Female genital mutilation is undoubtedly one of the most flagrant violations of human rights and one of the most atrocious and abhorrent forms of violence affecting women and girls around the world.

This practice, far removed from the stereotypes present in the collective imagination, is a form of cruel gender-based submission, still widespread in many parts of the world, which is used to suppress women’s sexual pleasure in order to avoid their supposed promiscuity, to prevent them from being rejected in marriage and to ensure that their only intimate relations can be with their husband or for the sole purpose of having offspring.

Genital cutting is rooted in gender inequality and social norms that impede the free development and empowerment of women and girls. According to United Nations sources, more than 200 million women and girls have been mutilated by this abominable practice that we must eradicate as soon as possible and forever. Just think that, this year alone, around 4.3 million girls will be at risk of being mutilated. Many of them will lose their lives as a result of complications related to infections due to the lack of minimum sanitary conditions, uncontrolled haemorrhaging or nervous shock resulting from severe pain after cutting.

For this reason, there is an urgent need for joint and coordinated efforts to eliminate female genital mutilation through urgent and cross-cutting actions in all areas (in the family and social environment, in the education and health systems, in the mechanisms of defence and legal protection against violence against women and girls, etc.). If this is not done, the number of girls at risk of being mutilated each year could rise to 6 million by 2030.

We know what needs to be done and what resources are needed if we really want to end this despicable practice. Governments and institutions cannot look the other way and must assume their responsibility unless they agree to be complicit by their silence.

Every minute counts. So much so that, in the time it has taken you to read this little text, in a quiet reading, for 25 girls it will already be too late.

Too late.