So-called “honour crimes” have risen by 40 per cent in five years in London, with the number of forced marriages doubling in the same period. According to the figures, obtained by the Evening Standard, some of the children involved in the abuse were younger than ten-years-old. Since 2012, honour crimes reported to the Metropolitan Police […]

Less than half of teachers said they had been given training to recognise the signs of forced marriage, according to a new survey. One-third feared they could be seen as racist or otherwise prejudiced if they reported concerns about honour-based abuse including female genital mutilation, said the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) which conducted […]

When American cosmetic surgeon Ivona Percec encountered her first patient to have been subjected to female genital mutilation, a widely scorned but enduring cultural practice in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia that intentionally alters or excises the genital organs of girls and women for non-medical reasons, she was speechless with shock. Not […]

Conservative MP Nusrat Ghani has brought forward a motion that certain crimes against women should no longer be described in relation to ‘honour’. Her rationale sounds reasonable – that describing these crimes differently has meant that police have been treating them as less serious; that they have been avoiding dealing with these crimes due to […]

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark was the special guest at the world premiere on Thursday evening of Jaha’s Promise, a feature documentary on female genital mutilation (FGM) following the life story of a 26-year-old campaigner Jaha Dukureh. The film, made by the Guardian and Accidental Pictures, got a standing ovation from the audience at the […]

Smuggling vulva-decorated cupcakes into the Somali region of Ethiopia was one of those moments where I thought: “My work as an anti-FGM campaigner gets me into interesting situations sometimes.” Three years earlier I’d made vulva cupcakes as part of a documentary about FGMthat I’d done for Channel 4. “We need you to bring them with […]

New figures reveal the number of women who have undergone hospital treatment after being put through “horrendous” female genital mutilation (FGM) – and how the crime can remain hidden for years. The Advertiser has obtained figures in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from health trusts across the capital, which reveal that at least 1,600 […]

Britain’s Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) recorded over 1,400 victims in 2016, up from 1,200 the previous year. Nazir Afzal, former head of the North-West Crown Prosecution Service, told the taxpayer-funded broadcaster that “one of the major things stopping victims coming forward is the codes of silence that exist in the family”. Afzal likened the culture […]

The police inspector in charge of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) investigations in London said the Metropolitan Police still does not know where young women and girls are being cut and disfigured. Inspector Allen Davis’s comments came as the NHS revealed there were nearly 5,500 new FGM cases reported to hospitals, clinics and GPs in 2016. No one has ever been […]