National Parliamentary Workshop on “Female Genital Mutilation and the Law”

No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ) and the Mauritanian Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (AMPSFE - IAC Mauritania), together with the Mauritanian Network of Parliamentarians on Population and Development, organized a parliamentary Workshop on “Female Genital Mutilation and the Law”, which was held on 3-4 February at the National Assembly of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.
 
The workshop was attended by parliamentarians, representatives from civil society and relevant government ministries. Its scope was to provide Parliamentarians the opportunity to take part in a comprehensive conversation on strategies and best practices in the fight against FGM, with the objective of evaluating and discussing a bill currently in development to prohibit female genital mutilation in Mauritania.
 
The workshop concluded with the adoption of a Final Declaration stressing the need to enact a specific and effective law banning Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) within a year in Mauritania and to foster a worldwide mobilisation contributing to the elimination of FGM as a violation of the human rights of women and girls.
 
Among its main recommendations, the Final Declaration calls not only for the adoption of effective national legislation banning FGM in all countries where it is practised, but also to work towards their harmonisation so that their scope and the sanctions they foresee are analogous, in order to tackle the increasingly cross-border aspect of the practice. A the international level, parliamentarians call on the Mauritanian authorities to fully support the campaign for the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations specifically focused  on the banning of FGM and call on all other States concerned to do the same.
 

• Final Declaration