{"id":585,"date":"2014-06-14T10:32:48","date_gmt":"2014-06-14T10:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/?p=585"},"modified":"2021-12-01T14:34:16","modified_gmt":"2021-12-01T14:34:16","slug":"petition-to-end-fgm-in-us-nears-200000-signatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/petition-to-end-fgm-in-us-nears-200000-signatures\/","title":{"rendered":"Petition to end FGM in US nears 200,000 signatures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.change.org\/petitions\/end-fgm-now-protect-girls-from-getting-cut-and-support-victims-of-female-genital-mutilation-in-the-usa\">petition that calls on the Obama administration <\/a>to tackle the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the United States has been signed by nearly 200,000 people.<\/p>\n<p>Jaha Dukureh, a victim of FGM who has spearheaded the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.change.org\/petitions\/end-fgm-now-protect-girls-from-getting-cut-and-support-victims-of-female-genital-mutilation-in-the-usa\">Change.org petition<\/a>, will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet\u00a0 some of the more than 50 members of Congress who have lent their support to Dukureh&#8217;s petition, which calls on Barack Obama and the Department of Health and Human Services to commission research into the scale and severity of the problem in the US. Dukureh launched her campaign at the Guardian\u2019s New York office last month with UN representative Nafissatou Diop, US congressman Joe Crowley and Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger.<\/p>\n<p>Doctors treating women and girls with FGM say the research is badly needed. \u201cWe would know, we\u2019d have a better sense of it nationally \u2026 The challenge that I\u2019ve faced over my entire career has been that often times we do not have data,\u201d said Dr Crista Johnson-Agbakwu, who treats women from 43 countries at the Refugee Women\u2019s Health Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, where a \u201cstaggering amount\u201d of her patients have been cut.<\/p>\n<p>FGM is a 5,000-year-old practice that takes place\u00a0 across large parts of Africa, the Middle East and south-east Asia. While there are varying types of severity, it essentially involves the partial or entire removal of the external female genitalia. Type III FGM, the most severe, requires the girl to be sewn closed until her wedding night. While there are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/video\/2011\/apr\/18\/female-genital-mutilation-video\">grassroots movements<\/a> in some African countries to phase out the practice, many diaspora communities still <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/video\/2014\/may\/13\/fgm-us-girls-american-female-genital-mutilation-video\">require a girl<\/a> to be cut.<\/p>\n<p>Read More:<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2014\/jun\/10\/end-fgm-us-petition-signatures\">http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2014\/jun\/10\/end-fgm-us-petition-signatures<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A\u00a0 petition that calls on the Obama administration to tackle the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the United States has been signed by nearly 200,000 people. Jaha Dukureh, a victim of FGM who has spearheaded the Change.org petition, will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet\u00a0 some of the more than 50 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[138,98,7,53,38,139,4,140,141],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-female","tag-fgm","tag-forced-marriage","tag-forced-marriage-unit","tag-foreign-office","tag-genital","tag-halo-project","tag-mutilation","tag-united-states"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1815,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions\/1815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haloproject.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}