The practise can cause severe bleeding, infection, infertility and death.

TRIGGER WARNING: GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS

Today is International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation, a day to set about raising awareness of the practise and encouraging people to take a stand and to help eradicate it.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the deliberate mutilation of the female genitalia and commonly carried out on girls between the ages of four and twelve.

It can cause severe bleeding, infection, infertility and death.

And the practise is unnecessary.

Here is one girl’s story:

Christine, 17 years old, was subjected to female genital mutilation when she was 15, before being forced to marry a much older man.

“My mother and brothers said it [FGM] was the only thing for my future. When it had been done to me and I was in seclusion, an old man came to my brothers and gave him 15 cows to marry me.

“When the time came for the marriage ceremony his relatives and some guards carried me away. I didn’t want to go and cried.

“The old man had a wife before me too. She was much older and just treated me like one of her children.

“On my first night in the house with the old man we were left alone together. He forced himself on me and I felt so much pain that I cried.

“The other wife was waiting at the door and he asked her to come in so that she could make me bigger using a cow’s horn.

“The eldest daughter of the man also came in to help.

“It was very shaming and I felt sad afterwards.”

Christine escaped from the house and sought help from the head of the mixed primary school – who subsequently contacted ActionAid.

By working with the Kongelai Women’s Network, ActionAid was able to help Christine find a place at school; the chief of Christine’s village was contacted and alerted to what had happened; her family is beginning to accept the wrongdoing and Christine is rebuilding a relationship with her family.

ActionAid helps women and girls to escape female genital mutilation by running girls’ clubs and rescue centres, supporting girls to stay in school, understand their rights and build their own futures.

ActionAid ambassador, actress Emma Thompson, said, “I have most unfortunately, seen and heard at first-hand about the devastating effects of female genital mutilation.

“The initial trauma, the high chances of infection, the hell of sex and childbirth, the loss of all sexual pleasure, the sheer violation of every natural and humane instinct – the stories I have heard beggar belief.

“We can no longer turn a blind eye.”

ActionAid is one group working very closely with communities, educating boys and girls about how damaging female genital mutilation is for both sexes, and says: “If we want to make a dent in this habit of mutilation, we have to support those long-term programmes, they’re the only things that produce lasting change.”

And in the UK?

The Home Office has supported a campaign by the NSPCC to help protect children in Britain from mutilation, as well as launching its own initiative, the Violence Against Women and Girls Action Plan.

The document boasts of significant government investment in ‘scaling up international work to tackle violence against women and girls’.

And a message on the Foreign Office website reads: ‘If you think that a girl or young woman is in danger of FGM…contact the Foreign and Commonwealth Office if she has already been taken abroad.’

A report from the Royal College of Midwives, identified more than 66,000 victims of FGM in England and Wales and warned that 24,000 girls under the age of 15 were at risk.

The report called for NHS workers to gather information on FGM and share it with police, education and social care worker.

It also called for FGM to be treated as child abuse.

And it called for health workers who detect evidence of FGM to treat it as a crime and inform the police.

The UK government’s minister for crime prevention, Norman Baker, pointed out that there isn’t any religion which condones FGM, “so it’s important that we get to the hard-to-reach communities who believe that their religion demands, or sanctions, FGM.”

In December last year the Home Affairs Committee announced an inquiry into female genital mutilation (FGM).

A major inquiry that will look at current legal framework’s suitability given there has not been a single prosecution in three decades.

The inquiry is to consider the following questions:

How effective is the existing legislative framework on FGM, and what are the barriers to achieving a successful prosecution in the UK?

Which groups in the UK are most at risk of FGM (whether in this country or abroad), and what are the barriers to identification and intervention?

What are the respective roles of the police, health, education and social care professionals, and the third sector; and how can multi-agency co-operation be improved?

How can the systems for collecting and sharing information on FGM be improved?

How effective are existing efforts to raise awareness of FGM?

How can the available support and services be improved for women and girls in the UK who have suffered FGM?

The Committee has asked for written submissions on these issues: they need to be in by noon on 12 February 2014.