Intensifying Global Efforts for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilations

Calls upon States to place a stronger focus on the development of comprehensive prevention strategies, including the enhancement of educational campaigns, awareness-raising and formal, non-formal and informal education and training in order to promote the direct engagement of girls and boys, women and men and to ensure that all key actors, Government officials, including law enforcement and judicial personnel, immigration officials, health-care providers, civil society, community and religious leaders, teachers, employers, media professionals and those directly working with girls, as well as parents, families and communities, work to eliminate attitudes and harmful practices, in particular all forms of female genital mutilations, that negatively affect women and girls;

Also calls upon States to strengthen advocacy and awareness-raising programmes, to mobilize girls and boys to take an active part in developing preventive and elimination programmes to address harmful practices, especially female genital mutilations, and to engage local community and religious leaders, educational institutions, the media and families and provide increased financial support to efforts at all levels to end discriminatory social norms and practices;

Urges States to condemn all harmful practices that affect women and girls, in particular female genital mutilations, whether committed within or outside a medical institution, and to take all necessary measures, especially through educational campaigns, including enacting and enforcing legislation, to prohibit female genital mutilations and to protect women and girls from this form of violence, and to hold perpetrators to account;

Also urges States to complement punitive measures with awareness-raising and educational activities designed to promote a process of consensus towards the elimination of female genital mutilations, and further urges States to protect and support women and girls who have been subjected to female genital mutilations and those at risk, including by developing social and psychological support services and care, and to explore other remedies, as appropriate, and take measures to improve their health, including sexual and reproductive health, in order to assist women and girls who are subjected to the practice;

Further urges States, as appropriate, to promote gender-sensitive, empowering educational processes by reviewing and revising school curricula, educational materials and teacher-training programmes and elaborating policies and programmes of zero tolerance for violence against girls, including female genital mutilations, and to further integrate a comprehensive understanding of the causes and consequences of gender-based violence and discrimination against women and girls into education and training curricula at all levels;

Urges States to ensure that the protection and provision of support to women and girls subject to, or at risk of, female genital mutilation are an integral part of policies and programmes that address the practice and to provide women and girls with coordinated, specialized, accessible and quality multisectoral prevention and response, including education, as well as legal, psychological, health-care and social services, provided by qualified personnel, consistent with the guidelines of medical ethics;

Calls upon States to ensure that national action plans and strategies on the elimination of female genital mutilations are comprehensive and multidisciplinary in scope and that they include projected timelines for goals and incorporate clear targets and indicators for the effective monitoring, impact assessment and coordination of programmes among all relevant stakeholders and promote their participation, including the participation of affected groups, practising communities and non-governmental organizations, in the development, implementation and evaluation of such plans and strategies;

Urges States to take, within the general framework of integration policies and in consultation with affected communities, effective and specific targeted measures for refugee women and women migrants and their communities in order to protect girls from female genital mutilations, including when the practice occurs outside the country of residence;

Calls upon States to develop information and awareness-raising campaigns and programmes to systematically reach the general public, relevant professionals, families and communities, including through the media, featuring television and radio discussions, on the elimination of female genital mutilations;

Urges States to pursue a comprehensive, culturally sensitive, systematic approach that incorporates a social perspective and is based on human rights and gender-equality principles in providing education and training to families, local community leaders and members of all professions relevant to the protection and empowerment of women and girls in order to increase awareness of and commitment to the elimination of female genital mutilations;

Also urges States to ensure the national implementation of international and regional commitments and obligations undertaken as States parties to various international instruments protecting the full enjoyment of all human rights and the fundamental freedoms of women and girls;

Calls upon States to develop policies and regulations to ensure the effective implementation of national legislative frameworks on eliminating discrimination and violence against women and girls, in particular female genital mutilations, and to put in place adequate accountability mechanisms at the national and local levels to monitor adherence to and implementation of these legislative frameworks;

Also calls upon States to develop unified methods and standards for the collection of data on all forms of discrimination and violence against girls, especially forms that are underdocumented, such as female genital mutilations, to develop additional indicators so as to effectively measure progress in eliminating the practice and to reinforce the sharing of good practices relating to the prevention and the abandonment of the practice at the subregional and regional levels;

Urges States to allocate sufficient resources to the implementation of policies and programmes and legislative frameworks aimed at eliminating female genital mutilations;

Calls upon States to develop, support and implement comprehensive and integrated strategies for the prevention of female genital mutilations, including the training of social workers, medical personnel, community and religious leaders and relevant professionals, and to ensure that they provide competent, supportive services and care to women and girls who are at risk of or who have undergone female genital mutilations and encourage them to report to the appropriate authorities cases in which they believe women or girls are at risk;

Also calls upon States to support, as part of a comprehensive approach to eliminate female genital mutilations, programmes that engage local community practitioners of female genital mutilations in community-based initiatives for the abandonment of the practice, including, where relevant, the identification by communities of alternative livelihoods for them;

Calls upon the international community, the relevant United Nations entities and civil society and international financial institutions to continue to actively support, through the allocation of increased financial resources and technical assistance, targeted comprehensive programmes that address the needs and priorities of women and girls at risk of or subjected to female genital mutilations;

Calls upon the international community to strongly support, including through increased financial support, a second phase of the Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Accelerating Change of the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Children’s Fund, which will run until 2017, as well as national programmes focused on the elimination of female genital mutilations;

Encourages men and boys to take positive initiatives and to work in partnership with women and girls to combat violence and discriminatory practices against women and girls, in particular female genital mutilations, through networks, peer programmes, information campaigns and training programmes;

Calls upon States, the United Nations system, civil society and all stakeholders to continue to observe 6 February as the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation and to use the day to enhance awareness-raising campaigns and to take concrete actions against female genital mutilations;

Calls upon States to improve the collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data and, where appropriate, to collaborate with existing data collection systems, which are crucial for evidence-based legal and policy development, programme design and implementation and the monitoring of the elimination of female genital mutilation;

Requests the Secretary-General to ensure that all relevant organizations and bodies of the United Nations system, in particular the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), the World Health Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Development Programme and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, individually and collectively, take into account the protection and promotion of the rights of women and girls against female genital mutilations in their country programmes, as appropriate and in accordance with national priorities, in order to further strengthen their efforts in this regard;