UN: At least 200 mn females estimated to be circumcised

At least 200 million girls and women in 30 countries are estimated to have undergone female circumcision, half of them in Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia, the UN children’s agency has said in a report.

The UNICEF statistical report said on Thursday the global figure includes nearly 70 million more girls and women than it estimated in 2014. It said this is due to population growth in some countries and new data from Indonesia. The UN General Assembly unanimously approved a resolution in December 2012 calling for a global ban on female genital mutilation, a centuries-old practice stemming from the belief that circumcising girls controls women’s sexuality and enhances fertility. One of the targets in the new UN goals adopted last September calls for the practice to be eliminated by 2030.

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Geeta Rao Gupta said in a statement coinciding with the new report that “determining the magnitude of female genital mutilation is essential to eliminating the practice.” 

While there has been an overall decline in the prevalence of female genital mutilation over the last three decades, UNICEF said it isn’t enough to keep up with increasing population growth. If current trends continue, it warned that the number of girls and women undergoing FGM “will rise significantly over the next 15 years.”  UNICEF statistical expert Claudia Cappa, lead author of the report, said the estimate of 200 million circumcisions comes from household surveys on the prevalence of female genital mutilation, and statistical modeling.

The 30 countries, mainly in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, “have large-scale representative data,” she told AP. “We still think this is a conservative estimate because we know there are many more countries where the practice exists, but we couldn’t report on it with the same level of care because we don’t have available data.”