Genital Mutilation as an Expression of Power Structures: Ending FGM through Education, Empowerment of Women and Removal of Taboos

swelled by a further 3 million girls each year. Female genital mutilation (FGM) (the term in common usage internationally) is practised in 29 African countries and in Yemen, Oman and Indonesia; it has been imported to the industrialised countries by certain groups of immigrants from these countries. All forms of FGM are irreversible and cause various kinds of physical and mental harm and complications. German Development Cooperation (DC) has devised successful approaches to ending the practice of FGM. From an intra-cultural perspective, the focus of FGM is not primarily on surgical intervention or the manipulation of a girl's or woman's sexual organs but