Accelerating action to end female genital mutilation in Ethiopia - program 2020 to 2024

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) program aims to speed up action to end female genital mutilation (FGM) under Ethiopia's National Costed Roadmap to end child marriage and FGM. UNICEF helps provide women and girls – including out-of-school girls – with the skills and knowledge required to voice their opinions and promote gender equality in decision-making at the household and community level. The project aims to engage adolescent girls in developing and implementing community-level interventions to end FGM including establishing support networks and communication campaigns. UNICEF builds the capacities of master trainers to train and supervise community-level health workers to integrate prevention of FGM management and referral for FGM-related complications. The project focuses on establishing community surveillance mechanisms including through social and protection services and community leaders to spread information about the harms of FGM and track and intervene in cases of FGM. UNICEF performs formative research with a human-centred design and participatory approach to inform and identify effective processes in empowering women and girls and ending FGM. UNICEF disseminates best practices to tackle the root causes of FGM including through Ethiopia’s National Alliance to End Child Marriage. The project also builds the capacity of the Government of Ethiopia to collect data and monitor progress related to its efforts to end FGM.

The expected outcomes of this project include: (1) empowered girls and women to transform their communities’ social and gender norms to end FGM; (2) empowered girls and women to receive quality services for FGM prevention protection and that are care responsive to their rights and needs; and (3) empowered girls and women through programming to end female genital mutilation supported by reliable data evidence-based decision-making and innovations that foster gender equality.