“Almost four and a half million girls worldwide (4.4 million or 12,000 per day) are at risk of genital mutilation (or clitoral cutting) this year,”an egregious violation of basic human rights“said UN Secretary General António Guterres this Tuesday.
Female genital mutilation, which consists of the removal of the clitoris and sometimes the vaginal lips, is a common practice in many African countries – to a lesser extent in Asia -, despite the fact that majority religions such as Christianity and Islam expressly condemn it.
(Read also: Female genital mutilation, a practice that continues to occur in Colombia)
The secretary general does not doubt that they are “patriarchal structures and attitudes” those who are at the origin of this practice, and asks to “amplify the voices” of all those who suffered this practice and later became aware of what it meant for their bodily autonomy.
It also calls for “restricting access to education and employment” of those people who have contributed to perpetuating this practice, without giving other details.
(You can read: The woman who denounced the abuse and torture of her father, the famous pastor TB Joshua)
The phenomenon of genital mutilation has made the leap from Africa to European countries, where some communities of African origin They practice it clandestinely, as happens with other phenomena such as child marriage..
The African Parliament launched, together with the UN, an initiative to prohibit excision on that continent.
The United Nations Population Fund (Unfpa, in English), in a statement issued today, regrets that progress in the fight against this phenomenon is very slow: “It should be at least ten times faster” to reach its total elimination in 2030.
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The UNFPA estimates that in the world there are 200 million women alive who have suffered this practice.
EFE
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