it is never a form of care. It is an assault on the body, decided by others, almost always before adulthood. In fact, this practice is inflicted on minors in nearly every case, which also makes it a violation of children’s rights.
A Crisis That Weighs on Africa More Than Any Other Continent
Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t a phenomenon spread evenly across the globe. In reality, out of the 230 million girls and women affected worldwide, 144 million live in Africa, well over half of all recorded cases, far ahead of Asia (80 million) and the Middle East (6 million).
What’s more, the burden isn’t evenly spread across the continent either. Indeed, West and Central Africa alone account for 17 of the 27 most affected African countries, making the region the single most decisive one for ever reaching the global goal of zero FGM.
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Africa: A Map of Striking Contrasts
From one country to the next, the gaps are staggering. On one end, some countries show near-universal prevalence: nearly 98% of women in Somalia have undergone FGM, compared with 95% in Guinea and 94% in Djibouti. In Mali, the picture is much the same, with over 89% of women and girls affected.
At the other end, some countries on the continent have moved almost entirely away from the practice. Cameroon (0.4%), Niger (1%) and Uganda (1%) now rank among the lowest rates in the world. Between these two extremes, Kenya stands out as living proof of what sustained effort can achieve: its prevalence has dropped sharply in recent years, largely thanks to long-term community programs.
African Laws to Protect African Women
The continent hasn’t taken this practice lying down, it has built its own legal response. As early as 2003, the African Union adopted the Maputo Protocol, which explicitly enshrines the elimination of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as one of the fundamental rights of African women. Since then, many countries have followed suit: Somalia’s Constitution, for instance, expressly bans the cutting of girls, even though enforcement on the ground remains uneven.
That said, the law alone doesn’t always change practices. For example, research conducted in Chad’s Mandoul province uncovered complex socio-ethnic and economic factors that keep the practice alive, despite legal texts condemning it. In other words, without community-level awareness, the law often remains just words on paper.
Why Community Pressure Remains So Powerful
As one girl put it during that same Chadian study, the fear of exclusion often weighs heavier than personal doubt: refusing to go through with the ritual means risking rejection by one’s own community. Three recurring patterns show up across the continent:
- An age-old rite of passage, seen in some regions as a prerequisite for entering adulthood or marriage.
- A false belief in medical protection. Yet no study supports any health benefit whatsoever; on the contrary, the practice raises the risk of infections, hemorrhaging, and complications during childbirth.
- A myth of foreign interference. In some communities, the fight against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is still wrongly seen as pressure imposed from abroad, which considerably slows down local dialogue.
(Behind FGM often lies a broader, almost invisible reflex, so normalized it goes unnoticed of deciding on behalf of women. This word also has its place in our women’s dictionary: discover paternalism.)
Africa Is Also Home to the Solutions to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
Fortunately, change isn’t coming from outside alone, it’s largely being driven by African women themselves. Indeed, around 400 million people living in Africa and the Middle East now oppose this practice, nearly two-thirds of the population in the countries concerned. What’s more, concrete progress is already visible on the ground: in Tanzania, community dialogues are allowing survivors to share their stories publicly, giving other girls the courage to refuse the practice in turn.
Concretely, several levers driven by African and pan-African organizations are already at work:
- The Inter-African Committee (IAC), which has coordinated the fight against FGM across the continent for decades.
- The joint UNFPA-UNICEF programme, active in around twenty African countries, combining health, education, and community mobilization.
- Local and cultural initiatives : community theater troupes, intergenerational dialogues, activist poetry, that speak to people in their own cultural language rather than imposing an outside narrative.
To go further, UNICEF gives voice to survivors who chose to fight against FGM: Ending Female Genital Mutilation: Survivor Stories from Southeastern Nigeria.
In short, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is neither an African fatality nor a mere statistic in an international report. It’s a fight that Africa is actively leading, country by country, community by community and every decline in the practice proves that change driven from within is not only possible, but already underway.