More than 230 million women and girls around the world have undergone female genital cutting, according to a new UNICEF analysis, an increase of 30 million since the agency’s last global estimate in 2016.
While the data shows that in some countries a new generation of parents has chosen to abandon the practice, in other countries laws and campaigns against it have had no impact. In Burkina Faso, the percentage of girls aged 15 to 19 who have been cut has fallen to 39 percent from 82 percent over the past three decades. But in Somalia, where an estimated 99 percent of women have had their clitoris excised, the level of cutting has not changed.
Because the countries where the practice is most common are also those with the highest rates of population growth, the total number of girls subject to the cut increases every year.
“The total number of women and girls is 15 percent higher than the last estimate,” said Claudia Cappa, an expert on global trends in female genital cutting with UNICEF. “The progress that has been made is very slow compared to the increase in the population of girls born every day in the countries most affected.”
The United Nations has set a goal of eliminating female genital cutting by 2030, but change would have to happen 27 times faster than the current rate to meet that goal, he said.
Some countries that have seen declines in the prevalence of cuts now see progress at risk as conflict and displacement from climate emergencies make people increasingly vulnerable and more dependent on traditional community structures, such as religious groups, that still support the practice.
The new data also highlights the extent to which the practice of cutting is global. While most common in sub-Saharan African countries, the practice also remains widespread in parts of the Middle East and Asia, and is still a clandestine practice in some immigrant communities in North America and Europe.
An estimated 144 million women and girls in Africa have been cut (the largest numbers are in Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan), 80 million in Asia and 6 million in the Middle East (more than half of them in Yemen), according to the new exhibition. In Asia, the highest rate of cases is in Indonesia, where 55 percent of girls undergo FGM, according to government figures.
UNICEF made its calculations using responses from regular national household surveys in the 31 countries where the practice is most common. These surveys ask women if they have been cut and if their daughters have been cut, and they ask both women and men in households where a woman has been cut if they think the practice should continue.
In Burkina Faso, the country with the biggest decline, the criminalization of the process and strong support from top political figures helped push for change, said Mariam Lamizana, president of an anti-cutting organization Voix de Femmes in Ouagadougou, the capital.
“We worked with religious and traditional leaders and said, ‘What you are doing in the name of civilization, here are the consequences for women, the consequences for little girls,'” said Ms. Lamizana, who led the first national commission established by the president to fight the cut. “We found that it was good to engage young religious leaders because they had more training and were more open.”
Nankali Maksud, who leads UNICEF’s work to end the practice, said most countries that have seen a decline have outlawed the cuts. But other strategies that seem to have led to change in some countries don’t seem to work in others, he said.
In Sierra Leone, the percentage of girls aged 15 to 19 who have been cut has fallen to 61 percent from 95 percent over the past three decades. The change is due in part to education campaigns, organized by both local and international organizations, about the physical and psychological harm caused by cutting.
But in Somalia, the practice has proven fiercely resistant to efforts to change.
“It’s persistent, it’s stable,” said Dr. Mariam Dahir, who has rarely publicly opposed the cuts in Somaliland, a breakaway region in the north of the country.
Dr. Dahir said there has been a campaign by some international anti-cutting groups to ask religious leaders to support a less extreme version of the practice, which involves removing some or all of the clitoral tissue, over the traditional practice of completely stitching the labia shut. The latter increases the likelihood that women will experience health complications from sexual activity or during childbirth. The less extreme option appealed to some parents and was endorsed in 2018 by a fatwa, telling parents to ask a health professional instead of a traditional cutter to do the procedure, he said.
But she and some other activists couldn’t embrace that modest improvement idea, she said. “How can we say for decades that nothing needs to be cut from a woman’s body, there is no religious justification for this practice, and then turn around and say this?” asked.
He posts videos on Facebook calling for a complete ban on cutting, which attract widespread criticism. “Then at least I know people are listening to the idea,” he said. And that, at least, is a change from the past, when it was completely taboo for people to discuss the practice at all.
The new data shows that a significant shift has occurred in a few countries, such as Kenya, where the practice was widespread 30 years ago and is now confined to areas of the country where most people are from the Somali ethnic community. One clear trend, said Ms Kappa, the UNICEF adviser, is that changing the rules around circumcision is easier in countries like Kenya, where the practice is not universal but rather a tradition of certain religious or ethnic groups.
“In countries where there is diversity, progress can be faster because communities that practice it are confronted with those that do not and can see that alternatives to their beliefs and values are possible and can be culturally acceptable. ” he said.
Sadia Hussein has channeled her experience as a survivor into an anti-cutting organisation, the Brighter Society Initiative. Working in her home region in northwest Kenya, she said getting people to talk publicly about the practice was key to reducing the prevalence of the practice to 9% of girls aged 15 to 19, from 23% before three decades.
“Men say, ‘Women never told us this is bad, even our wives,'” she said. “So I have to build the confidence of survivors to share their pain because our society has really conditioned women in such a way that they endure pain in silence. So I tell them, whatever we went through must not happen to our daughters.”
The places where the prevalence of cutting remains highest are also some of the most fragile countries, those affected by conflict or climate disasters or both. Such conditions make it more difficult to address the needs of girls who have been cut and to implement prevention policies.
Ms Hussein said climate change had complicated anti-austerity efforts in her region. Families lose livestock to weather disasters and need money to rebuild their herds, and may look to dowries for young daughters as a source of capital.
“Many girls are mutilated so that they can be married off at a tender age,” he said. “When there are floods and droughts, we see more girls getting cut.”
National surveys found that two-thirds of men and women in households where a woman had been cut, in Africa and the Middle East, said they believed the practice should stop. In countries like Djibouti and Sierra Leone, where it is still common, more men than women said they were against it.
Ms Cappa warned that what people say privately in a survey may not match the view they express publicly. Even parents who would like to see the practice end may still have their daughters for fear of social repercussions, such as being unable to marry, if they don’t comply, he said.
“There is devastation and sadness in these numbers, but you still have young girls and women — and even men — who believe this practice needs to stop. This is something positive,” Ms Maksud told UNICEF.
