Leyla Hussein: Advocating Against Female Genital Mutilation

Yasmin Valdez  | 29 de noviembre de 2018  | Vistas: 74

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a practice that involves the removal of some or all of the external female genitalia, and is something that to this day keeps happening around the world. Leyla Hussein shares during this interview her experience and journey of becoming an activist against this injustice.

I lived in an environment where all women have had genital mutilation, so I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.“

Hussein describes how she became to the realization that she was an activist, how the female mutilation was something harmful and that there wasn’t much education or information about it.
Leyla explains her perspective of not only campaigning against FGM but in favor of the protection of human rights. Also, the importance of defending ALL human rights, where she includes the challenges that this presents with social or cultural beliefs.

If you’re gonna be challenging female genital mutilation you need to challenge all forms of human rights, you can’t pick and choose.”

She reveals what is her inspiration to keep doing her work as an activist, in relation to her daughter and the safety of women in today’s society. Hussein concludes presenting the consequences of the work she’s done, and why she created Face of Defiance, a project dedicated to portrait campaigners as happy and normal humans, to break the common paradigms around the subject.

Now watch her conference at the College Freedom Forum 2018The Cruel Cut: Female Genital Mutilation


Psychotherapist and activist against Female Genital Mutilation



Universidad Francisco Marroquín