Growing up healthy

Ensuring children’s survival, protection and healthy development

It is estimated that there are between 100 million and 140 million girls in the world who have undergone female genital mutilation.  The ritual, which involves cutting or removing the female genitalia, is usually associated with preparing girls for womanhood.

In Mali, the practice is so common that approximately 94 per cent of girls of reproductive age undergo it each year.  Increasingly, the procedure is also being carried out on infants.  Female genital mutilation is one of the major causes of sickness and death among girls and young women in Mali. 

This is why Plan, as part of its reproductive health programme, has been working hand-in-hand with local partners to change people's attitudes through education, information and communication. Female genital mutilation is a deeply traditional part of local culture and often a difficult or taboo subject.  We therefore work sensitively and respectfully with communities and change is inevitably slow.

We work to raise awareness of the impact, to explore the reasons for it as a practice and to dispel the myths around it using a variety of methods. Plan has also been vigorously lobbying leaders at all levels to adopt policies in order to eradicate the practice.