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<h3>Fighting to End FGM for Over 30 Years</h3>
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<div class="block_content">Munich, April 1977: imagine a new German feminist magazine, EMMA, and a graduate student eagerly inspecting it. She stops, taken aback, at the headline: Klitorisbeschneidung &ndash; clitoridectomy. What can that be? She learns, along with 150,000 other subscribers whose mail-sacks of letters overwhelm the editors. The journalist had concluded with an appeal from Khartoum: &ldquo;Here no one talks about it. The media are silent. Our only hope lies in an outcry from abroad.&rdquo; It came. <strong>What can we do</strong>, EMMA&rsquo;s readers asked. <strong>What they did</strong>: between 1977 and the early 80s in eight German cities, groups formed to support African activists. The German women&rsquo;s medical association invited Dr. Asma el Dareer to address their annual convention; the physician&rsquo;s dissertation marked the first epidemiological study of infibulation in the Sudan. Awa Thiam, founder of CAMS &ndash; Commission for the Abolition of Sexual Mutilation -- in Senegal, became the first keynote speaker for Terre des Femmes, today&rsquo;s leading German NGO for women&rsquo;s human rights; and Efua Dorkenoo in the UK, who founded FORWARD in 1983, provided the template for FORWARD &ndash; Germany (founded 1998). Fast forward to today: finally overcoming the three main obstacles to ending FGM &ndash; inadequate communication, lack of a feminist analysis, and miserly funding &ndash; a broader world movement is rapidly evolving thanks to government aid, social media, and the continued dedication of NGOs and individuals calling for an end to this widespread abuse.</div>
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