That story starts when, as an 8-year-old orphan in Kajiado, Kenya, while on a break from boarding school, Leng'ete literally ran away from a circumcision arranged by her uncle for her and her cousins. She made it to her grandfather's home and managed to convince him, an influential elder in her Masai community, to exempt her from the painful and dangerous procedure.FGM. The new drive is specifically geared toward pressing the European Union to coordinate the laws, statistics and even foreign policy of its 27 member states into a united front to halt the practice. In the U.S., legislation has been in place since 1996 offering asylum to any woman fleeing the threat of FGM or who has already experienced it. But in Europe, though the majority of the 27 EU member states outlaw FGM under either specific or general criminal laws, only a handful officially recognize FGM as a form of persecution warranting protection and they do not apply the law in the same way. (This is also true among different courts in the U.S. where, for example, a Malian asylum seeker who had been subjected to FGM as a child was rejected by the state of Maryland because there was no reason for her to fear it happening again.) End FGM wants uniform laws adopted throughout the EU and the most generous possible interpretation of them.
The European Parliament (EP) in March 2009 passed a strongly worded resolution condemning FGM as a “violation of fundamental human rights, as well as a savage breach of the integrity and personality of women and girls and therefore … a serious crime in the eyes of society.” The resolution called on the EU executive and member states to prepare plans “aimed at banishing FGM from the EU” and providing all means possible to protect and help vulnerable women. In short, it looks a lot like Amnesty’s wish list.
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