FGM. CLASS IN SWEDEN WHERE EVERY GIRL UNDERWENT PROCEDURE EXPOSED.

The harrowing tales of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (Photo credit: DFID - UK Department for International Development)

School health services in Norkopping, eastern Sweden found that 60 girls returning to school after holidays to their parents country of origin had been subject to FGM (female genital mutilation). The 28 girls from the same class had been subjected to infibulation, the most extreme form of FGM where the clitoris and labia are completely cut away and the genitals are sewn together leaving just a small opening of the vagina.                                FGM has been punishable by a prison sentence in Sweden since 1982 but was updated to include FGM performed outside the country in 1999.  Considered by communities to be allowed for religious,social and cultural reasons as well as necessary for developement of females into adulthood and marraige FGM comes along with mental illness,  chronic vaginal and pelvic infections, abnormal periods, persistent urine infections, possible kidney failure and infertility according to UK NHS.    "We're working to inform parents that they could face prison if they come back and their children have undergone female genital mutilation,” said Petra Blom Andersson, student health coordinator in Norrköping.                                                                                    FGM is also a problem in the UK, where, it is estimated that over 20,000 girls under the age of 15 are at risk, and that 60,000 women have been operated on.   As in Sweden girls in the UK are most at risk in the summer months when taken abroad and mutilated at the hands of the girls relatives making prosecution of the parents difficult to prove. The law can only prosecute the main perpetrators of FGM.                        UK Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer, unveiled plans to increase convictions under existing legislation,  the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act, which creates an offence of causing or allowing a child or vulnerable adult to die or suffer serious physical harm.                                                                                                           The World Health Organisation predicts that 125 million girls and women alive today have been subjected to FGM in the 29 Africa and Middle Eastern countries where it is most frequently performed                                                                                                                                           Related articles

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