Abolishing FGM/C: implement effective social marketing campaigns, do not medicalise it

Over the last four decades, global efforts to end female genital mutilation-cutting (FGM/C), have intensified through combined efforts of both international and non-governmental organisations, governments, religious institutions, and civil society groups.The international commitment to ending FGM/C was reaffirmed in 2012 when the UNGA adopted a resolution calling for global efforts to end the practice.

A wide range of intervention strategies have been implemented with the goal of accelerating the abolishment of FGM/C. Initially, the most common approaches used information and education campaigns that sought to educate people about the adverse health outcomes associated with FGM/C. These previous approaches led to the assumption that as people became increasingly aware of negative health risks, they would weigh this against the perceived positive aspects, and become motivated to abolish the practice.

An early comparative overview of data on practitioners of FGM/C from the demographic and health survey data, drew attention to the problem that in certain settings FGM was being increasingly performed by health care providers. It also characterised declines in FGM/C prevalence as “limited and slow,” with the practice still supported by large segments of the population. This led to speculation that health approaches motivated its medicalisation more than its abolishment.