Equality Now - Main Organizer

State Department of Gender - Government of Kenya, Anti Female Genital Mutilation Board - Kenya : co-organizers

A review of various Voluntary National Country reports record progress on some gender equality indicators including 5.3 on female genital mutilation. However numbers of women and girls being mutilated globally, daily remains high. While the exact number of girls and women worldwide who have undergone FGM remains unknown, at least 200 million girls and women have been cut in 31 countries with representative data on prevalence. The continued violation of women’s rights in this way can in part be attributed to a failure in addressing the underlying drivers of FGM such as, social norms and attitudes rooted in patent discrimination against women as well as a top down approach in implementation of policies and laws that excludes local governance structures or uses them to rubber stamp concepts thereby failing to gain traction amongst practicing communities who view the laws as neo- imperialist. Equality Now in collaboration with Kenya’s Anti FGM Board, the State Department of Gender and partners wish, through a side event in July at the High Level Political Forum in New York July 2020 to undertake a context analysis to examine the obstacles to achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.3 and how they plan to dare eliminate FGM in Kenya by 2022 using legal and advocacy pathways.

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