Ki-moon: Stop female genital mutilation

Opening the landmark media campaign that seeks to end the practice, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged all people, women and men, to support the fight against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). "The mutilation of girls and women must stop in this generation, our generation," the UN chief said in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

The campaign which was first initiated in Britain by the guardian Newspaper journalist Maggie O'Kane was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2012. It will provide key journalists in Kenya who will be reporting on FGM's risks and consequences, with grants which will be awarded annually. Announcing the grant to reporters and heads of Kenya's main media players, Ban said he hopes that Kenyan media would be a role model, which could be replicated across Africa. "Not only do we hope to support the Kenyan media in bringing the issue of FGM to national and global attention, but we hope to create a media model that can be reproduced in other countries," Ban said.

Female Genital Mutilation is a celebrated ritual that removes some or all of the external female genitalia. In Africa and in the Middle East the practice is normally carried out by traditional circumcizers. They usually use a blade or razor with or without anaesthesia.

Speaking at the launch Maggie O'Kane, an award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker who is also the coordinator of the British Guardian Newspaper said about six thousand girls across the globe are being subjected to FGM each day. "I have interviewed many victims who talk about the brutality and it is something that they never recovered," O'kane said.

'With your help we will succeed'

The World Health Organization estimates that more than 125 million women from 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East have been mutilated. Speaking to DW, Tobe Levin, vice president and founder of Forward Germany ("zero tolerance to FGM"), also founding secretary of the European Network against FGM said she is optimistic that the practice could be stopped.

"Nigerian contemporary grandmothers had been cut. But already their daughters and their grand daughters had not. And when you have mothers who have chosen to spare their daughters, it's likely that those daughters are not going to pass the practice on. And this is a cause for rejoicing," said Levin.

Many rights activists have also been criticizing the practice and also people who are continuing with the process in western countries saying that it is a violation of human rights. But FGM survivor Kakenya Ntaiya told DW during the launch of the campaign that she knows that the process which is painful and traumatizing will come to an end. "When I underwent the practice, it was celebrated, we didn't know it was against the law," Ntaiya said. "But today, the story is different. Why are we letting it happening?"

Most of women who underwent the practice have been risking infertility, complications during delivery or even death. "Change can happen with sustained media attention on the damaging public health consequences of FGM," Ban said. "With your help, we will succeed, said Ban.