Campaigners are calling on American lawmakers to develop a clear strategy for ending FGM in the US in the wake of a new report that shows at least 500,000 women are at risk or have been subjected to the practice.
The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) on Friday said up to 507,000 women in the US are affected by the practice, more than double what the data analysis firm estimated in 2000. This report comes one day after the Guardian reported on unpublished Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that say 513,000 women and girls have been affected by the practice.
Jaha Dukureh was cut as a baby in her home country of the Gambia and is leading the campaign against FGM in the US. She launched a campaign, backed by the Guardian, in May 2014 calling for the government to conduct a new prevalence study on the practice, which it had not examined since 1997.
“Now that we have those numbers, I believe the US government needs to step up and they need to do more,” said Dukureh at a UN press conference on Friday.
She and officials at the PRB, which has collaborated with the CDC to create the estimates, were not surprised by the increase, which is in part attributed to the rising number of people living in the US with ties to countries that have a higher prevalence of FGM.
“Those numbers didn’t come as a shock to me. I’m not surprised at all,” said Dukureh, who lives in Atlanta. “It is the reason why I started that petition.”
She said that it is essential for young people and men to be a part of the movement to end the practice through education efforts and campaigning. In October, Dukureh led the first youth summit on the practice in the Gambia.
The 25-year-old mother of three was inspired by the work of Fahma Mohamed, who campaigned for the UK government to get information about FGM into its schools. The Guardian also worked with Mohamed as part of its campaign to end FGM, which launched last year.
Charlotte Feldman Jacobs, associate vice-president of International Programs and Program Director for Gender at PRB, said that the data released on Friday is important for informing policy decisions on women’s healthcare.
“We have a responsibility to girls and women in this country to give them the best healthcare that we know how,” said Feldman Jacobs. “How can we do that unless we know what risk they’re at or what they have suffered?”
The PRB estimates also looked at which countries most US women and girls at risk for FGM came from. The three top countries – Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia – accounted for 55% of the females at risk in 2013.
California, Washington, Texas, Minnesota, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia have the highest number of women or girls at risk and that population is primarily concentrated to metropolitan areas and their suburbs.
The US outlawed conducting FGM on minors in 1996. A law enacted in 2013 made it illegal for people to knowingly transport girls or women out of the country for the purpose of cutting – sometimes called “vacation cutting”.
“I think if we are serious about that law, then there has to be some follow-up policy actions about how are we going to enforce that law,” said Feldman Jacobs.
Democratic representatives Joe Crowley of New York and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas on Thursday introduced legislation to bring an end to the practice. The Zero Tolerance for FGM Act of 2015 would require the US government to create a strategy to protect women in the US from FGM.
“Lessons can be drawn from ongoing efforts to stop FGM, including in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, where the government, in collaboration with FGM survivors, is taking strong action,” Crowley said in a statement. “In order to improve efforts to protect these little girls, we must know the facts about FGM in the United States.”
The White House National Security Council spokeswoman, Bernadette Meehan, reiterated comments made by Barack Obama in July, calling for an end to the practice. “It carries grave dangers to physical and mental health, and the US government considers it to be a serious human rights abuse and a form of gender-based violence,” Meehan said.
In conjunction with the UN’s 12th annual International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM, the state department is encouraging people to share photos of themselves with a zero sign and posting it with the hashtag #Togetherforzero.
