06, Aug 2018

Somalia’s Attorney General, Ahmed Ali Dahir, has announced the country’s first prosecution over FGM, after a 10-year-old girl haemorrhaged to death after undergoing a traditional cutting in mid-July 2018, the Guardian reported. At a conference on female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, Dahir said that a team of ten investigators had been dispatched to interview the parents of the girl and the village cutter who conducted the procedure. The conference organiser, End FGM, tweeted that Dahir said, “We are ready to take it to court”. Somalia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Mahdi Mohamed Gulaid, was also in attendance at the conference, and said, “It is not acceptable that in the 21st century FGM is continuing in Somalia. It should not be part of our culture. It is definitely not part of the Islamic religion.” 98% of women and girls undergo FGM, the highest rate worldwide.