The Fight to Eradicate Female Genital Mutilation

November 19, 2021 CATALYST Team

Fueled by her personal experience, Ifrah Ahmed is a grassroots activist dedicated to ending the brutal practice.

Ifrah Ahmed speaking at a symposium on Safe Cities Campaign in Mogadishu, Somalia on December 26, 2016, .AMISOM Public Information. CC0 1.0

Female genital mutilation (FGM) of women and girls is a brutal practice that persists in communities to this day. The practice, which has no health benefits for women, consists of removing exterior female genitalia. Additionally, this mutilation is extremely painful and poses significant health risks, including severe bleeding, infections and complications during childbirth. 200 million girls have experienced FGM across 30 countries. The practice is most prominent in Eastern, Western, and Northeastern regions of Africa, but cutting has a global presence including significantly in the Middle East and some parts of Asia. The practice is also present in parts of Europe and the United States. The CDC estimates that more than 500,000 women and girls were cut or at risk in the United States. In Europe, 600,000 women and girls have been subjected to the practice and another 180,000 are at risk. Many major organizations strictly oppose female gential mutilation, including the United Nations, the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

FGM is practiced for many different cultural reasons, which includeviewing it as a rite of passage into adulthood, making women fit for marriage, fitting cultural conceptions around purity and even catering to men’s sexual preferences. The practice is primarily done to young girls, and can be extremely psychologically and emotionally scarring as well as physically dangerous.

While many countries that practice FGM have made it illegal, and major organizations campaign against it, grassroots activists also have a largeimpact in working towards ending this violence against women.

One of the more prominent grassroots activists leading the movement is Ifrah Ahmed, a victim of FGM herself as a young girl in Somalia. Ahmed founded the Ifrah Foundation, an organization with the goal to end FGM in Somalia and the Horn of Africa. In Somalia, Ahmed’s childhood home, it is estimated that 98 percent of women have undergone FGM. Ahmed was instrumental in Ireland’s official ban of FGM in 2012. Recounting her personal experience, Ahmed doesn’t want to be seen as a victim. “I want people to see me empowering other women,” said Ahmed.

FGM has a long history in Somalia, making its practice deeply rooted in Somalian culture. The Ifrah Foundation’s most recent approach to ending the practice is called the Dear Daughter Campaign. The campaign is focused on reaching individuals and having people pledge to shield their daughters from the practice in the future. The campaign also aims to provide education and information around the issue, relying on individuals to help communicate the information to their communities through different methods of outreach. The foundation’s work has the full support of the Somalian government. The foundation hopes to help completely end the practice of FGM by 2030, a goal set by the United Nations.

In the past, the Ifrah Foundation has utlized grassroots activists by training people to speak on FGM and fight any misconceptions about the practice. Many of these activists will use their own experiences with cutting when discussing the dangers of the FGM. Activists like Ifrah Ahmed are key to fight female genital mutilation because they can approach the issue within context of the many cultures that practice it. Ahmed’s foundation is focused on systematic change, making their approach to FGM specified to the culture of each unqiue region. Despite the prevalence and persistance of FGM, Ahmed remains focused on a positive future, telling the Thomson Reuters Foundation “I can’t change what happened to me, but I don’t want any other girl to go through it.”