Female genital mutilation: Around 125.000 women and girls still affected in France
This Monday February 6th marks the UN’s International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation. The practice – which consists of removing a part of the clitoris – is illegal in France. But according to one French NGO, as many as 125,000 women and girls in the country are believed to be affected. Young girls are often mutilated while on holiday abroad with their families. FRANCE 24’s journalists Olivia Bizot and Sonia Baritello met up with Assa, who told them about her physical and psychological recovery.
foreign
was just two years old when she was
mutilated it happened when she was in
Mali on a family trip but it wasn’t
until years later while attending a sex
education class at school that she
realized something was off foreign
foreign
women in France to have endured female
genital mutilation many don’t even know
they are survivors of the practice or
that physical recovery is possible with
Sarah abramovesh is a gynecologist in a
hospital outside Paris she performs
about a hundred restorative clitoris
surgeries a year so this is a Volvo that
hasn’t been mutilated as you can see the
clitoris is here so the clitoris is
underneath and measures between 7 and 11
centimeters it’s the external part of
this cut the aim of the surgery is to
remove the scar tissue which can be
thick and painful and to bring out the
interior part of the clitoris to put it
back in the right place
ASA had the surgery last September and
she feels like a new woman
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but recovery goes far beyond the surgery
to this day ASO is being followed by a
psychologist and a sexologist who are
supporting her on her journey towards
healing
