UN backs campaign, but UK’s education minister continues to dodge the issue.

In February Fahma Mohamed, a 17 year-old student from Bristol, launched a Guardian-backed campaign to increase awareness of female genital mutilation (FGM) and stop the practice in both the UK and the rest of the world.

She added her voice to a broad coalition of global charities and campaigners who had joined with the Guardian to urge the Minister for Education, Michael Gove to act, and supporters added their names to a petition on the Change.org campaigning website.

She wanted Gove to write to the heads of all primary and secondary schools, urging them to flag up the dangers of FGM before the summer holidays, when girls are at the greatest risk.

Her campaign has now received backing from the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon.

“This is part of making women’s voices heard and giving them the right to protect themselves,” he said at a meeting with Fahma Mohamed earlier this month. “I will mobilise all UN tools and agencies to help promote this campaign.”

The campaign uses the power of both traditional and current media and activism, and there are plans to adapt its successful campaign model in other countries, especially in Africa where the practice is particularly prevalent.

The campaign is having a significant impact in the UK, where it is believed there are 66,000 victims of FGM and more than 24,000 women and girls at risk every year.

The success of the online petition, which received nearly 250,000 signatures and at its height was obtaining two signatures every second, led to a meeting between FGM campaigners and a recalcitrant Education Secretary.

Gove praised the Guardian’s campaign and eventually pledged to write to all headteachers with information on FGM and guidance on safeguarding children.

He promised the information will reach schools before the summer holidays, or “cutting season”, when many girls are taken abroad to their home nation.

Gove, however,  fell short of promising FGM would be taught in schools, saying he wanted more evidence on how the issue could be taught in an age appropriate way.

Year six pupils at St Werburgh’s primary school in Bristol are taught about FGM. With the permission of their parents and using age-appropriate language.

They learn about FGM without the use of graphic images and in safe language they can understand.

The school’s headteacher, Claire Smith, told the Guardian: “We are proof that it is entirely possible to teach this in an age-appropriate way – it’s not about scaremongering, it’s about keeping children safe,” says Smith told the Guardian, and added that primary schoolchildren may be at the most risk.

“An opportune moment for FGM to happen is when they [girls] are transferring between schools – in a new school a teacher may not know your behaviour had changed, whereas here we’d know straight away.”

FGM was initially made illegal in the UK in 1985, and further legislation was introduced in 2002.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has demanded a specific legal focus on parents who allow their daughters to be cut as well as on “cutters” themselves.

Part of the difficulty in bringing prosecutions is getting girls to testify against those who have mutilated them – often members of their own family.

And the current legislation makes it difficult to prosecute cases if ‘cutter’ or victim are not a permanent residents of the UK.

Alison Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions, said potential reforms could place a legal duty on parents to protect their children from FGM, leaving parents liable to criminal charges if they fail to do so.

Saunders also said that new legislation would place a statutory duty on doctors, teachers and other health and education professionals to report cases of FGM and also girls at risk from the practice.

A lack of understanding of the practice and how to prevent it, as well as awareness of where mutilation is happening, are considered key factors hampering social services and the police from being able to take any action.

And authorities, including the NHS and schools, have been accused of turning a blind eye because of ‘cultural sensitivities’.

Reform, however, is taking place within the NHS.

From April, all NHS hospitals will be able to log if a girl has undergone mutilation or if there is a family history of mutilation.

By September, such information will be reported to the Department of Health on a monthly basis and will be centrally recorded.

The NHS reforms form part of an FGM declaration signed by ministers from across government, which also launched an new £100,000 FGM Community Engagement Initiative.

The initiative, which stems from a successful bid for funding from the European Commission, allows charities to bid for up to £10,000 to carry out community engagement work aimed at raising awareness of FGM.