Opinion: YES to the Bodily Integrity of Girls and Women in Mali

A renewed online campaign defending female genital mutilation in Mali has prompted Dr Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana to speak out. Drawing on her Malian roots and decades of advocacy for women’s rights, the former European MP calls for stronger protection of girls, challenges the misuse of religion and tradition, and urges Mali to finally outlaw FGM.

Since mid-August 2026, Mali has faced a disturbing online campaign in support of female genital mutilation (FGM). On social media, particularly Facebook, AI-generated images openly call for the practice to continue. They carry slogans such as “Yes to FGM in Mali” and “We want to protect her.”

But can removing part of a girl’s body be called protecting her?

These images show a razor blade, a chilling symbol of the instrument used to mutilate girls’ bodies.

We must call this practice by its name: female genital mutilation. It involves altering or removing, without medical necessity, all or part of a girl’s or woman’s external genitalia. It can cause severe physical, sexual and psychological harm, with consequences that may remain with survivors throughout their lives.

A razor blade does not protect a girl. It mutilates her.

This online campaign is all the more alarming because Mali still has no specific national law banning female genital mutilation. UNICEF confirms that Mali is among the countries that have yet to adopt a national FGM law.

The need for a law

The time has come to legislate. I make this solemn appeal to Mali’s authorities and lawmakers, and to religious and community leaders:

Listen to Malian women and civil society organisations that have called for the protection of girls for decades. The time has come to give this struggle the force of law: Mali should enact legislation explicitly prohibiting all forms of female genital mutilation.

Such a law would not be directed against Malian culture. It would protect Mali’s children.

It would not be directed against religion. It would protect their bodily integrity and dignity.

It would not be imposed from outside. For decades, Malian women and men, associations, doctors, educators and human rights defenders have led this struggle themselves.

Let us listen to them. Let us support them. Let us protect them!

Unconditional support for Malian activists

I want to express my full solidarity with the Malian women who courageously work, day after day, to bring an end to FGM.

This appeal is deeply personal. I was born in Bamako. Mali is part of my own history. As a daughter of this land, I stand today beside these courageous women, who refuse to let new generations of girls endure what their mothers and grandmothers endured.

The accounts shared on social media by Malian women of the suffering they have experienced are heartbreaking. Behind the statistics are children. Behind appeals to “tradition” are wounded bodies and shattered lives.

To all these women, I want to say loud and clear: you are not alone. Your struggle is ours too.

As a former Member of the European Parliament and my political group’s rapporteur on the European Parliament’s resolution of 12 February 2020 on female genital mutilation, I brought this cause to the European level. Today, as patron of the German INTEGRA network, which brings together organisations working to end FGM, I reaffirm our complete solidarity with everyone pursuing this struggle in Mali and across the diaspora.

This commitment goes back many years

Since 2007, our organisation FORWARD-Germany, now FORWARD for Women e.V., has partnered with the Association for the Advancement and Defence of Women’s Rights (APDF), founded by our dear late friend Fatoumata Siré Diakité. A leading advocate for women’s rights in Mali, she also served as Mali’s ambassador to Germany. May she rest in peace.

We have helped support APDF’s remarkable prevention and awareness work among the Malian population, notably through a “Youth Caravan No to Female Genital Mutilation”, which travelled across Mali to inform young people about the consequences of FGM.

I wrote about this commitment in my article “Berlin à l’heure du Mali”, published on Grioo.com on 30 September 2007.

I know the determination of Malian activists. Their struggle deserves to culminate in historic progress today.

FGM is not a requirement of Islam

Islam protects human integrity and forbids causing physical harm to others.

Faith does not require children to be mutilated to safeguard their virtue or dignity. Confusing an age-old patriarchal custom with a divine duty is a mistake paid for in women’s blood and suffering. Religion should be a source of protection and compassion, not a pretext for irreparable bodily violence.

FGM must never be presented as a religious obligation. It is an ancient practice that, over time, has sometimes become entangled with religious precepts in certain societies. But a custom’s age confers neither legitimacy nor obligation.

In November 2006, an international conference of Muslim scholars and religious authorities at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University examined this very question. Its conclusions were unequivocal: FGM is an inherited custom with no basis in the Qur’an or authentic tradition of the Prophet. The conference called for the practice to be stopped and for legislation prohibiting it.

The then Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, stressed the absence of a religious basis for the practice. Earlier, he had also described female genital mutilation as a custom rather than a religious duty.

Medical evidence, including research on complications associated with FGM, has shown that the practice has no medical benefits and can cause serious physical and psychological harm. The Islamic principle that one must neither cause harm nor respond to harm with harm reinforces the call to prohibit it.

How, then, can anyone invoke God to legitimise a practice that mutilates healthy genital tissue and can cause chronic pain, infections, complications during childbirth, psychological trauma and lasting sexual harm?

Islam must not be used as a shield for the mutilation of girls.

Traditions can change

Fighting FGM in all its forms does not mean fighting Africa, Mali or African traditions.

African societies have always been able to change. A custom that harms a person’s health, bodily integrity and dignity must be open to scrutiny, transformation and abandonment. As the great Malian writer and thinker Amadou Hampâté Bâ said:

“There are practices that our ancestors themselves, if they came back to life, would find outdated, obsolete and outmoded!”

Above all, let us firmly reject the claim that FGM is necessary to safeguard girls’ morality, prevent a supposed “dissolute life” or control their sexuality. A woman’s virtue cannot be measured by the part of her body that has been removed.

Education protects.
Knowledge protects.
The law protects.
The blade does not.

To Mali’s authorities: a historic choice

Today, this debate reaches beyond FGM alone. It raises a fundamental question: what kind of society do we want to leave to Mali’s girls? One in which their bodies can be mutilated in the name of tradition? Or one that affirms that every girl is born with dignity, bodily integrity and inalienable rights that no one may take from her?

The time has come for Mali to take a historic step.

I solemnly call on Mali’s authorities to pave the way for a national law explicitly prohibiting all forms of FGM. This legal framework must be accompanied by ambitious measures to prevent the practice, protect survivors and engage in dialogue with communities and religious leaders.

A law alone will not change attitudes overnight. But the absence of a law also sends a message. Faced with a campaign that dares to brandish a razor blade while claiming to “protect girls”, silence is no longer an option.

To the Malian women who have fought tirelessly, day after day, for so many years, I renew my profound solidarity.

To those who have undergone FGM: your voice matters.

To the girls at risk: your body belongs to you.

And to Mali’s political leaders: it is time to act.

NO TO FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION IN MALI!

YES TO A LAW!

YES TO THE BODILY INTEGRITY, DIGNITY AND FUTURE OF GIRLS AND WOMEN!

……………………………………………….

The author, Dr Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana, is an Honorary Citizen of Erlangen and a former Member of the European Parliament (2019–2024). During her tenure, she served as First Vice-Chair of the Committee on Development and Co-President of the European Parliament’s Anti-Racism and Diversity Intergroup (ARDI). A specialist in racism, the duty of remembrance and women in development, Dr Herzberger-Fofana holds two master’s degrees: one in German studies (German sociology) from the Sorbonne in Paris and another in sociolinguistics from the University of Trier (Germany). She earned her PhD in Francophone women’s literature at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.