Female Genital Mutilation in Africa

Abstract

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is routinely practiced as tradition in twenty nine countries in Africa and the Middle East nations, many of them in West Africa distributed more or less contiguously across a zone running from Senegal in the west to the east. Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda practice FGM.