Activist says film from Somalia shows young girl being held down and cut while people look on

Activists against female genital mutilation have urged Sky News to drop a segment which they say will show a girl as she undergoes the cutting in Somalia, saying it is tantamount to filming child abuse.

Leyla Hussein, who co-founded anti-FGM campaign Daughters of Eve, said she was asked to appear on Sky News for an interview after a filmed segment about the prevalence of FGM in Somalia and Puntland, an autonomous state in Somalia’s north-east.



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Hussein said she asked to see the footage that would be used in the Sky News film, and described seeing “a little girl of about six or seven, being held down and cut”.

“You can see her face,” she said. “People are watching. The film crew are filming. No one intervenes … when I was cut I remember that most of all, no one intervened.”

Sky News initially did not confirm such a clip had been filmed or respond to the activists, but several hours after being contacted by the Guardian said the girl would not be identified and her face would not be shown in the final edit.

A Sky News spokesman said: “This week Sky News will broadcast a powerful report from Somalia which sheds new light on the subject of FGM.”

He added that the report treated a difficult subject with sensitivity and “captures the stark reality of this widespread practice … [and] will help our viewers to understand the issues surrounding FGM and its social and cultural acceptability in some parts of the world”.



Hussein, who was about the same age as the girl in the film when she was subjected to FGM, claimed she refused to take part in the feature. She said she had asked Sky News not to use the clip, which was scheduled to be broadcast on Monday night. The Guardian understands this has now been delayed. “I was guilty of doing this myself in attempts to try to get people to pay attention to FGM,” Hussein said. “But I had time to think. We are supposed to be protecting children. How is this protecting children?”

British-Somali activist Hibo Wardere, author of Cut: One Woman’s Fight Against FGM in Britain Today, tweeted:



hibo wardere (@HiboWardere) @nofgm @SkyNews pkease people boycott thus and show yoyr support. Monday skynews is goung to show a mutilation pic.twitter.com/c6daAjtWEB

Wardere told the Guardian she believed the filming would still be inexcusable even if the clip was re-edited or not shown. “We have not had a single response from Sky News, despite hundreds of activists emailing and calling them,” she said. “Even if they re-edit, they were there, they were part of her pain and they did nothing to stop it.”

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Anti-FGM campaigners in the UK, including Equality Now, delivered a statement to Sky News on Sunday night, expressing concern that such a segment unedited could be harmful and stigmatising and damaging to efforts to end FGM in the UK and in Somalia. “A huge amount of work has been done to reframe FGM as child abuse and violence against girls. This puts that work in jeopardy,” the statement said. “The segment will break broadcasting guidelines by showing an image of child abuse. She can and did not consent to any of this. Bystanders are potentially at risk of action being taken against them too.”

Dr Comfort Momoh, an FGM specialist at London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals, said she had received emails about the clip from FGM victims she had treated after they were cut. She said: “They are unanimous. They want the clip to be withdrawn. For them it is about consent. Some of them are very angry. One can argue that there is a place for showing these kind of images, for training and to show the extent of damage and give an insight but this isn’t it. You have to listen to the survivors. It is their story and we have to go by how they want that story to be told.”