As Female Genital Cutting Explodes, Tostan's Molly Melching Reports Progress

As Female Genital Cutting Explodes, Tostan's Molly Melching Reports Progress

We celebrate every step forward taken in the drive to end the genital mutilitation of women worldwide. But a new report from the UN says that the estimates of the total women affected has been very underestimated.

A new survey from Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, plus population growth in other countries where the practice continues, often despite being outlawed—led to the revision.

It's believed that about half of all Indonesian females under the age of twelve have undergone female genital mutilation or cutting, as it’s formally known, even though the practice was outlawed in 2006."The new numbers bump up the worldwide total to at least two hundred million women and girls, alive today, who have undergone genital mutilation—some just a few weeks after birth, the vast majority before the age of ten."

Safa Idriss Nour Is Waris Dirie's 'Desert Flower' In the Fight To End FGM In Somalia

Safa Idriss Nour Is Waris Dirie's 'Desert Flower' In the Fight To End FGM In Somalia

A simple Facebook share last week elicited more likes than any supermodel has achieved on my page. Meet Safa Idriss Nour, a young girl born in a slum in Dijibouti, Somalia.  Perhaps her gorgeous young-girl face soothed a world under fire in Beirut, Nigeria and Paris. Mali had not blown up yet as my FB friends fell under Safa's spell. 

On Friday I decided to look for information about this young girl, and the truth of her life amazed me. 

 A Young Somali Girl Uncut

An estimated 98% of girls and women in Dijibouti have undergone female genital mutilation, a procedure of varying severity in Somali culture. AOC has a long history of writing about FGM, the cutting off a female's clitoris and some of the labia. The procedure -- executed without anaesthetic -- is designed to protect a girl's purity and represents a sign of commitment to a future husband over a desire for sexual pleasure. In the most severe cases of FGM, a girl's labia is sewn together and only reopened after marriage. The probability of a young woman not being desirable as a bride and commanding no bride price for her family is high. 

Activists & Masai Warriors Join Forces To End Female Genital Mutilation

Activists & Masai Warriors Join Forces To End Female Genital Mutilation

3. The famous Masai men are acclaimed for being feared and accomplished warriors.  Pictured here, Ole Lelein Kanunga, the leader of young Masai tribal warriors in Entasopia, “a lush oasis of trees and pasture in the otherwise desert flats of this part of southern Kenya”, says that in the month of December, circumcisions will end.You see, December is the month when girls are cut in Kenya, a rite of passage that often results in their not returning to the classroom and marrying instead, with babies on the way.

This article is unique in articulating the primary reason for FGM/FGC — which is NOT prescribed in Islam, although most people believe it is. Experts in the field know that it is a tribal custom — one advocated by men to keep women from ‘straying’.

Masai warriors believe it keeps their wives “off heat” and uninterested in sex, therefore faithful while they are off in the bush for months on end hunting, raiding and fighting.