Africa: Joining the Fight Against Gender-Based Violence

Nairobi — The small compensation Fartun Abdi Ahmed, 25, takes from having her genitalia ritually excised with a knife used on six other girls is that the procedure took place in a rural part of Somalia, where the risk of infection, from HIV, for example, was relatively low.

"One cannot imagine the pain, the fear and the stress I went through; thank God it was a rural area and so we did not get some of the infections that are common nowadays," Ahmed, a refugee, said on 23 November at the launch of a 16-day campaign against gender violence in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. "FGM [female genital mutilation/cutting] is the number-one form of gender-based violence for women in Somalia."

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