28th April 2026
From Colombia to Connecticut: The urgent need to end FGM in the Americas
20 min read
By Tamara Rusansky, Associate Manager, Communications LAC & Mel Bailey, Associate Communications Manager, with Equality Now
Across the Americas, hundreds of thousands of women and girls are living with or have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). These affected populations are citizens and residents of countries where protections are incomplete, entirely focused on criminalisation, inconsistently enforced, or entirely absent.
FGM is not a “foreign” issue. It is a human rights violation unfolding within national borders, one that governments in the Americas have the legal and moral responsibility to address.
As regional governing mechanisms, like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), begin to formally recognise FGM as a human rights issue within the Americas, states have more concrete guidance on their obligations to take action to prevent and eradicate this form of violence against women and girls.
Female genital mutilation (FGM), which affects more than 230 million women and girls worldwide, is a grave human rights violation deeply rooted in gender inequality and discrimination. FGM refers to the partial or total removal or other injury to female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
Across the Americas, FGM remains a hidden, poorly documented, and largely ignored practice impacting more than 700,000 women and girls. Although progress has been made throughout the hemisphere to combat various forms of gender-based violence, FGM has remained on the margins of public attention and protection policies.
The occurrence of this harmful practice is formally recognised in the United States, Canada, and Colombia, yet none of these countries has a comprehensive legal framework to address it. While the US and Canada have federal criminal laws neither law has dedicated prevention or educational provisions. At the state level in the US, while 41 states have enacted specific legislation, these laws vary considerably in their scope and level of comprehensiveness, and nine states still lack any targeted legal protections. In Colombia, despite growing recognition and advocacy, there is currently no national law addressing FGM.
Across Latin America and the Caribbean, where data gaps leave the full extent of the practice almost entirely unmeasured, a persistent myth frames FGM as exclusively an African or Asian phenomenon with no presence in the region. In North America, two parallel misconceptions hinder progress: that FGM is a “global south” problem or that it is confined to specific Indigenous or diaspora communities and therefore does not require a comprehensive national policy response.
These misconceptions contribute to the invisibility of the issue and reinforce the lack of effective measures for its prevention and elimination.
FGM has long been recognised globally as a severe form of gender-based violence and a violation of women’s and girls’ human rights. Equality Now and its partners have collated evidence of FGM in 94 countries, including the US, Colombia, and Canada. Only 59 of those countries have a specific law prohibiting FGM, and considerable improvement is needed to ensure better access to justice and support for survivors.
Numerous human rights mechanisms, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Istanbul Convention, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, affirm that states have a legal and moral duty to prohibit FGM, prevent, and provide survivor-centred support services.
In March 2026, the IACHR, the key regional body of the Organization of American States (OAS), charged with protecting human rights across the Americas, became the most recent inter-regional mechanism to formally recognise the presence of FGM in the Americas and called on states to take comprehensive action.
Grounded in states’ obligations under the Belém do Pará Convention and the American Convention on Human Rights, the Commission urged governments to promote dialogue with communities to drive sociocultural change, and to strengthen legal and policy frameworks that ensure early detection, survivor-centered care, and access to services, all grounded in intercultural, gender-responsive approaches and backed by sustained funding.
This landmark acknowledgement followed the first-ever dedicated thematic hearing held by an international human rights mechanism focused on FGM/C in the Americas, just four months prior. The public announcement by the IACHR has the potential to redefine how FGM is understood under regional law, situate the violation within the regional human rights framework, and demand coordinated State action, accountability, and recognition that every woman and girl has the right to live free from this form of gender based violence.
As we approach the end of legislative sessions where pending FGM legislation has been proposed across the Americas, we must acknowledge the narrowing window for governments to act.
Across the Americas, momentum is mounting to enact anti-FGM legislation.
Legislators have until 20 June 2026 to enact Proyecto de Ley No. 440 de 2025 Senado-018 de 2024 Cámara, a bill that would establish the first specific legal framework against FGM in Latin America.
The bill combines prevention, intercultural education, mandatory health protocols, and data collection obligations, reflecting a comprehensive, survivor-centred, and intersectional approach developed in close collaboration with Indigenous women leaders whose communities are most affected by the practice.
Government health data shows that FGM disproportionately affects Indigenous girls in Colombia. Between 2020 and 2025, 204 cases were documented nationwide, 177 of them involving Indigenous girls, mainly in the departments of Risaralda and Chocó. Experts warn that such figures significantly underestimate the real prevalence due to persistent underreporting of FGM. Without accurate data, assessing the extent of the problem and designing appropriate responses is challenging.
