state.



Over the past two years Dukureh has become the most prominent young woman campaigning against FGM in the Gambia. Buoyed by her profile as head of the Guardian Global Media Campaign, she is part of a new generation of young women in the Gambia who are working to make sure that the mutilation that has happened to them is not repeated on their daughters.

They are part of groups of young women (and men) across the world who are trying to break the silence on FGM. Their argument, and ours at the Guardian Global Media Campaign, is that FGM – practised on the most vulnerable in our world – continues because no one has made stopping this barbaric procedure a political or media priority. It is carried out infollowed by admission and, finally, legislation to end FGM.

It was a similar situation in the UK, where FGM campaigners had struggled for years to get an audience with the then education secretary, Michael Gove. Fahma Mohammed wanted Gove to write to all schools in the UK warning that British schoolgirls born to families from FGM-practising countries, such as Somalia, Yemen and Egypt were at risk. A powerful response to her petition launched on the campaign platform change.org publicised by the Guardian led to more than 250,000 signatures in 19 days. Gove invited Mohammed to meet him and agreed to write to all schools.

Monday’s announcement by the Gambian president is welcome, but the country will still need to put its declaration into legislation and then enforce it. Much more