Thirty years ago, US anti-FGM campaigner Assetou Sy refused to cut her daughter.

We feel this issue acutely because we come from a community in Mali where FGM is all-too-common. Thirty-three years ago, my husband and I refused to cut our own daughter. This was not easy in a society where men had multiple wives and women had few rights. We refused to buy the idea that the only way to make a girl “clean” and “pure” was to mutilate her genitals. Gazing at our beautiful baby daughter, we knew she was perfectly “clean” and “pure” on the day she was born, and that mutilation would only be a terrible violation of her rights.

Let’s work together to end impunity and prevent this crime from every recurring. In that way, we can give communities the best possible resource to build a new future: whole, healthy girls.