2020 Global Annual Report: Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation during COVID-19

Sustaining the momentum

FGM-report-2020
UNICEF/UN0418486/Pouget

Highlights

The year 2020 marked the launch of the ‘Decade of Action’, a global call for accelerating sustainable solutions to the world’s biggest challenges: inequality, poverty, and discrimination - to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. But with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic - school closures, disruptions in services, and rising household monetary poverty have increased girls’ risk of being subjected to female genital mutilation and impeding progress towards meeting SDG target 5.3, while making its achievement more urgent and necessary. 

In 2020, the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation: Accelerating Change placed girls and women at the center of its humanitarian response by adapting interventions to ensure continuity of services, while pivoting to prevent and mitigate the risk of female genital mutilation.  

Through partnership with governments, civil society, women and youth-led groups, community leaders, activists, and other stakeholders - the Joint Programme has made considerable progress despite facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. 

Author(s)
UNICEF, UNFPA
Publication date
Languages
English

Key results include:

FGM-2020-1

120,605 

girls were saved from being subjected to FGM 

FGM-2020-2

79,863,144  

people were engaged through digital approaches and campaigns promoting FGM elimination 

FGM-2020-3

2,156  

communities involving 2,220,937 people made public declarations to abandon FGM

FGM-2020-4

1,792  

communities established surveillance systems to protect girls from being subjected to FGM 

FGM-2020-5

430,748  

girls and women received health services. 

FGM-2020-6

129,531  

girls and women received social services related to FGM

FGM-2020-7

16,380  

girls and women received legal services related to FGM 

FGM-2020-8

109,951  

girls graduated from a capacity development package 

Sustaining the Momentum: Launching 2020 Annual Report of the Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation

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