Who Cares About FGM, Right?

I’ll start with a reminder that I will be speaking at the International Conference: Dialogue of Civilizations & Tolerance co-organized by the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, the U.A.E. Ministry of Civilizations & Tolerance and the Emirates Scholar. Please check out the event website to learn more about attending or viewing online.

 On February 6th, the U.N. commemorates the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM. As we approach this day, I have been reflecting on an experimental research we funded two years ago with a small group of men in Kenya to ask the question, “Do you prefer to be intimate with a cut or uncut woman?” 

 When a woman is cut, it means she has undergone female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C), a harmful practice the U.N. has deemed torture. The men interviewed were made up of different tribal backgrounds, consisting of Christians, Muslim Somalis, and Maasai. And just as I thought, the majority of men preferred uncut women.  

 The fight against FGM has been bolstered by the incorporation of religious figures, like our network of 3400 imams in the #ImamsForShe program, and organizations that work to provide an alternative income stream to the cutter, and in some countries, laws that ban FGM/C altogether.  And yet as I’m finding out even when men prefer an uncut woman, it remains a stubborn cultural habit to break. It is estimated that 12,000 girls will be cut each day this year, for a total of 4.4 million. To learn more about FGM and the painful statistics on this harmful practise, please visit this page. 

 2030 is the year member states are to meet their Sustainable Development Goals, which includes the eradication of FGM. It’s not going to happen because we’re too busy funding wars and most importantly, because we're complicit in its genocide of Palestinians, America's status as a beacon for human rights is dead.   

 With the American government funding billions for the creation of 19,000 Palestinian orphans in the span of four months, the utter destruction of historical sites dating back to the Crusades in Gaza, and families writing their names on their legs before going to sleep in the event a 2,000 pound American bomb gets dropped by Israel’s “moral military”, who incidentally laugh and dance after each neighborhood they flatten, eradicating FGM and so many other human rights violations which the US champions is all but a joke.

Onward and upward…

 Ani Zonneveld,

President & Founder