Fahma Mohamed: Fighting a ghost

Photography by Dave Betts

At just 18 years old Fahma Mohamed’s campaign against FGM has won her a Woman of the Year award but, as she tells Pamela Parkes, while the fight to be heard may be over, the battle to end FGM goes on.

Fahma Mohamed’s story has all the hallmarks of a modern fairytale.

She is the daughter of parents who fled Somalia, who came to live in Bristol when she was 7-years-old. Horrified by the brutal and barbaric tradition of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), she has led an inspired campaign by Integrate Bristol to raise awareness and change government policy towards FGM.

Now, thanks to her commitment and dedication, Fahma has been named Outstanding Young Campaigner by the Woman of the Year awards.

Despite her incredible journey, the 18-year-old is still very much just a girl from Barton Hill – albeit one who appears to have the world at her feet.

“I was in Year 7 (at City Academy) and I was hearing the term FGM a lot. I remember having no idea what that word meant, or what that term stood for. I thought: ‘How come I don’t know about this when I come from that  community?’.”

“I went to my mother and I asked her what FGM was. She told me some of the reasons why people do it and why she was personally against it. I just remember thinking that I could not believe that this was a thing that even existed in the first place and, out of everywhere, it was happening in the UK.”

Turning Points

One of the hardest things that Fahma and Integrate Bristol had to overcome at the beginning of the campaign was getting anybody to even talk about FGM.

“The subject was so taboo it was like we were trying to fight against a ghost,” said Fahma. “It happened, it was going on but, because no one wanted to talk about it, everybody was just turning a blind eye to it. We really couldn’t  do anything about it – it was very hard at the beginning.

The turning point in the campaign came in February this year when Fahma set up an online petition calling for more awareness of FGM in schools.

She did not know it at the time, but the petition was a game changer. FGM suddenly became an issue which could no longer be ignored. At one point more than 2 people per second were signing her petition and, to date, it has more than 234,000 signatures. The groundswell of opinion persuaded the then Education secretary Michael Gove to meet Integrate Bristol. On the back of that meeting he agreed to write to all schools reminding them of the safeguarding issues surrounding FGM.  

Since then doors have been opening everywhere for Fahma and Integrate Bristol: “Everything has been amazing – from meeting (the UN secretary general) Ban Ki-moon, to hearing that (Nobel peace prize recipient) Malala Yousafzai was behind our cause, and to getting Michael Gove to listen to us.”

“I want to keep working on this and I want to get FGM into the school curriculum. That is what we are focusing on right now – getting FGM recognised as violence toward girls. My aim is to get every single student in the UK to recognised what FGM is. To know that it is child abuse and know who to report it to.

“Everyone needs to work together – the police, politicians, educators and law-makers need to work together. For a long time now we have been working independently – we just didn’t have the information to try and help these girls out. We are actually getting somewhere now.”

Giving girls a voice

The eldest of nine children Fahma credits her parents with her passion for her cause. She said: “(My parents) are so excited for me. They are probably more excited than I am, just to see their little girl fighting for what she believes in.”

“I wouldn’t be the person I am today without my parents. They are the ones that instilled what I believe in and they have always told me, ‘Don’t let people tell you no or force their opinions on you – just be you and do what you want to do’.”

As the face of the campaign Fahma said she had  “expected some backlash of some form”.

She was well aware of the risk she was taking: “If you are going to do something this big and very controversial you have got to expect something.

“I was thinking it might backfire a little bit, but the amount of love and support I’ve been getting, especially from my community, has just been crazy. People I don’t really know have been stopping me on the streets and telling me ‘what you are doing is amazing’.

“For the longest time, especially in my community, people have wanted to speak out but they didn’t know how. I think I am trying to give a voice, not just for my community, but for everyone.”

The past 12 months have been an eye opener for Fahma and she now thinks a career in human rights work, politics or law could be her next step: “I’ve realised I’m good at this. I never thought I could do this and be interested in politics. So many opportunities are coming up it would be crazy of me not to take them up.” 

Thousands in UK at risk every year

FGM is the partial or complete removal of a the female gentials. Cutting often takes place before puberty, often on girls between the age of four and eight.

FGM is usually performed without anaesthetic and under unhygienic circumstances using knives, scissors, razor blades or pieces of broken glass.

The procedure can cause severe bleeding and problems urinating,  cysts, infections, infertility as well as complications during childbirth.

It is thought that some 130,000 British women have been cut and around 20,000 girls are estimated to be at risk each year. More than 1000 girls in Bristol are at risk of FGM every year.     

More than 1,700 women and girls who have undergone FGM have been treated by the NHS since April, according to the first official figures to be published on the numbers of FGM cases seen by hospitals in England.

According to estimates by the World Health Organisation (WHO) 150 million women are affected by FGM worldwide, primarily in Africa.

www.bava.org.uk/types-of-abuse/female-genital-mutilation/

www.clinician.bristol.nhs.uk/clinician_portal/safeguarding_children/female_genital_mutilation.aspx