Intensifying Global Efforts for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation

A/RES/77/195No PDF available

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 26Advancement of women, published in 2022.

What other versions does this mandate have?

5 versions · 2017–2024

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/79/153

2024A/RES/79/153Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilationLatestCompare with previous version
2022A/RES/77/195Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilationCompare with previous version
2020A/RES/75/160Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilationCompare with previous version
2019A/RES/73/149Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilationCompare with previous version
2017A/RES/71/168Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilation

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What subjects does this mandate have?

6 topics

Female Genital Mutilation Health Education Reproductive Health Women's Education Women's Health Women's Rights

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2024.

2024A/79/514Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilation report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

31 operative paragraphs

Stresses that the gender equality and empowerment of women and girls is key to breaking the cycle of discrimination and violence and for the promotion and protection of human rights, including the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health, and calls upon States parties to fulfil their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, as well as their commitments to implementing the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”, and of the special session of the General Assembly on children;

Condemns all forms of violence and harmful practices that affect women and girls, in particular female genital mutilation, and urges States to take all necessary measures in accordance with their obligations under applicable international human rights law, including legislative and policy measures, to prohibit female genital mutilation and to protect women and girls, including from cross-border and other affected communities;

Calls upon States to place a stronger focus on the development and implementation of comprehensive prevention strategies, including the intensification of educational campaigns, awareness-raising and formal and non-formal education and training in order to promote the direct engagement of girls and boys, women and men and to ensure that all key actors, including government officials, law enforcement and judicial personnel, immigration officials, parliamentarians, health-care providers, practitioners, civil society, the private sector, community and religious leaders, teachers, employers, media professionals and those directly working with girls, as well as parents, legal guardians, families and communities, work to eliminate attitudes and harmful practices, in particular female genital mutilation, that negatively affect women and girls, and emphasizes the importance of adopting a non-stigmatization approach in all prevention interventions;

Also calls upon States to develop information and awareness-raising campaigns and programmes to systematically reach and engage the general public, especially relevant professionals, in particular schoolteachers, families, communities, civil society representatives, including women’s and girl-led organizations and religious and traditional leaders, including through the traditional and non-traditional media, featuring television and radio discussions and information and communications technology, about the harmful effects of female genital mutilation and the fact that this practice still exists and about national and international levels of support for the elimination of female genital mutilation, with a view to helping to change existing negative social norms, attitudes and behaviours that condone and justify gender inequality, all forms of violence against women and girls and harmful practices, including female genital mutilation;

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

Encourages States to ensure that female genital mutilation-related prevention, protection and care services are mainstreamed in humanitarian and emergency preparedness and response plans and integrated in coordination mechanisms and remote service delivery as part of the continuum of essential services, including health-care services for all women and girls across the humanitarian-development nexus, with particular attention to the protection needs of women and girls living in cross-border communities;

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 mutilation, and also urges States to protect and support women and girls who have been subjected to female genital mutilation and those who are at risk in order to assist them, including by developing social, legal and psychological support services and care and appropriate remedies, and to ensure access to health-care services, including for sexual and reproductive health, in order to improve their health and well-being;

Also urges States to condemn all harmful practices that affect women and girls, in particular female genital mutilation, whether committed within or outside a medical institution, to take all measures necessary, including through educational campaigns and by enacting and enforcing legislation to prohibit female genital mutilation, to protect women and girls from this act of violence, to hold perpetrators to account and to put in place adequate accountability mechanisms at the national and local levels, where applicable, in order to monitor progress;

Calls upon States to address the medicalization of female genital mutilation and to encourage professional associations and trade unions of health service providers to adopt internal disciplinary rules prohibiting their members from engaging in the harmful practice of female genital mutilation;

Urges States to promote gender-sensitive, empowering educational processes, sensitive to the needs of women and girls, by reviewing and revising, as appropriate, school curricula, educational materials and teacher-training programmes and elaborating policies and programmes of zero tolerance of violence against girls or of harmful practices, including female genital mutilation, placing special emphasis on education about the harmful effects of female genital mutilation, 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;

Also urges States to ensure the protection of, and provision of support to, women and girls subjected to or at risk of female genital mutilation, including cross-border and transnational female genital mutilation, and to address the underlying systemic and structural causes in which this harmful practice is rooted by establishing regional, national and multisectoral prevention and response strategies that respond to the needs of women and girls, including supportive legislation and policies, programmes and budgetary measures based on integrated, coordinated and collective approaches combining political commitment, civil society engagement and accountability at the regional, national, local and community levels;

Further urges States to ensure that the protection of 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;

