Steep aid cuts put slow gains against female genital mutilation at risk

While female genital mutilation, or FGM, is illegal in Kenya, it’s so ingrained in culture in some areas of the country that manyfamilies go to great lengths to circumvent the law and secretly cut their girls. Young girls who’ve been subjected to it are then often forced to be married off to men decades older — often becoming pregnant teenagers.

But when a young girl, with her small pelvis, becomes pregnant, the lack of elasticity of her scarred reproductive organs can lead to obstructed labor. She can also experience postpartum hemorrhage, eclampsia, and fistula. Girls and their babies have died from FGM-linked complications during delivery.

Those working to fight this crime say high-level political commitment, laws, and prosecutions aren’t enough when cultural traditions are so deeply held. A slow-moving, context-specific strategy of changing mindsets is the only way it may eventually be eliminated.

But that work has long been heavily supported by development aid. As foreign aid budgets were cut drastically, global work to end FGM has been impacted. This includes cuts from the United States and the United Kingdom.

These cuts impact work on the ground in places such as Narok County, Kenya, where grassroots organizations are working to provide another path in life for these girls and to educate communities around the dangers of FGM.

And the impact of these foreign aid cuts goes beyond work specifically targeting FGM — they also impact whether these teenage girls have skilled medical workers available to handle delivery complications when they go into labor and whether they have adequate access to family planning.

Keep reading: Join Devex as we travel to Narok County, Kenya, to visit rescue homes and health facilities to hear the stories of those who’ve escaped female genital mutilation and early marriage and those working to end it.