Female Genital Cutting Continues to Increase Worldwide - The New York Times

[Gunnar Larson]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/health/female-genital-cutting.html

It’s the United Nations’ International Women’s Day — a day that sprang from
the commemoration of the 15,000 women who protested in New York against
harsh working conditions and paltry pay in 1909. Though women’s rights have
improved on paper since then, in reality things remain grim the world over.

More than 230 million women and girls around the world have undergone
female genital cutting, according to a new analysis by UNICEF, an increase
of 30 million since the organization’s last global estimate in 2016.

While the data shows that in some countries a new generation of parents
have chosen to forgo the practice, in other countries laws and campaigns
against it have had no impact. In Burkina Faso, the share of girls aged 15
to 19 years who have undergone cutting has fallen to 39 percent from 82
percent over the past three decades. But in Somalia, where an estimated 99
percent of women have had their clitoris excised, the level of cutting has
not changed.

Because the countries where the practice is most prevalent are also those
with the highest rates of population growth, the overall number of girls
who are subject to cutting is growing each year.

“The total number of women and girls is 15 percent higher than the last
estimate,” said Claudia Cappa, an expert on global trends in female genital
cutting with UNICEF. “The progress that has been made is too slow compared
to the growth of the population of girls who are born each day in the
countries that are most affected.”

The United Nations has set the goal of eliminating female genital cutting
by 2030, but change would need to be occurring 27 times faster than the
current rate to meet that goal, she said.
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