Refugee mother and daughter fight rocketing rates of child marriage
“A girl I know from school here in the camp got married last year when she was 15,” Saba, 16, told UNFPA. Saba encouraged her friend to delay pregnancy until her body was more mature. But the pressure to have a child was too great. “Three months ago, she was pregnant with twins but had a miscarriage. I told her she should stop because her body isn’t ready yet, but she and her husband are adamant about having a child.”
Local Egyptian heroine aims to end “huge” suffering caused by FGM
In her daily life, Hoda Hamed, is a quiet 37-year-old kindergarten teacher, but when she is off the clock, she is a force of nature. Ms. Hamed is an outspoken advocate for women and girls, working tirelessly to convince her rural Egyptian community to abandon female genital mutilation (FGM).
Midwives on the frontlines of fighting maternal death in Somalia
Maymuum's mother died giving birth. Today, newly graduated midwife Maymuun provides lifesaving care to other pregnant women and newborns in Somalia.
UNFPA and The Guardian present the first pan-African award for reporting on female genital mutilation
“My father forced me to get married to an older man almost his age. The old man gave him 20 cows. I tried to run away from that old man, but my father warned me that he would beat me to death if he was forced to return the cows he was given as payment for dowry,” says an unnamed thirteen year-old girl, her face unseen, as she relays how she was forced to marry shortly after she suffered female genital mutilation (FGM) at age 10, in a short film made by Kenyan journalist Diana Kendi.
A silent epidemic: The fight to end female genital mutilation in Colombia
“When I was 9 years old, my mother told me that three of her sisters died because her grandmother practiced female genital mutilation (FGM),” says Patricia Tobon Yagarí, an Emberá indigenous lawyer from Colombia.