@lastonetoleaveturnoutthelights: Mao's single most positive legacy was the emancipation of women. He used his political capital to abolish child marriage, prostitution, and concubinage. He wanted women in the workplace contributing to the economy so I guess it came down to profitability! We might hate what happened during the Cultural Revolution, but we have to accept there were some benefits. Nothing is ever black or white.
We can feel angered by 'cautious' approaches by development groups but this slower, less judgmental, more committed approach is working. Otherwise the danger is that you alienate Africans by constantly criticising their culture. Ultimately, they have to be the ones to take the decision to stop cutting by seeing it as their own decision and taken for the positive reasons. Otherwise as has happened in the past, they pretend to agree and go ahead secretly anyway. Senegal's government reviewed all the different attempts by various groups to abolish cutting and concluded that Tostan was the only programme achieving long term results. The Grandmother Project, too, has achieved significant results over the last 3 years in Veringala, Senegal.
As to the cutting of girls either in Western countries or those taken out during summer holidays, I think the UK has a legal problem to overcome. It is illegal to perform FGM on British subjects but many of the immigrants do not have British nationality and therefore can't always be prosecuted. This can't be the case in France or Sweden where prosecutions (hefty fines and prison sentences) and medical checkups of returning targeted families have happened. That's what I was told at the Feminism in London conference last year when we had a question and answer session. If that's the case, we should be trying to change the law. This would empower the older girls who could argue with their parents that the British law was on their side and prosecutions or just the threat of a prosecution might act as a deterrant.