'Zero Tolerance': A Worldwide Call to Eliminate the Brutal Practice of FGM

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/02/06/zero-tolerance-worldwide-call-eliminate-brutal-practice-fgm



Students and teachers of the Midwifery School in El Fasher, North Darfur. They all recently signed a pledge to stop the practice of female genital mutilation in Darfur.

'Zero Tolerance': A Worldwide Call to Eliminate the Brutal Practice of FGM
Deirdre Fulton, staff writer
Friday, February 06, 2015

Zero tolerance.

That's what the United Nations, health professionals, and those who advocate for women and girls say is necessary to end female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that still plagues millions of women and girls around the world, reflecting deep-rooted inequality between sexes and extreme discrimination against women and children.

Friday marks the UN's International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, following what the Guardian describes as "12 months of historic change and growing awareness of the practice."

The focus of this year's commemoration is on the troubling 'medicalization' of FGM, a trend in which healthcare providers engage in the practice, in turn lending their tacit approval. Around one in five girls have been cut by a trained health-care provider, they say, with that number going as high as three in four girls in some countries.