“When I realised I wasn’t going to get help I started to stare at the ceiling. I remember feeling cold, humiliated, confused, and felt the worst pain ever. I started to shut down but the sound of the tools had all my attention throughout the whole procedure."


Are you at risk of:

 • Severe blood loss, pain, shock and infections

• Difficult or painful sex

• Psychological health issues such as depression, flash
backs or low self-esteem

•Death due to blood loss

• Urinary tract infections

• Painful and prolonged periods

 • Infertility

• Difficulty in passing urine

• Complications during pregnancy or child birth

 • Obstetric fistula

1 in 20 women and girls in Southwalk are at risk due to Female Genital Mutilation. This means multiple women and girls down my road are at risk, hundreds of thousands of our sisters in our communities and over 100 million beautiful women and girls worldwide.

Female genital mutilation is classified into four major types:

• Type 1 – Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and, in very rare cases, only the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris).
• Type 2 – Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (the labia are “the lips” that surround the vagina).
• Type 3 – Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, or outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.
• Type 4 – Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.

FORWARD are a charity run by an incredible team to help our sisters and brothers to abolish this practice. Here is a link to their website if you would like to learn more: 

http://forwarduk.org.uk/

If you have any spare cash this month please please please donate generously to help FORWARD to complete this mission and allow everyone to have basic human rights. FGM is not 'culture'. It's a fierce form of physical and psychological abuse. We need to work together to rehabilitate, protect and educate.

Here's another link to introduce some of the inspirational women working to end this practice:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewtucker/these-british-women-are-all-survivors-of-female-genital-muti?utm_term=.hp9BQwG94D#.txBQk3OdLE

“It’s more than written words or spoken words; it’s far from just an experience. It’s a psychological grief and betrayal that repeated in me from a child until this day." - Feyrus Hussein, FGM campaigner