By Aneeta Prem MBE
Sometimes a single line in a Parliamentary statement tells you everything you need to know.
Two senior House of Commons committee chairs have warned that ending a UK aid programme on female genital mutilation “presents a serious risk to women and girls globally”. That isn’t the usual careful, grey Westminster language. It is a red flag.
On 2 December 2025, the Women and Equalities Committee and the International Development Committee wrote to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). They said they were “deeply concerned” that the UK’s flagship aid programme to end FGM – The Girl Generation – Africa-Led Movement to End FGM – will end in October 2026, with no plans for future funding. They also warned that failure to tackle FGM overseas “compromises the safety of women and girls in the UK, who remain at risk of being taken abroad to undergo FGM”.
You can read their statement here:
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/328/women-and-equalities-committee/news/210729/ending-government-funding-for-fgm-prevention-programme-puts-women-and-girls-at-serious-risk-committee-chairs-warn/
And the full letter here:
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/50512/documents/275320/default/
These are the FGM aid cuts we are talking about.
As founder of Freedom Charity, creator of the red triangle international symbol against FGM, and author of But It’s Not Fair and Cut Flowers – both PSHE Association accredited – I have spent years listening to survivors, speaking in schools, and working with professionals who are trying to keep children safe. From that vantage point, this is not a tidy line in a budget spreadsheet. It is a decision about which children count.
Let’s sit with the numbers for a moment, because they tell their own story.
In March 2024, UNICEF confirmed that over 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM. That’s around 30 million more than the previous global figure eight years earlier – not because the world suddenly “discovered” FGM, but because it is still happening at scale.
UNICEF press release:
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/over-230-million-girls-and-women-alive-today-have-been-subjected-female-genital
UNFPA now estimates that around 4.3 million girls are at risk of being cut every year. If nothing changes, that number is expected to rise to 4.6 million a year by 2030.
UNFPA briefing:
https://www.unfpa.org/resources/unfpa-research-fgm-highlights-increased-risk-call-evidence-and-action-end-female-genital
Meanwhile, a 2025 global report led by Equality Now, End FGM EU and partners has pulled together evidence of FGM in 94 countries. Not just the “usual list”, but parts of Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and diaspora communities across Europe and North America.
Report overview:
https://equalitynow.org/resource/reports/female-genital-mutilation-cutting-a-call-for-a-global-response/
2025 update – The Time is Now:
https://equalitynow.org/resource/reports/the-time-is-now-end-female-genital-mutilation-cutting-an-urgent-need-for-global-response-2025-update/
End FGM EU page:
https://www.endfgm.eu/resources/reports/fgmc-a-call-for-a-global-response-global-report-2025/
UNICEF’s data hub makes it plain: FGM is concentrated in a cluster of about 30 high-prevalence countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, but its footprint spreads much wider through migration and diaspora.
https://data.unicef.org/topic/child-protection/female-genital-mutilation/
Behind every statistic is a real girl. A child who went to bed intact and woke up in agony, told this was the price of being “pure”, marriageable, respectable. Those are the girls we are talking about when we discuss FGM aid cuts.
And this is the moment the UK has chosen to switch off its central international programme.
Whenever FGM is discussed in Britain, someone will say: “But we’ve got the law now.” And it’s true that, on paper, the UK framework is strong.
The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 makes it a criminal offence to perform FGM in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, or to arrange FGM abroad for a UK national or permanent resident.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/31
The Serious Crime Act 2015 tightened things further with FGM Protection Orders, mandatory reporting for professionals, and extra-territorial reach.
Government resource pack (with links to the Acts and guidance):
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/female-genital-mutilation-resource-pack/female-genital-mutilation-resource-pack
All of that matters. But the select committees are blunt for a reason. They say that ending the FGM programme with nothing to follow it “presents a serious risk to women and girls globally” and undermines protection for UK citizens and residents. They are right.
If families travel to high-prevalence countries where local activists, midwives, teachers and faith leaders no longer have funding or backing to challenge FGM, girls with UK passports are not magically safe because they live here for most of the year. The risk does not stay in Britain when they board a plane at Heathrow. It waits at the other end.
Year after year, schools, social workers and charities watch for signs that a girl may be taken abroad to be cut during the holidays. That is not a myth or a “media scare”. It is part of safeguarding in real classrooms. When you cut aid to programmes that support change in the countries those girls travel to, you change the risk calculation for them too.
