FGM kills 44000 girls a year

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.bmj.com/content/390/bmj.r1758

' FGM kills 44 000 girls each year according to recent research, which analysed 15 African countries.1 This means that FGM is a bigger cause of death than malnutrition, measles, meningitis, HIV/Aids, and many other health threats for girls in the 15 countries studied.1 Yet, no major foundation prioritises funding to end FGM'
...
'We know that over three quarters of the FGM that is happening in Egypt or Sudan is carried out by medical professionals and the medicalisation trend is getting worse.4
This “medicalisation” of FGM is a dangerous trend because it can give the false impression that this violence can somehow be performed in a “safer” way.56 Medicalising FGM does not reduce the harm, it legitimises it. FGM is an act of torture that cannot be made safe no matter who performs it or in what setting it is performed.

Ritual pricking is most prevalent in South east Asia and Indonesia is the most populous muslim country in the world. You are easily looking at 150 million girls and women in South East asia alone who would have experienced it. That study seems to focus on African countries rather than the global picture.

This map shows instances of FGM globally from Unicef.

But page says it should have been updated in March this name, but wasn't?

Those poor babies.

'many Malay Muslims, especially amongst the older generations, believe the procedure reduces a woman's libido and decreases the risk of extramarital sexual affairs.'

To two year olds. God almighty.

I think this point is astute:

"We start trying to control women's bodies at infancy. It's the first sign to a child that her body is not hers, it's the community's," said Filzah, who is a project co-ordinator at gender equality rights group Aware.
"An infant at two weeks wouldn't know anything at all. How could she possibly consent to anything?" adds Zarifah.
According to her, all the Malay Muslim girls in Singapore she knows have undergone this procedure. All of them were unaware of it until they asked their parents.'

Yes, the silence around the topic is unnerving. I was very involved in women's and green groups and knew loads of activist types (like from AWARE) but the subject never came up. So when it did in a conversation with a religious teacher around 2000, I was quite shaken. Then it took another 2 decades for it to be mentioned in activist circles. Even now the topic is very much confined to these tiny circles and no where in the mass outreach domain.