Woman Who Survived Female Genital Mutilation Is Now Working To Ban It

Fixers is a series from What's Working that profiles the people behind the most creative solutions to big problems.  When Gambian president Yahya Jammeh banned female genital mutilation in his country last month, no one was as surprised as Jaha Dukureh. "I couldn't even believe it," said Dukureh, a native of the small West African country where about 75 percent of girls are subjected to female genital mutilation, or FGM, the ritual practice of cutting off a girl's external genitalia. The ban is a major victory for 26-year-old Dukureh, who now lives in Atlanta and has made it her life’s work to end FGM both in the U.S. and abroad. Now, she is directly involved in writing the Gambian law. The nonprofit she founded, Safe Hands for Girls, is helping draft the legislation. Dukureh told HuffPost that the ban was a welcome surprise despite the political climate. "I'm happy that the president prioritized girls and women despite the elections," she said. Dukureh says the law will likely include both prison time and monetary fines as punishment for FGM. In other African countries where FGM has been outlawed, the sentences include short prison terms (6 months to 3 years on average) and fines ranging from $5 to $5000. She has been campaigning against FGM since 2013, when she founded Safe Hands for Girls. It's a deeply personal crusade for Dukureh, who told the NY Daily News that she was less than a week old when her labia and clitoris were cu...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news