2020 Global Annual Report: Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation during COVID-19

Highlights

The year 2020 marked the launch of the ‘Decade of Action’, a global call for accelerating sustainable solutions to the world’s biggest challenges: inequality, poverty, and discrimination - to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. But with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic - school closures, disruptions in services, and rising household monetary poverty have increased girls’ risk of being subjected to female genital mutilation and impeding progress towards meeting SDG target 5.3, while making its achievement more urgent and necessary. 

In 2020, the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation: Accelerating Change placed girls and women at the center of its humanitarian response by adapting interventions to ensure continuity of services, while pivoting to prevent and mitigate the risk of female genital mutilation.  

Through partnership with governments, civil society, women and youth-led groups, community leaders, activists, and other stakeholders - the Joint Programme has made considerable progress despite facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.