Female Genital Mutilation has been illegal in the UK for over 30 years, but the number of women and girls affected by FGM is still rising. The government estimates 170 000 women and girls in the UK have undergone FGM.
Nevertheless there has been not one successful prosecution against FGM since.
What is missing is not the jurisdiction but the willingness to act, which leads to child abuse and a violation of human rights.
Now members of the British parliament speak up and demand harsher penalties against professionals who decide not to report FGM in children.
There are laws, training programmes for teachers and medical professionals in order to identify girls and women who are at risk, but still the protection fails. It needs the willingness to act upon perpetrators and the combination of prevention and punishment, when it already happened, until then FGM will remain effectively a legal practice in the UK!
We demand action!
