The state community has outlawed female genital mutilation worldwide as a human rights violation and banned it through numerous international conventions. Yet 8,000 girls are mutilated every day.

Female genital mutilation is a global phenomenon of violence with at least 4 million victims every year. In the meantime, many countries where genital mutilation of girls is widespread have enacted criminal laws. Nevertheless, more than 264 million girls and women in African, Arab and Asian countries where it is prevalent still have to live with the serious consequences. That is one in 20 women worldwide. In some countries, almost the entire female population is affected, such as in Egypt, Guinea and Somalia.

This systematic violence against the female population is widespread in some 28 African countries and is more prevalent in both the Middle East and Asia. The distribution figures published by Unicef list only Iraq and Yemen apart from African countries. However, in February 2016, Unicef revised the victim figures upwards, as there is representative evidence of the spread in Indonesia and Malaysia, with at least 50 million people affected. Studies from Iran, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, among others, show the true geographical extent. It remains to be seen whether the important field research in these countries will find its way into the official distribution statistics.

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Due to migration, genital mutilation is also increasingly appearing in America, Australia and Europe. Research by the Waris Dirie Foundation has shown that at least 500,000 affected women and girls live in Europe and 180,000 underage girls are considered to be at acute risk. In Germany alone, we estimate that about 81,000 girls are threatened or already affected by this particularly severe form of violence. Violence therefore by no means stops at European states under the rule of law. In order to be able to comprehensively protect girls in Germany from the mutilation of their genitals, we plead for effective preventive measures, such as the introduction of compulsory reporting according to the French model and obligatory preventive child examinations.