Harmful practices

Harmful cultural practices, such as child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), are discriminatory practices committed regularly over such long periods of time that communities and societies begin to consider them acceptable.

Around the world, hundreds of millions of girls and boys have experienced some form of violence, exploitation or harmful practice, although girls are at much greater risk. Child marriage and FGM span continents and cultures, yet in every society in which they are practiced, they reflect values that hold girls in low esteem and deprive them of the agency to chart their own course in life.

Some 650 million girls and women around the world today have been married as children, and over 200 million girls and women in more than 30 countries have undergone FGM.

FGM can lead to serious health complications – including prolonged bleeding, infection and infertility – or even death. Girls who have undergone FGM are at heightened risk of experiencing complications during childbirth. It is estimated that FGM causes an additional one to two perinatal deaths per 100 deliveries.

In some societies, FGM goes hand in hand with child marriage. Girls marred as children are more likely to drop out of school and become pregnant as teenagers – when they face increased risks of dying during pregnancy or childbirth, compared to women in their twenties. Infants born to teenage mothers are also more likely to be stillborn or die in the first month of life.

Wherever they occur, harmful practices rob girls of their childhood, deny them the chance to determine their own future and threaten the well-being of individuals, families and societies.