Countering Pushbacks to Ending Female Genital Mutilation and Child Marriage: Synthesis Paper & Country Briefs
In-country Narratives and Co-design of Faith Engagement Approaches
About
Female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage continue to violate girls’ rights and limit their futures. Despite decades of progress, a new wave of resistance is emerging—more organized, more politicized, and harder to counter.
In several contexts, bans on FGM and child marriage are being challenged, health-care professionals are increasingly performing FGM in violation of girls’ fundamental rights, bodily integrity, and the medical ethic to do no harm, and both practices are often defended through selective religious interpretations. Online harmful narratives cross borders instantly, amplified by diaspora voices and political actors. Poverty, conflict, and climate impacts further entrench these practices as coping mechanisms.
This evolving landscape makes the need for evidence more urgent. The arguments used to promote FGM and child marriage are not new, but their delivery is more organized, more politicized and more complex to counter. Understanding who is driving the pushback, how narratives evolve, and where influence lies is critical. Faith actors remain among the most trusted voices in communities, uniquely positioned to champion dignity, protection, and the abandonment of harmful practices.
To support this work, UNICEF Child Protection and Social and Behavior Change teams, in collaboration with Samuel Hall, conducted a 15-country scoping study under the Joint Programme on the Elimination of FGM, to map pushback efforts against ending harmful practices, with particular attention to the role of faith actors.
What’s Inside This Repository:
a) Synthesis Paper: Risks and likelihood of pushback against the abandonment of harmful practices and the role of faith actors.
A synthesis paper providing a cross-country overview of:
- emerging narratives and resistance strategies
- key actors driving or countering pushback
- where pushback operates—from parliaments to pulpits to online spaces
- effective faith-engagement approaches to strengthen child protection
b) Country Briefs
Concise snapshots of trends, discourses, and expectations across:
Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Yemen.
This review examines how faith-based interventions can drive social change by reframing traditions through protection and empowerment. Grounded in social and behaviour change theory and the mind–heart dialogue, it synthesizes global and local insights to distill challenges, lessons and best practices to leverage faith-engagement as a catalyst for change. It also outlines key dimensions and actionable guidance for engaging faith actors to address FGM and child marriage.
