Intensifying Global Efforts and Sharing Good Practices to Effectively Eliminate Female Genital Mutilation

Urges States to place special emphasis on education, in particular of youth, parents and community leaders, about the harmful effects of female genital mutilation, and especially to encourage men and boys to become more involved in information and awareness campaigns and become agents of change;

Also urges States to work for better dissemination and implementation of their relevant international human rights obligations and commitments, particularly those relating to the rights of women and girls, including by using outreach tools;

Further urges States to develop and implement, at the national level, policies, programmes, action plans and national legislation for the elimination of female genital mutilation, based on integrated multisectoral, coordinated and collective approaches at all levels, taking into account the empowerment of former practitioners, the principles of human rights, equality between women and men and non-discrimination, to ensure that former practitioners abstain from resuming the exercise of this practice, and in general taking into account the issue of respect for the basic human rights of women and girls, while also working together with religious and traditional leaders;

Urges States to condemn all harmful practices that affect women and girls, in particular female genital mutilation, whether committed within or outside a medical institution;

Urges States to strengthen support to communities, especially those that have developed successful local models to prevent and eliminate female genital mutilation, by encouraging them to design and utilize education programmes, information and awareness-raising tools and to make them accessible to the greatest number of people possible;

Urges States, international and regional governmental organizations and civil society, including non-governmental organizations, to intensify research on the consequences of female genital mutilation, the persistence of the practice and the impact of campaigns and other initiatives to eliminate this scourge;

Urges the international community to continue and strengthen efforts to share best practices on national and regional legislation, policies, programmes and action plans aimed at preventing and criminalizing the practice, to mobilize resources and to enhance international cooperation in this regard;

Calls upon States to continue to increase technical and financial assistance for the effective implementation of policies, programmes and action plans to eliminate female genital mutilation at the national, regional and international levels, including by strengthening the United Nations Population Fund-United Nations Children’s Fund Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Accelerating Change, and all the other initiatives and activities at the local, regional and international levels aimed at the prevention and elimination of female genital mutilation;

Calls upon States, the international community and the organizations of the United Nations system to end the medicalization of female genital mutilation, which entails the definition and dissemination of guidelines to medical staff, and to provide, including through clinical guidelines, an adequate response to the chronic health problems suffered by the millions of women and girls who have undergone female genital mutilation and that hinder progress on health in general;

Urges the international community to keep the issue of the elimination of female genital mutilation on the agenda of development policies, within the framework of the process of developing the post-2015 development agenda;

Encourages the treaty bodies, in particular the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Human Rights Committee, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the Committee against Torture and the Committee on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, to continue to give the necessary consideration to the question of female genital mutilation;

Requests the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare, in consultation with States, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Population Fund, the treaty bodies, relevant special procedures, regional organizations, national human rights institutions, civil society and other relevant stakeholders, a compilation of good practices and major challenges in preventing and eliminating female genital mutilation, and to submit it to the Human Rights Council at its twenty-ninth session;