NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

More than 125 million girls and women have undergone female genital mutilation worldwide, and another 30 million are at risk of being cut over the next decade — yet few interventions have focused on stopping the practice, and previous United Nations targets and pledges to end FGM within a generation have failed.

“Unlike other campaigns of similar magnitude, FGM prevention has not received massive investments from the international community,” Efua Dorkenoo, program director at the End FGM Social Change Campaign, said in an exclusive interview with Devex.

At the grassroots level, though, she noted more and more people are engaging with the issue, particularly young women survivors of FGM — the so-called “warriors and heroines” of the campaign.