Five prominent Africans who suffered female genital mutilation

Jaha Dukureh

Jaha Dukureh is a UN Women Ambassador for Africa and a renowned activist. She is a mother and a survivor of FGM. At 15, she left Gambia to New York City to marry a man she had never met only to learn that she had undergone FGM as a baby.

“I screamed out against FGM and child marriage, wrote blogs, threatened to call law enforcement if I could not leave my husband, established an NGO to combat these practices and petitioned the Obama administration to investigate the profile of FGM in the United States of America,” she said.

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Dukureh has contributed to the legislation to ban FGM in her country, Gambia. “We must support women and girls, especially survivors, to lead change and be role models. When a survivor speaks to her own people, it touches a chord.”