UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation is acelerating efforts to end FGM
Gloria Chelangat was born and raised in a community with a deep-rooted practice: female genital mutilation .
To date, nowhere in Uganda is it practised more than in Sebei and Karamoja regions, both located on the eastern side of the country. Uganda's southwestern neighbour had randomly popped into her head as a potential destination for her naive, desperate escape plot yet she knew nothing about Rwanda. "Stories about FGM were many at school, but there were no activists. No-one came to say that this practice should stop. It seemed normal. So I stepped in," she says.
"We would then pause and ask them questions: 'Why do you think FGM is wrong?'....'What do you think should be done?'...Their views mattered," says Ms. Chelangat, who returned to Kapchorwa from Kween to complete her secondary education. The UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on the Elimination of FGM, created in 2008 to accelerate efforts to end FGM in a phased approach, is changing gears in its ambitious quest to eliminate the harmful practice in the 17 countries where it is implemented.
The Joint Programme's annual report for 2021, which is titled Delivering and sustaining in the new normal and was released in September, presents encouraging numbers. The number of girls prevented from being cut rose from 16,251 in 2018 to 216,853 in 2021, thanks to surveillance systems established to protect girls from a practice that potentially has devastating health consequences.
"As the world witnesses various humanitarian crises and competition for resources, the focus on FGM must not diminish." FGM is commonplace in Bukwo and Kween, also districts in Sebei region, but it is more rife in the Karamoja districts of Moroto, Nakapiripirit and Amudat - in that order.One person who has seen FGM first hand and considers it an"evil" practice is Uganda's Minister of State for Karamoja Affairs, Agnes Nandutu.
"In fact, these days, they cut them at a tender age in order for them to go for marriage as early as possible."
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