FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION IN NIGERIA SITUATION ANALYSIS UNFPA 2021

Based on a joint statement issued by the WHO, UNFPA, and UNICEF in 2007 against the practice of FGM and calling for its elimination, the 2008 World Health Assembly (WHA) resolution on the elimination of FGM highlighted the need for member countries to develop and implement policies and plans backed by adequate resources and indicators to track progress, coordination, and impact. The UN General Assembly in 2012 also passed a resolution calling for the elimination of FGM and urging countries to create awareness, allocate resources, and enforce legislation to end the practice. In addition, the United Nations Human Right Council, during its 44th session, passed a resolution calling upon all governments to adopt comprehensive, multisectoral, and rights-based measures to prevent and eliminate FGM. Subsequently, there have been concerted global and national efforts to facilitate the abandonment of FGM. These efforts have been backed by charters, international conventions, legal and policy frameworks, and advocacy. FGM is thought to be still widespread in Nigeria, with certain sociocultural determinants identified as supporting the practice. Critical decision makers can, in fact, be grandmothers, mothers, opinion leaders, and elders, who closely associate it with girls' eligibility to be married. FGM was traditionally the specialization of traditional healers, birth attendants, or members of the community guild for the practice. There is, nowadays, “medicalization”, introduced by trained health practitioners and community health workers. The WHO advocates against this “medicalization” and has advised that FGM must neither be institutionalized nor performed by health professionals in any setting, including hospitals or in the home setting. With improvement in the educational and social status of women and increased awareness of the complications of FGM, most women who underwent FGM disapprove of the practice, and hardly any is prepared to subject their daughters to the harmful procedure. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as all procedures which involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia and/or injury to the female genital organs, whether for cultural or any other non-therapeutic reasons. In Nigeria, the subjection of girls and women to obscure “traditional” practices abounds. FGM is an unhealthy practice inflicted on girls and women, shrouded in secrecy and controversy, as an initiation ceremony of girls into womanhood, or misguidedly to ensure modesty and chastity.