The Guardian Global Media Campaign #EndFGMWhyWait
The Guardian launched its Global Media Campaign to end FGM at the UN ONE Plaza Hotel on 12 March 2015. The idea is to support the new generation of activists using the media to amplify their message – stop FGM! – to their communities and the world. Here you see two of these determined activists, Domtila Chesang from Kenya and Jaha Dukureh, originally from the Gambia. Their presentations, with those of UN Women Under-Secretary General Mme Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and others, are available here.
The event was aligned with the United Nations 2015 Commission on the Status of Women.
As the Guardian’s FGM Consultant, I have been privileged to work with Maggie O’Kane and her colleagues to ensure the event included attendees with many different places and experiences, all keen to secure progress on the eradication of female genital mutilation. The determination to make FGM history was palpable.
If you too would like to support the campaign, please go to the Human Dignity Foundation website.
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FURTHER INFORMATION AND ACTION
Readers are invited to support these two FGM e-petitions:
UK Government: Enforce the UK law which forbids FGM (Female Genital so-called ‘Cutting’) ..
and FGM abolitionists internationally: Support the Feminist Statement on Female Genital Mutilation
There is a free FGM hotline for anyone in the UK: 0800 028 3550, or email:fgmhelp@nspcc.org.uk
The #NoFGM Daily News carries reports of all items shared on Twitter that day about FGM – brings many organisations and developments into focus.
Also available to follow is daily news from NoFGM_USA.
For more on FGM please see here.
Twitter accounts: @NoFGM1 @NoFGMBookUK @FGMStatement @NoFGM_USA [tag for all: #NoFGM]
Facebook page: #NoFGM – a crime against humanity
More info on FGM in the UK here. Email contact: NoFGM email
Hilary Burrage 
Thank you to Hilary Burrage, The Guardian, Jaha and Domtila for hosting this important discussion! Yes – I agree that we’re talking to the choir!! It’s time for national and international foundations to fund our efforts to eradicate FGM. Our organization, Pastoralist Child Foundation (registered CBO in Kenya and 501C3 in the USA) works in Samburu County, Kenya. We’re educating young girls and teens about FGM in an effort to replace this vice with safe Alternative Rites of Passage. We intend to have the very first celebratory Alternative Rite of Passage in a village this August. We are blessed to have a Samburu warrior as a Founder of our organization – His name is Samuel Siriria Leadismo, a warrior fighting for girls’ rights to NOT undergo FGM and to have the right to go to school. We invite all good people and organizations to contact us in order to collaborate and partner with us. We’re fully dedicated to abolishing FGM forever! It’s time for FGM to go!! Write to us directly at info@pastoralist-child-foundation.org. Visit our website to see our good work and video at http://www.pastoralist-child-foundation.org Peace and Blessings. Call us – 🙂
Reblogged this on Far be it from me –.
There really does seem to be the momentum at last to end this suffering. I recently posted on the point that the West has not been without blame, historically: https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-fgm-in-victorian-london-38327
Thank you Helen… and of course FGM in especially the USA continued for a century after this. In 1973 Dr Leo Wollman, a gynaecological surgeon at Maimonides Hospital, Brooklyn, published an article in which he argued for female circumcision (meaning excision of the clitoral hood) as a cure for frigidity [see ref].
Thanks for the link to that article, Hilary! As someone from a Classics background, I am mildly relieved that claims that FGM went back to Hippocrates didn’t continue after the 19th c… Although instead new ways of arguing for its validity were adopted.