Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they are resourcing the provision of training and education in communities in the United Kingdom in which female genital mutilation is practised.

Long-term and systematic eradication of female genital mutilation in the UK will require practising communities to abandon the practice themselves. To keep girls safe we need to work directly with local people who know what will work in their areas.

Faith has an important role to play. At the Girl Summit we launched declarations for faith leaders to sign against female genital mutilation and forced marriage. These have now been signed by over 350 leaders from all major faiths. These declarations make it clear that no religion condones the practice.

The Department for Communities and Local Government and the Government Equalities Office have also committed £270,000 to community projects to prevent female genital mutilation and other forms of so-called honour based violence. We recently announced the projects that successfully secured this funding. We will fund 17 community projects which include three organisations that will set up networks of community champions against female genital mutilation and forced marriage.

Many of these projects will work with young people. Brave young women and men have been at the forefront of campaigning against female genital mutilation and their courage and determination inspire us all to do more. Videos of the projects can be found at http://www.thinglink.com/scene/597214845217013762.

This funding is in addition to £100,000 committed by the Home Office to run a female genital mutilation community engagement initiative. The Home Office is funding 12 voluntary and community sector organisations to carry out community work to raise awareness of female genital mutilation amongst women already affected by this and young girls at-risk, as well as men in the community.

On 5 December 2014 the Government also launched a new female genital mutilation unit to drive a step change in nationwide outreach on female genital mutilation with criminal justice partners, children's services, healthcare professionals and affected communities.

The unit will deliver outreach support to local areas to assist them in developing their local response to tackling female genital mutilation and to raise awareness of the unit. The first phase of this work will be carried out in a series of training workshops which Forward UK are delivering to Local Safeguarding Children's Boards in high prevalence female genital mutilation areas.

The unit will also offer bespoke targeted peer support to local areas who want to strengthen their ability to tackle female genital mutilation. Organisations interested in receiving peer support or an outreach presentation can email the unit at

FGMenquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.