Ifrah Ahmed remembers confronting her aging Somali grandmother, whose decision it was that the former should undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) at the tender age of 8. Ahmed asked her grandmother why she had been forced to go through the traumatic procedure, which involved having her legs bound together and being circumcised along with nine other girls, one of whom later died due to bleeding.
“She explained to me that this is a cultural practice. It’s not something that started with me or my older sister, it’s something which started even before her generation. She said it’s something that everybody in the family has gone through,” says Ahmed, now 26.