As an anti-FGM campaigner currently volunteering with http://www.forwarduk.org.uk, our approach is to fund and encourage women’s empowerment civil society organisations to provide a space for dialogue for their peers.

With relatively little intervention, if women are allowed to discuss amongst themselves what they would like to change, they do very quickly come to realise how damaging FGM is. This sometimes starts with the women whose daughters have died through the procedure, but spreads to those who are adversely affected by it.

What is also vitally important is that men agree to uphold a community decision to shift away from FGM. Often it is conducted because women know their daughters will not be married if they are uncut. If men agree to marry uncut women, this ensures there are no economic benefits from FGM. It’s also vital that a whole community shifts at once.

So whilst I completely agree with the sentiment above that people need to find their own solutions to shifting, there does still need to be some intervention – either in terms of funding community workers, or health workers or simply funding girls’ education or economic interventions (microfinance?) to act as a catalyst to speed up and prioritise these issues.

It’s important to look at the issue as one inside the culture/community itself & THEN work with the people to end it on THEIR terms.

A history lesson can be found in the book, “Politics of the Womb” by Lynn M. Thomas