Thursday 6 February 2014

Change.org - #endFGM

Join schoolgirl Fahma Mohamed's campaign for schools to teach the risks of cultural female mutilation practises - click here

To summarise what is being done to young British girls aged from a few weeks to young womanhood, picture it in the form of a criminal investigation:
  • The families of underage British girls enable a stranger to commit GBH/ABH/assault on their daughter.
  • The stranger is 'armed and dangerous'.
  • The stranger is either located in an unfamiliar country to which the girls are taken by family members to be assaulted - the 'accessories' to the crime - or the stranger has travelled to the U.K. with the specific intent of committing ABH/GBH/assault and the permanent mutilation of underage girls.
  • The lasting trauma impacted on these girls could be compared to having suffered an act of terrorism, where the intention by the assailant is to ingrain and impose a cultural form of repression on women.
With all the existing assault laws, anti-terrorism laws, abduction and human trafficking laws, laws governing surgical procedures, cosmetic procedures and body modification in the UK, and domestic violence awareness in the current political agenda, the outline protocols are already in place for reasonable and clear prosecution of such perpetrators.

What is needed is to reframe the perception of such incidents so that potential victims can identify them as crimes, and are empowered and enabled in turn to know that there are grounds to report what they see and hear for their own safety, in the same way we teach personal safety in schools already - whether part of the curriculum, or by charity organisations such as the NSPCC Childline Schools Service.

You can sign the petition on Change.org and spread the word further by sharing on social media using the hashtag: #endFGM

L xxxxx