WUNRN
Website Link Includes Video.
Liberia - Girls’ Right to Education
vs.Traditional Practices - FGM, Bush Schools, +
7 February 2013 - Attaining primary and secondary school
education for girls in
A programme supported by the United Nations Human Rights
office is engaging with some of the rural communities in
Anne Ogbigbo is the UN Human Rights officer in the Grande
Cape Mount region. “Our aim is to be able to talk about FGM openly and I
think we are going to use the children’s law as an entry point,” she says.
“When people come to talk about harmful traditional practices, they say ‘How do
you know that they are harmful?’ So I think we need to engage with the
traditional leaders and try to explain why it is harmful... You have to
understand when you talk to them about [the] Convention on the Rights of the
Child, for them it sounds remote. Little by little, we will talk about child
rights and we will progress.”
The International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital
Mutilation is observed on 6 February each year to raise awareness about this
practice. According to the World Health Organization, FGM is affecting about
140 million girls and women, and more than 3 million girls are at risk every
year.