In March 2026, the Senate’s First Commission approved the bill in its third debate, solidifying a significant step forward after years of advocacy. Now, attention turns to the Senate plenary, where the final vote will decide whether it becomes law. For Indigenous women leaders, advocates, and communities who have long called for action, the end of this legislative session will be their defining moment.
The End FGM Canada Network estimates there are more than 100,000 survivors of FGM/C. However, publicly available data estimating the scale of the problem within the country remains scarce.
Under the Canadian Criminal Code section 268(3), any person found guilty of conducting FGM faces up to 14 years imprisonment; however, to date, there have been no criminal prosecutions or convictions for FGM in the country.
At least 577,000 women and girls are estimated to be at risk or affected by FGM. Federal law currently prohibits the violation through the STOP FGM Act, though recent proposals such as Congressional Bill H.R. 3492 wrongly conflate FGM with gender-affirming care and risks undermining enforcement of anti-FGM protections for survivors nationally.
These developments have sparked an additional drive toward state-level action to comprehensively protect against the practice. Individual state agencies and officials have far greater capacity than federal authorities to directly assist women and girls in local communities. An interactive map by Equality Now and the U.S. End FGM/C Network shares FGM/C legal provisions and gaps in every US state.
Among the most recent proposed legislation to curtail the practice, Connecticut State legislators have 6 May, 2026 to pass Senate Bill 259, which passed unanimously in the State Senate in April 2026. After years of sustained advocacy by survivors, FGM advocates, civil society organisations, health experts, and legal policy experts, the Bill now awaits a vote in the House.
Previously, legislators and advocates have made six unsuccessful attempts to pass a law addressing FGM in the state. Proposed bills in 2018, 2020, and 2021 aimed at prohibiting FGM or studying its prevalence did not progress beyond the committee stage, while in 2019, a bill was rejected by the State Senate. In 2024, a drafted bill failed to be introduced, and in 2025, a bill was never raised to the House floor for a vote during the legislative session.
If passed, Senate Bill 259 would finally establish a state-level ban and provide essential protections for thousands of survivors and girls at risk by establishing the crime of female genital mutilation in Connecticut and setting higher safeguards for girls. The bill would also:
Collecting data is an essential first step in understanding where and how FGM occurs and identifying effective strategies to eliminate it.
Across the Americas, emerging best practice points to the clear conclusion that a sole focus on the criminalization of FGM is not enough to prevent, eradicate, or adequately protect survivors from harm.
Effective legal frameworks must be holistic in ways that combine prevention, education, community engagement, and survivor-centred support services.
Colombia’s bill offers an instructive model in this regard. Rather than centering criminal punishment, it establishes obligations around prevention, intercultural education, mandatory health protocols, and data collection, recognizing that a practice sustained by social norms and community structures requires responses that work within and alongside those communities, not solely against individuals.
Punitive frameworks, when applied in isolation, risk driving the practice underground, deterring survivors from seeking care, and criminalising communities without addressing the conditions that allow FGM to persist.
However, the effectiveness of even the most robust legal frameworks is ultimately dependent on sustained and dedicated funding. Legal obligations must be matched by investment in frontline training for healthcare providers and educators, in community-led prevention initiatives, and in accessible, survivor-centred services. Without this resourcing, laws risk remaining largely symbolic, unable to deliver meaningful protection in practice.
Crucially, legislation must also be carefully drafted to avoid conflating FGM with distinct medical procedures, including gender-affirming care. Such conflation risks undermining both legal clarity and access to essential health services.
In Colombia and beyond, comprehensive approaches in addition to political commitment toward the adoption of legislation and meaningful implementation will be essential to translate these efforts into sustainable protections for all women and girls within the Americas.
The growing recognition of female genital mutilation as a human rights issue in the Americas has created a rare and time-sensitive opportunity. But recognition alone will not end the practice. What happens next will depend on whether governments, regional bodies, and civil society take collective action.
Governments across the region must:
Regional and international human rights mechanisms must:
Civil society organisations must:
Ending FGM in the Americas will require these efforts to converge. Fragmented approaches, isolated laws, underfunded programs, or short-term political attention will not deliver lasting change. A coordinated response, grounded in shared responsibility and sustained collaboration, can.
This is a moment that demands alignment: between law and implementation, between governments and communities, and between regional commitments and national action. The tools to end FGM in the Americas already exist. What is needed now is the collective will to use them together.
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