FGM: a costly, organised crime against women and girls

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is big business. It’s trans-global and sometimes organised by centuries-old formal agencies, on a for-profit basis. Like most other efficient businesses, it markets itself as in the interest of the consumer, into whose lifestyle expectations it is firmly embedded.

These observations imply no disrespect for the immense suffering which FGM causes. Across the globe there are probably 200 million women and girls now alive who have experienced (and survived) FGM.

FGM boosts low-paid medical workers’ incomes, and attracts kudos and power for traditional excisors in communities where other high-status work is hard to come by.
An estimated 10-30% of those who undergo FGM may die from it, either directly because shock, haemorrhage or infection, or from further complications when giving birth. Infants whose mothers die or cannot care for them have a much higher likelihood of dying as well. Women’s much needed contributions to the local economy, of labour and enterprise, are lost.