Fahma Mohammed was only 13 when she heard about Female Genital Mutilation for the first time. Even though she was one of nine daughters in a Somali family that moved to Britain when she was seven, she’d never heard of the practice. When she was told about the removal of a girl's outer sexual organs as a way of assuring virginity, she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Now, aged 17, she’s horrified by how many people she knows personally who have been affected by FGM. ‘I definitely know people it has happened to: girls who have been taken home, or who have had it here [in the UK]. For some of these mothers it’s a lot cheaper and easier to get them done here. I know these girls, and it just fuels my passion. I want to get their voices heard.’
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Fahma is now heading up The Guardian’s campaign to end Female Genital Mutilation and is calling on Michael Gove to help by asking head teachers to give parents and teachers more information about the horrific practice. Fahma is part of a new generation of young anti-FGM campaigners who are determined to spread the word and finally get government backing to help end the practice for good. Speaking to The Guardian, Fahma said that, when she first heard about FGM, she was horrified. ‘I thought it was something that happened in my mother’s time, that happened in Somalia. I didn’t think it would be happening to girls who are my age, or in the UK. But then I found out that it was. All I can remember thinking is was – why hasn’t anyone tried to stop this before?’
These days, Fahma is a trustee of Integrate Bristol, a charity which fights against FGM. At City Academy Bristol, which is one of the only schools in the country that actually run an anti-FGM project, Fahma and her schoolmates have started a group called the #FDL or Female (or ‘fanny’ for the ruder amongst them) Defense League. They’ve made a song for today’s UNs FGM zero-tolerance day which they say is ‘sayin no to bullshit oppression’. It includes a rap in which the girls accuse politicians like education secretary Michael Gove of ignoring the problem: ‘I’m sorry, Mr Micky, if you still don’t get it, then David Cameron oughta say, beat it, Gove, beat it!’
The first official snapshot of the number of women treated by the NHS for genital mutilation will be published this year and numbers are thought to be much higher than previously expected.
Fahma and her schoolmates will be keen to see more government action before the summer holidays, when what’s known as ‘cutting season’ begins, putting girls are at greater risk of FGM. A recent government estimate claims that 20,000 girls under 15 are at risk of genital mutilation every year, with 66,000 women in England and Wales thought to be living with the consequences of FGM. Some victims are said to be just a few weeks old. The first official snapshot of the number of women treated by the NHS for genital mutilation will be published this year and numbers are thought to be much higher than previously expected.
There is, however, some good news, because today the government announced plans for better support for FGM victims and harsher crackdowns for those found to be performing the surgery. From April this year, all hospitals will be forced to report if a patient has undergone FGM or a related procedure and if there has been a previous family history of the practice. By September, the hospitals might report this information to the Department of Health on a monthly basis, with the aim of helping the government support social services and the police in their work to protect women and prosecute those who commit the crime. Jane Ellison, the Public Health Minister, said ‘Female Genital Mutilation is an abhorrent practise that has no place in this – or any other – society. In order to combat it and ensure we can care properly for the girls and women who have suffered mutilation, we need to build a more accurate nationwide picture of the challenge. This is the first step to doing that.’
Whilst we can’t quite believe that the government and hospitals haven’t been doing this already, we definitely applaud any attempt to finally stop the horrific practice once and for all. But whether or not these sanctions will go far enough in helping fill in the loopholes with the current UK FGM act remains to be seen. Speaking to The Huffington Post last week, FGM campaigner Leyla Hussein explained the problems with act as it stood. ‘The UK FGM act expects children to run to the police and sue their parents,’ she said. ‘To be more specific, if I cut my daughter's finger, she is not expected to give evidence against me because the missing finger is evidence enough. Removing her clitoris on the other hand is an entirely different issue; for me to get prosecuted in this case, my daughter would need to testify against me. The worst part of this is that the FGM act has forced perpetrators to perform FGM to children of an even younger age, to make sure that they will not be able to speak out.'
Fahma’s certainly not giving up any time soon. She told* The Guardian* that her and her #FDL mates are 'not going to be quiet, we’re not going to shut up. It’s taken us this long just to get people talking about it, we don’t care how long it takes.' We’re with you on that one, Fahma.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.