Female genital mutilation in the United Kingdom

According to Equality Now and City University London, an estimated 103,000 women and girls aged 15–49 were thought to be living with female genital mutilation (FGM) in England and Wales as of 2011.

The diaspora communities in the UK thought to be at high risk of FGM include those from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan.

Girls from communities in which FGM is commonplace are often taken to their countries of origin during the school summer holidays in order to undergo the procedure.

[18] Two years after she founded FORWARD, the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 made it an offence in the UK to perform FGM on children or adults.

[12] In 1993 a councillor at the London Borough of Brent proposed a motion that FGM should be legalised and made available on the National Health Service.

John said she suffered verbal attacks, including threats that she herself would be mutilated; interviewed in 2014, she said she believed her treatment had deterred people for years from opposing FGM in case they were accused of racism.

[22] Per the City University study:[23] The number of women aged 15-49 resident in England and Wales born in FGM practising regions having migrated to the UK was 182000 in 2001 and increased to 283000 in 2011.

[30] A 17-year-old student from Bristol, Fahma Mohamed, created with support from The Guardian an online petition on 6 February 2014 with Change.org, on the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation.

[31] The petition asked Michael Gove, then education secretary, to write to primary and secondary schools, encouraging them to be alert to FGM.

Gove met Mohamed and members of the youth group Integrate Bristol, who have played a key role in raising awareness of FGM.

[39][40] The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women expressed concern in July 2013 that there had been no FGM-related convictions in the UK.

"[41] The first charges were announced in March 2014 against a doctor, accused of having performed FGM on a woman from Somalia who had just given birth at the Whittington Hospital in north London.

Richard Kerbaj, "Thousands of girls mutilated in Britain",The Times, 16 March 2009 (courtesy link Archived 2013-06-26 at the Wayback Machine).