"I was one week old when I was mutilated ... it took away my honour, the right to my body, my sexual health" - Jaha Dukureh
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The U.S. government should help end female genital mutilation (FGM) by updating data on the prevalence of the harmful practice in the country and providing assistance to women and girls who have been cut, an American survivor of FGM said.
In 1997, it was estimated that 168,000 girls in the United States were at risk of FGM, which involves the partial or total removal of external genitalia, but those statistics are now out of date and the number is likely to be much higher, experts say.
"I was one week old when I was mutilated in the Gambia ... it took away my honour, the right to my body, my sexual health," said Jaha Dukureh, 24, at the U.S. launch of an international media campaign to end FGM that brought together politicians, activists and journalists.
"My sister bled to death when I was eight, and all that was said was that it was her time to go," she added.
Widely practised in Africa and pockets of the Middle East and Asia, FGM is also a risk to girls living in the West with roots in countries where being cut is believed to preserve a girl's virginity, and as a result, considered an important rite of passage and prerequisite to marriage.
"In the U.S., FGM is believed to be a problem only in far away places. I know it's hard to believe but a lot of girls in New York, Atlanta and throughout the States have been victims of FGM," said Dukureh, who moved to the United States when she was 15 and was forced into marriage not long after her arrival.
"I am also a survivor of child marriage and this happened right here in New York City," she said at the event in New York.
FGM is illegal in the United States under federal law and in 2013, Congress passed the Girls Protection Act which made it illegal to take girls abroad for purposes of FGM.
However, there hasn't been a federal prosecution for FGM to date and experts say the issue is still largely unknown to the American public.
Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley, who spearheaded the approval of the act, stressed the importance of having legislation in place but also said the law needed to be enforced.
"The way to really eradicate FGM is through knowledge," he said, adding that everyone from politicians to police officers and the general public needed to be made aware of the practice and its harmful effects on the health and psyche of women and girls.
Shelby Quast, senior policy adviser at women's rights charity, Equality Now, said any effort to end FGM should "include not only getting appropriate laws and policy in place, but also measures focused on child protection, prevention and provision of services to affected women and girls at risk".
The campaign to end FGM is led by the Guardian newspaper in collaboration with the United Nations, Equality Now and online advocacy platform change.org, among others.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