Urges States to put in place effective regional cooperation and coordination mechanisms to prevent and eliminate cross-border and transnational female genital mutilation and to ensure their sustainability and effectiveness by providing them with adequate financial resources and capacities so that they can oversee the implementation of comprehensive and multisectoral regional, national and subnational plans, strategies, policies and programmes, with the active engagement and participation of relevant actors, including international organizations, regional and international networks of parliamentarians, national human rights institutions, professional associations, including of health-care providers, civil society organizations, including human rights groups, women’s human rights organizations and youth-led organizations, as well as traditional and religious leaders and faith-based organizations, men and boys, parents, legal guardians and family members, victims and survivors;

Calls upon States to ensure that national action plans and strategies on the elimination of female genital mutilation are comprehensive and multidisciplinary in scope and that they are adequately financed, 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 women and girls, 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, asylum-seeker, migrant and internally displaced women and girls, their families and their communities in order to protect women and girls everywhere from female genital mutilation, including when the practice occurs outside the country of residence;

Also urges States to pursue a comprehensive, culturally sensitive, systematic approach that incorporates a social perspective and is based on human rights and gender equality 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 mutilation;

Further urges States to identify and allocate sufficient resources to the implementation of policies and programmes and legislative frameworks aimed at eliminating female genital mutilation, in particular measures involving information and communications technologies to facilitate learning and knowledge-sharing;

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

Also calls upon States to harmonize legislation and policies between States where cross-border and transnational female genital mutilation occurs, in addition to supporting the implementation of laws criminalizing female genital mutilation, increasing cooperation between States and civil society at national borders, conducting media campaigns promoting cross-border prevention among vulnerable border communities and introducing enhanced monitoring systems across borders on female genital mutilation cases;

Further calls upon States to support, as part of a comprehensive approach to eliminate female genital mutilation, programmes that engage local community practitioners of female genital mutilation in community-based initiatives for the elimination of the practice, including, where relevant, the identification and the provision 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 mutilation;

Calls upon the international community and all Member States to strongly support, including through increased financial support, organizations and programmes that support women and girls affected by or at risk of female genital mutilation, including the fourth phase of the Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation: Delivering the Global Promise to End Female Genital Mutilation by 2030 of the United Nations Population Fund and the United Nations Children’s Fund, which will run until 2030, as well as national programmes focused on the elimination of female genital mutilation;

Stresses that progress has been made in eliminating female genital mutilation in a number of countries using a common coordinated approach that promotes positive social change at the community, national, regional and international levels, and recalls the goal set out in the United Nations inter-agency statement that female genital mutilation is to be eliminated within a generation, with some of the main achievements being obtained by 2030, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals;

Encourages men and boys to take an active part and to become strategic partners of women and girls and their allies in efforts, including through intergenerational dialogue, to eliminate violence, discrimination and harmful practices against women and girls, in particular female genital mutilation, through networks, peer programmes, information campaigns and training programmes;

Calls upon States to engage key stakeholders, in a coordinated manner, including various sectors of government and civil society organizations, along with the support, upon request, of United Nations entities, in developing a multidisciplinary approach to both preventing and responding to female genital mutilation and to adopt laws and policies, where appropriate, providing high-quality, multisectoral interventions for girls and women who have been subject to female genital mutilation, as well as robust prevention strategies, taking into consideration those girls and women who are most vulnerable;

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 mutilation;

Calls upon States to improve the collection and analysis of quantitative and qualitative disaggregated data, where appropriate, and 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;

Also calls upon States to develop unified methods and standards for the collection of data on female genital mutilation, which is underdocumented and underreported, particularly in humanitarian and emergency situations, to develop additional indicators to effectively measure progress in eliminating this practice and to reinforce the sharing of good practices relating to the prevention and elimination of female genital mutilation at the national, subregional, regional and global levels;

Urges the international community to fulfil its commitment in supporting developing countries in strengthening the capacity of national statistical offices and data systems to ensure access to high-quality, timely, reliable and disaggregated data, while ensuring national ownership in supporting and tracking progress, in order, inter alia, to inform policy and programming, as well as to monitor progress in 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, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 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 mutilation in their country programmes, as appropriate and in accordance with national priorities, in order to further strengthen their efforts in this regard;

Renews its request to the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly, at its seventy-ninth session, an in-depth, multidisciplinary, evidence-based report, with accurate and updated data, an analysis of root causes, progress made to date, challenges and needs and action-oriented recommendations for eliminating this practice, on the basis of updated information provided by Member States, relevant actors of the United Nations system working on the issue and other relevant stakeholders.

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