Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation

:<small class="delsort-notice">Note: This debate has been included in the Article Rescue Squadron's list of content for rescue consideration. Cherylbarksdale (talk) 01:58, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
The Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation is a global campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM). The campaign links grassroots activism in countries that still practice FGM to each other to foster communication, information and strategy sharing. The mission of the campaign is to ensure that countries practicing FGM adopts a definitive strategy to end FGM and provide protection to women and girls who flee their countries for fear of being mutilated.
History
In the 1960s medical practitioners in FGM practicing countries started to speak out against the practice citing health concerns. By 1997, formal research had been done by the World Health Organization on the health consequences of FGM which is practiced mostly in Africa. After WHO found that over 30 million women in Nigeria had undergone some form of genital mutilation, in 1998 The Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation was established in Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa to give all those standing against FGM a unified voice . On February 6, 2003, the First Lady of Nigeria, Stella Obasanjo declared February 6, the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation and called for stronger collaboration in African countries on the Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation. Since then, the UN has recognized February 6th as an awareness day marked every year by the global Campaign Against Female Genital Mutilation and anti-FGM campaigns around the world.
Campaign Status
Since the campaign began, many countries have abandoned the practice. Several FGM practicing communities continue to join the campaign . In addition to African countries, the campaign has expanded to Europe and America where immigrant communities still practice FGM. On February 6, 2012, CAGeM hosted the International Day Against Female Genital Mutilation awareness event in New York with Amnesty International New York City Women's Human Rights Action Team. The event highlighted the progress of the global campaign and Anti-FGM laws in the United States including the status of the Girls Protection Act of 2011 which protects girls from being removed from the United States to be genitally mutilated . The bill was introduced on June 16, 2011 and referred to the subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security on August 25, 2011, but is yet to be passed. Although the campaign has had success with establishing anti-FGM laws in several countries, enforcement continues to be a major challenge of the campaign .

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