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U.S. may develop national plan against FGM

Thursday, 12 June 2014 23:59 GMT

California, Maryland and New York have the most of the thousands of girls at risk

NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A national plan to tackle female genital mutilation (FGM) in the United States could be drawn up in the next six months, one campaigner said Thursday.

Shelby Quast, senior policy advisor at charity Equality Now, said she met with government agencies and the Department of Education after the submission of a letter urging the Obama administration to devise a national strategy to tackle FGM in the U.S. and that the response to the letter was “great.”

“There wasn't any official commitment…but definitely a lot of interest,” Quast told Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview from her Washington, D.C. office, adding that she is optimistic a national plan could be produced in the next six months.

“They said ‘We want to look this over, we have just received this, and see what we can do…and come up with a comprehensive national strategy’,” Quast said of the officials.

On Wednesday, Democratic U.S. Representatives Joseph Crowley of New York and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas presented a letter to Congress and the administration urging them to “coordinate a comprehensive plan focused on bringing an end to the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) inflicted on American girls.”

Quast said that the letter, co-signed by 58 members of Congress, was the “tipping point” in campaigners’ fight to give the issue of FGM national attention.

Equality Now has been at the forefront of the fight to end FGM in the U.S. and globally.

The organisation took part in a successful campaign in Britain, which led, among other things, to the country’s first prosecution of a doctor accused of performing FGM.

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.

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.

An analysis of data from the 2000 U.S. census by the African Women’s Health Center at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital estimated that about 228,000 women and girls in the U.S. had undergone or were at risk of undergoing FGM, 27 percent of them under the age of 18. The number rose about 35 percent between 1990 and 2000, likely reflecting the growth in immigration from countries, especially in Africa, where FGM is prevalent.

The study found that California, New York and Maryland have the greatest number of women and girls at risk of FGM.

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