You cannot claim to be serious about protecting girls in Birmingham, Manchester or Norwich while quietly dismantling the programmes that keep girls safe in Hargeisa, Addis Ababa or Jakarta.
There is no mystery about what actually works to end FGM. UNICEF, UNFPA and global partners have been saying it for years: you need long-term, survivor-centred, community-led programmes; you need proper funding; and you cannot do it without involving men and boys.
UNFPA’s own wording is stark: the world will miss the target of ending FGM by 2030 without urgent action, including from men and boys.
https://www.unfpa.org/press/world-will-miss-target-ending-fgm-2030-without-urgent-action-%E2%80%93-including-men-and-boys
The 2025 report The Time is Now calls for exactly this kind of joined-up, patient, global response if we are serious about the Sustainable Development Goal that promises to eliminate harmful practices such as FGM by 2030.
https://equalitynow.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/The-Time-is-Now-End-Female-Genital-MutilationCutting-An-Urgent-Need-for-Global-Response-2025-ENGLISH.pdf
This is the same philosophy that sits behind my work at Freedom Charity.
In schools, I have seen what happens when young people read But It’s Not Fair and Cut Flowers. They recognise family dynamics, coded conversations, “holiday” stories that sound a little too familiar. These books, both accredited by the PSHE Association, are used as safeguarding tools across the UK. They give children language and courage, and they give teachers a way in.
PSHE Association: https://www.pshe-association.org.uk/
When we launched the red triangle badge as a simple international symbol against FGM, the idea was always that a child should be able to look around a classroom, surgery or police station and think: if I tell that person, they will understand. A tiny piece of metal, but it opens the door to conversations that would never otherwise happen.
And then there is Not In My Name – the work we do with boys and young men, asking them to say out loud that FGM will never take place in their name, or in their future families. If you want to change a harmful tradition that is bound up with ideas about men, marriage and “honour”, leaving boys out of the conversation is a luxury we cannot afford.
These ideas are not abstract. They are lived, tested and refined in real school halls and community meetings. If you want to support them directly, you can order red triangle badges and class sets of But It’s Not Fair and Cut Flowers here:
https://freedomcharity.org.uk/shop/
The bitter irony is that just as global evidence has caught up with this approach – long-term, rooted, survivor-informed, involving boys – the UK has decided to wind down its main Africa-led FGM programme with no clear successor.
If Britain seriously wants to be seen as a leader on ending FGM, the bar is higher than a tweet on the International Day of Zero Tolerance.
UN Zero Tolerance Day:
https://www.un.org/en/observances/female-genital-mutilation-day
At a minimum, real leadership on these FGM aid cuts would mean:
None of this is glamorous. It doesn’t fit into a single photo-op. But that is what real leadership on FGM looks like.
When I wrote Cut Flowers, I didn’t do it to add another title to my CV. I did it because I wanted a teenage girl in a British classroom to recognise herself in those pages and realise, perhaps for the first time, that what had been done to her was not “tradition”. It was abuse. And she had the right to be safe and to be heard.
When I designed the red triangle symbol, I wanted a simple badge that could say, without words: You can talk to me. I understand. I’m on your side.
Today, when I look at these FGM aid cuts, I hear something else. I hear the message they send to girls: we see the data, we know how widespread the harm is, we even call ourselves a world leader on FGM – but we are still willing to walk away from the long, slow work that actually changes lives.
The UK still has time to choose a different path. Ministers can listen to their own select committees, renew support for the Africa-led movement to end FGM, and match that commitment with proper safeguarding and specialist support here at home.
If we choose not to, history will record something very simple: we had the evidence, we had the tools, we had survivors’ voices in our ears – and we walked away anyway.
Aneeta Prem is the founder of Freedom Charity, creator of the red triangle international symbol against FGM and author of the PSHE Association accredited novels But It’s Not Fair and Cut Flowers. Freedom Charity has donated over 100,000 copies of these books to children, schools and professionals, and works nationally and internationally to end forced marriage, dishonour-based abuse and female genital mutilation.
Freedom Charity:
https://freedomcharity.org.uk/
Freedom Charity shop (books and red triangle badges):
https://freedomcharity.org.uk/shop/
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