Tostan [to 7 February 2015]
February 6, 2015

Tostan’s contributions to ending FGC highlighted by Government and UN agencies at national press conference

Dakar, Senegal – At a Press Conference held yesterday in Dakar, the Government of Senegal, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) shared the results of a recent government study on the practice of FGC in Senegal. According to this 86-page government report, Practices of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting of Girls and Women in Senegal (December 2014), the country has seen significant decreases in the number of young girls affected by FGC. The study revealed that among girls aged 0-15, who have a mother and at least one sibling who have been cut, the prevalence of FGC dropped from 20% in 2005 to 6.2% in 2010—that’s a 69% reduction over the course of five years.

The author of the study, Saturnin Kinson Kodjo, credited Tostan’s approach of non-formal human rights education and community engagement to the increasing number of communities that are abandoning the practice of FGC. “The best solution to abandoning FGC is Tostan’s approach of capacity building in communities and public declarations of abandonment,” he said. He recommended the continuation of the Tostan program in Senegal in order to put an end the practice in the coming years.
Tostan’s Chief Executive Officer, Molly Melching, was invited to talk about the success of Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program in helping communities make the decision to abandon FGC…