Whose voices and bodies matter? Global norms condemning FGM

Blog post by Debra L. DeLaet, Drake University, USA

On February 6 each year, the United Nations observes the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This observance aligns with anti-FGM initiatives within numerous UN agencies. Eradicating FGM by 2030 is a critical target of Sustainable Development Goal 5 focused on promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. In 2024, the theme of the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM was #HerVoiceMatters, described as an effort to elevate the voices of survivors in mobilizing support for global efforts to eliminate FGM.

Despite the implied universality in campaigns such as #HerVoiceMatters, legal inconsistencies and cultural biases in global anti-FGM initiatives beg questions about whose voices – and whose bodies – matter in practice. According to the official website for the International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM, FGM ‘comprises all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons…’ The simplicity of this definition, alongside the stated goal of zero tolerance, asserts a universal standard that seemingly should apply to women and girls across cultures. 

However, global norms developed within the United Nations system and reflected in anti-FGM laws in Western countries treat FGM exclusively as a set of non-Western practices. In my Identities article, ‘FGM and genital cutting across borders: cultural biases in the contestation of global human rights’, I detail the ways in which the disparate treatment of non-Western and Western genital modification practices by the United Nations and Western countries represent efforts to maintain gendered and racialized social orders reflecting the values and practices of dominant groups.
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In 1997, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed a classification of FGM into four different types, including partial or total removal of the clitoris (Type 1), clitoral modifications/ excisions coupled with partial or total removal of the labia (Type 2), infibulation (Type 3) and other harmful procedures, such as genital pricking or piercing, performed for non-medical reasons (Type 4). Although this typology ostensibly creates uniform standards, the WHO and other UN bodies apply it in ways exclusively targeting non-Western practices. UN data on FGM prevalence focuses almost exclusively on documentation of reported cases in a small number of African countries. The UN also provides estimates of FGM prevalence among non-Western migrant communities in Western countries. In contrast, UN agencies exclude Western practices meeting the WHO definition from the outset.

The exclusion of female genital cosmetic surgery (FGCS) from global anti-FGM initiatives is a case in point. For example, labiaplasty, a surgical procedure altering the folds of skin surrounding the human vulva, is the most common form of female genital modification in the United States and other Western countries. Labiaplasty, often performed on adolescent girls with parental permission, technically meets the criteria under WHO Type 2 FGM but has not been characterized as mutilation by UN bodies or transnational human rights advocacy organizations. Instead, such surgeries have been justified as medically necessary based on a woman’s (or adolescent girl’s) subjective expressions of dissatisfaction with the appearance of her genitals. Conversely, the same standard has not been applied to non-Western genital modification procedures, including those desired by adult women based on the subjective expression of religious, cultural or personal preferences.

UN agencies and Western countries exclude FGCS from the list of practices constituting FGM not because they fail to meet the established criteria in global norms governing FGM but because of cultural, racial and religious biases in the interpretation and application of these norms. Global initiatives intended to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls need to reckon with these biases to ensure that all voices and bodies matter.

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Image credit: rufai ajala, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Read the Identities article:
DeLaet, Debra L. (2024). FGM and genital cutting across borders: cultural biases in the contestation of global human rights. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2024.2373607   OPEN ACCESS

Read further in Identities:
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​Producing victim identities: female genital mutilation and the politics of asylum claims in the United Kingdom

Ethnic‐nationalism, wars and the patterns of social, political and sexual violence against women: The case of post‐Yugoslav countries

Gender and Citizenship in a Global Context: The Struggle for Maquila Workers' Rights in Nicaragua​