New laws aimed at preventing young girls being taken abroad to undergo female genital mutilation are to be fast-tracked within weeks, amid fears that the number of cases could soar during the summer holidays.
David Cameron has ordered ministers to rush through measures before schools break up next month.
The measures will enable local authorities, social workers or police to apply directly to courts to ensure that any individual they suspect of trying to take someone abroad for FGM will have to surrender their passport and other travel documents with immediate effect.
The plan had been to introduce new FGM “protection orders” in parliament later in the year, but the prime minister and senior members of the cabinet, including home secretary Theresa May, decided greater urgency was necessary.
Anyone who breaches such an order would be guilty of an offence carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison.
Girls are thought to be at particular risk of FGM during the summer holidays, when they are most likely to be taken abroad for the mutilation to be carried out.
Cameron told the Observer: “Female genital mutilation is a cruel and barbaric practice. At last year’s global summit in London, I said we should not rest until this abhorrent practice is stopped everywhere. But the fact that it is happening right here, to young women and girls in our own country, sickens and appals me. These new orders will help in the fight against this horrific abuse.”
Experts, who welcomed the latest government action, say those organising for girls or women to undergo FGM overseas often choose the summer holidays because they believe those subjected to mutilation will have a better chance of recovering from the physical effects and are therefore more likely to avoid suspicion on return.
The moves, to be introduced through statutory instruments in parliament, follow the release of figures showing that 578 girls were treated for FGM in England in March – a number that campaigners called the “tip of the iceberg”. This took the total of identified cases, compiled by the Health and Social Care Information Centre, to 3,963 since data was first collected last September. Sixty of these cases involved girls under 18.
Global campaigns to stop FGM have risen to the top of its agenda since last year, after the Guardian and other organisations launched campaigns to highlight the extent of the practice. A Guardian petition pressured the Department for Education into writing to all schools about its dangers and the abuse of human rights involved.
Equality Now, a global campaigning organisation for women’s human rights, estimates that 137,000 women and girls living in England and Wales have been affected by FGM.
The practice involves the partial or total removal or injury of the external female genitalia and is seen by some cultures as a way to reduce libido, thereby protecting their virginity before marriage and increasing the chances of marital fidelity. The World Health Organisation estimates that globally 100-140 million women have undergone some form of FGM.
Ministers say the FGM protection orders are similar to forced marriage protection orders which it is believed have prevented more than 800 women resident in the UK from being subjected to forced marriages since they were introduced in 2007.
They say the initiative builds on a series of measures to combat FGM’s use on women resident in this country and across the world.
The UK is the biggest international donor to efforts aimed at tackling FGM, investing up to £35m over five years
The practice was banned in the UK in 1985. The law was strengthened in 2003 to prevent children travelling to undergo FGM abroad, although there has yet to be a successful prosecution.
Mary Wandia, FGM programme manager for Equality Now, said: “It is fantastic that the UK is continuing to ensure that FGM is urgently treated as a human rights violation.
“We hope that the UK can become a model for other countries in terms of ending FGM, but psychological, emotional and health support is still urgently needed for survivors.”
John Cameron, of the NSPCC, also welcomed the move as a big step forward, but said more needed to be done to encourage people to report cases where they believed FGM had taken place or was at risk of taking place.
Cameron said the fact there had still been no successful prosecution was evidence of the scale of the challenge. The high threshold of proof needed to bring prosecutions against those involved in a process surrounded by secrecy meant people had to be even more on the alert: “20,000 children in the UK are still at risk of FGM. The message needs to be given through prosecutions that this is not acceptable,” he said.
To build a shelter for girls running away from FGM in Kenya click here
To build a shelter for girls fleeing FGM in Gambia click here: globalgiving.org/projects/EndFGM
