FGM Is About Culture, Not Religion

Marzieh Goudarzi interviews UNFPA Executive Director DR. BABATUNDE OSOTIMEHIN

According to data from the World Health Organisation, FGM/C-affected communities exist in northern, northeastern, and western Africa and in some Middle Eastern and Asian countries. FGM/C is also practiced in immigrant communities from these countries living in other parts of the world. Are there common elements among these communities that allow FGM/C to continue?

it is more cultural than anything else.

What UNFPA has done with UNICEF, is to engage communities across those regions that you mentioned and persuade them that FGM/C has no medical benefits at all and that, for a fact, it causes damage to women and girls physically, psychologically, and emotionally.

UNFPA/UNICEF’s strategy in approaching a sensitive issue like FGM/C

Understand communities. 

initiates community dialogue with interlocutors that have integrity within the community

explain to them that these are things we believe we have to let go because of their consequences, and demonstrate 

Recent data shows that since the establishment of the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme in 2008, nearly 10,000 communities in 15 countries, representing about eight million people, have renounced FGM/C.