In today’s world, the girl child is the most vulnerable, and female genital mutilation (FGM) is one of the cruellest practices and forms of discrimination against girls and women. There are 200-million women in the world that have been victims of FGM, of which 92-million are in Africa. Each year three million girls are at risk on the continent. Every 11 seconds a girl will be cut.<\/p>\n
Herself a victim of the practice, gender rights activist\u00a0Leyla Hussein<\/a>\u00a0believes it’s time to call it what it is. Hussein was one of the speakers at the recent\u00a0Oslo Freedom Forum<\/a>\u00a0(OFF) in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought I had escaped the wort trauma of FGM but, after a routine examination, I blacked out. It was only then that I understood that I had blocked out the trauma of what had happened to me. I was cut with 200 million other women, purely because we are women. We need to call it for what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n She took on the role of breaking the cycle and to protect girls from this practice. \u201cFGM is an attack on female sexuality and part of a war on female sexuality that also includes other forms of discrimination against women, such as child marriages and unequal pay for men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n For her, language is very important in this work. \u201cFGM is not a cultural or religious practice, it is child abuse. A cultural practice is the food we eat and music we listen to. Harming or abusing a human being is not cultural and we need to speak about it not as cultural but as abuse.\u201d<\/p>\nBreaking the cycle<\/h2>\n