Support women who are stopping FGM on the front lines
Last year our partners in Sierra Leone and Somalia worked on getting international attention to the deaths of several young girls caused by female genital mutilation (FGM), an extreme form of subjugation, which has affected over 200 million women and girls around the world. In each case the government indicated it was going to act, but little has happened since.
Although both countries have extremely high levels of prevalence at 88% and 98% respectively, neither has banned FGM, making it almost impossible for victims to get justice.
Marie Kamara’s remains being taken for postmortem in Sierra Leone, Dec 2018
Front line groups including The Galkayo Center in Somalia, Amazonian Initiative Movement in Sierra Leone, Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative in Kenya and Voix de Femmes in Burkina Faso have made great progress, but with up to 5 million girls at risk each year they know that there is still a mountain to climb.
Just last week a British court found a woman guilty of committing female genital mutilation on her 3-year-old daughter, the first conviction under the UK law banning FGM was passed in 1985. That law was championed by Efua Dorkenoo, in whose memory we have established the Fund to End FGM.
This International Day of Zero Tolerance to FGM please give what you can to our grassroots Efua Dorkenoo Fund To End FGM. We want as much funding as possible to get to the front lines, where it is urgently needed every single day of the year.
Yours sincerely,
Jessica Neuwirth
Director