FGM must be seen as violence against women

This comment column is written by Sian Norris

Picture: Fahma Mohamed by Dave Betts

At the start of October, activists, politicians, journalists and young people gathered in Bristol for a conference on female genital mutilation (FGM). 

A few weeks later, Fahma Mohamed, a young woman from Bristol who campaigns against FGM, won the Women of the Year Good Housekeeping Young Campaigner of the Year award.

I couldn’t make the conference unfortunately, but afterwards I went for a drink with Nimko Ali, co-founder of Daughters of Eve. Together we marvelled at how far the anti-FGM movement had come since we first met, about six years ago. Thanks to the energy and passion of women like Nimko, Fahma, the late Efua Dorkenoo OBE of Equality Now, Comfort Momoh, Leyla Hussein, Muna Hassan and many, many more, FGM is high up on the agenda – and we are closer than we have ever been to getting a prosecution for this violent crime. 

As Nimko said to me that evening, we will be the generation whose daughters ask us in horrified anger why FGM existed, and how it was allowed to carry on unchallenged for so long. 

A few years ago, the landscape was very different. Concerns about ‘cultural sensitivity’ meant newspapers rarely published articles about FGM. Politicians ummed and aahed around the subject. Mainstream child abuse charities ignored the issue. 

But campaigners like Ali and Hussein knew that cultural sensitivity cannot be allowed to trump human rights. They believed that cultural sensitivity must never be valued higher than a girl’s right to bodily autonomy, and a girl’s right to live free from violence. They argued that the cultural sensitivity argument is meaningless when you consider that FGM is not confined to one culture, or one religion. And it becomes even more meaningless when the abuse and violent control of girls is a universal issue. 

FGM has always been, and remains, an act of gender-based violence against women and girls. It is rooted in ideas of patriarchal control of women – just as all violence against women and girls is. That’s why if we are ever to truly tackle FGM, we need to recognise it as a form of violence against women. 

Last year, the NSPCC announced it was opening a helpline for girls who had experienced, or were at risk of, FGM. The NSPCC’s announcement was backed up by commitments from the government to end FGM in the UK and around the world. 

This was a huge breakthrough. It showed people up and down the UK that we were finally taking FGM seriously as an issue of child abuse. But we still have a long way to go before this practice has ended for good. Now we need to see the government follow through on their recent promises. We need to see a joined-up strategy that brings together teachers, health workers, social workers, charities, experts and the police, so that they can take co-ordinated action to identify girls who are at risk of FGM, and protect them. And we need to start seeing prosecutions for those who commit this abuse against girls. 

When I first started supporting the campaign against FGM, I could never have imagined that David Cameron would pick up the issue. I couldn’t imagine that FGM would be front page, or a subject for a BAFTA-nominated TV documentary. At that time, it felt like we were still fighting for FGM to even be spoken about in the public arena – let alone discussed on the news as a form of gender-based violence against girls. 

The change we have seen in the last few years has been phenomenal. But that change has only happened because a group of very brave, very determined and very dedicated women stood up and spoke out. They spoke out in the face of violence and threats. They spoke out when no one was listening. They spoke out, and now things are changing. 

One of these women was Efua Dorkenoo, who died on Saturday 18th October after dedicating her life to the fight against FGM. Dorkenoo was an incredibly brave and passionate woman who was determined that no more girls would have to live with the legacy of this violence. I was privileged enough to meet her when she spoke on at a panel event I had organised. I know that, thanks to her vital work fighting violence, supporting women and inspiring women, her legacy will be an end to FGM.

Read our interview with Fahma Mohamed in the November issue of B24/7 magazine, out next week