Legislative and policy responses to ‘FGM’ in the UK

Political concerns relating to this prosecutorial inactivity resulted in further policy and legislative action through the Serious Crime Act 2015, which (amending the 2003 Act) made all those ‘habitually resident’ in the UK protected by the law regardless of their visa status. The 2015 Act also introduced mandatory reporting of ‘FGM’ for a range of professionals with responsibility for safeguarding, as well as new recourse to civil remedies through FGM Protection Orders. FGMPOs are issued by family courts and involve an assessment of future risk in which the standard of proof is the balance of probabilities rather than determining beyond reasonable doubt that criminal activity has taken place. Consequently, FGMPOs may be applied even in situations of relatively low risk (Pantazis et al. 2025).

To date, there have been three convictions in the UK for ‘FGM’-related crimes. In the first, which took place in 2019, a mother without cultural heritage relating to female circumcision was found guilty of cutting her child alongside other child abuse. In the second, in 2023, a woman was convicted of assisting the occurrence of ‘FGM’, having accompanied a child abroad in 2006, when she herself was a young adult. In 2024, a man was convicted of arranging and paying for a girl to go abroad for ‘FGM’. The small number and nature of these convictions adds further weight to indications that the prevalence of ‘FGM’ in the UK is not what the policy assumes.

There is now a large and growing body of evidence to support claims that these assumptions are problematic. Internationally, existing research highlights concerns with the reliability of these estimates, even in settings in which the data were collected (Elmusharaf et al. 2006). There are also several problems with applying these data to UK contexts. Firstly, it is likely that FGM/C is less common amongst migrants than those remaining in high-prevalence settings, particularly given that claims for asylum are routinely made on the basis of avoiding FGM/C (Kea and Roberts-Holmes 2013; Middelburg and Balta 2016). There is also evidence that attitudes to FGM/C change following migration (Ali et al. 2020; Carver 2021; Cohen et al. 2018; O’Brien et al. 2016). Understood as a strategy for social mobility in communities in which it is practised, its value can be lost on migration to non-practising societies. In the UK this tendency has been encouraged by effective educational initiatives organised by affected communities themselves (Ahmed et al. 2022; FORWARD 2017; Small et al. 2020).

Our research adds to this evidence and suggests that the data underpinning ‘FGM’ policy in the UK are not only extremely limited but also unfit for purpose. The data suggest that the actual prevalence of FGM/C in the UK is much lower than is presumed in government estimates. Clinical studies of National Health Service (NHS) populations reveal a small number of cases (Ali et al. 2020; Creighton et al. 2016; Hodes et al. 2016). For example, Hodes et al.’s (2021) review of data from the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit (from over 90 per cent of consultant paediatricians between 2015 and 2017) identified just 103 FGM/C cases, which included genital piercing. In comparison, some 266 labial reduction operations were performed on girls under the age of fourteen on the NHS between 2008 and 2012 (British Society for Paediatric & Adolescent Gynaecology 2013:4). There has also been a significant global increase in cosmetic genital surgeries since that time (Liao and Creighton 2019:2).

Evidence of institutional responses to FGM/C since the 2015 Act, gathered from freedom of information requests to the Home Office, Department for Education, and Ministry of Justice, also suggests that these estimates exaggerate the scale of the issue in the UK (Karlsen et al. 2023). Additionally, analysis of publicly available data from the NHS’s FGM Enhanced Dataset,1 The FGM Enhanced Dataset was set up by the Department of Health in 2015 to monitor the level of FGM/C in the UK. This requires general practitioners (GPs) and mental health and acute trusts to gather details about FGM/C among their patient populations. the Home Office’s official statistics, and the Crown Prosecution Service’s official reports supports this claim. While this is likely to be an under-estimate, only seventy-four FGM/C offences were reported to the police (excluding Manchester Metropolitan Police) in 2019–20 (Karlsen et al. 2023). The Ministry of Justice recorded almost 600 FGMPOs between 2015 and 2020, but none was reported as ‘breached’ (e.g. having led to an experience of FGM/C) by 2019 (Karlsen et al. 2023). While the FGM Enhanced Dataset only collects data from clinic populations and is, again, incomplete,2 Only 2.5 per cent of GP practices and 62.7 per cent of NHS trusts had ever submitted information to the dataset by 2020 (Karlsen et al. 2023). our investigation into available data suggests that as few as eight girls and young women aged under eighteen and living in the UK have experienced any type of FGM/C between 2015 (when the record began) and 2020 (Karlsen et al. 2023). It is also worth noting that political and media discourses regarding ‘FGM’ often encourage assumptions that the majority of FGM/C risk experienced in the UK relates to its most extreme form, notably infibulation (WHO Type 3) (Ali et al. 2023). Data from the FGM Enhanced Dataset suggest that the number of girls and women aged under eighteen experiencing these FGM/C types in the UK between 2015 and 2022 may be as few as one or two (Karlsen et al. 2023).

While far from comprehensive, the picture of UK FGM/C prevalence presented by this data would suggest that the policy responses described above are heavy-handed, as the scale of FGM/C seems much smaller than official estimates. The over-zealous policy approach was also a concern raised by our community partners, to whose perspectives we now turn.

Despite this positive collaboration, concerns about local and national policy started to create tensions, which were exacerbated by a series of events in 2018. The first was the attempted prosecution of a Bristol Somali father for allegedly organising FGM/C for his daughter. The case was dismissed mid-trial by a judge who found the prosecution’s sparse and faulty evidence ‘deeply troubling’.5 BBC News (2018). No byline. ‘Bristol FGM case against father dropped’, 22 February. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-43153529 [Accessed 11 July 2025]. It triggered an outburst of anger from groups who had experienced FGM safeguarding, aimed at local authorities, police, politicians, and anti-‘FGM’ activists. Tensions were compounded by the release of a Channel 4 documentary a week later called The FGM Detectives, focused on the police as they investigated the case. In response, some local parents organised themselves into a campaign group called Somali Parents Against Stigmatisation to draw attention to the harm, stigmatisation, and racial profiling created by the FGM-safeguarding policy and practices. This led to several community-led actions including the production of a touring theatrical show dramatising people’s experiences, and an approach to the University of Bristol with a request for academic research on the impact of FGM safeguarding.

In partnership with Somali Parents Against Stigmatisation and other local organisations, we recruited thirty individuals into six focus groups in 2018. The focus groups involved Somali-heritage participants, including some anti-‘FGM’ community activists and individuals from community engagement organisations; therefore they did not rely only on the perspectives of those linked to the Somali Parents Against Stigmatisation group. Separate focus groups were conducted with men, women, and young people. As well as developing the study aims with our collaborators, preliminary findings were also presented to participants and partners for validation before the official launch, giving them an opportunity for feedback and further input.

Furthermore, in 2022 the research team worked with Caafi Health,6 https://www.caafihealth.org.uk/ [Accessed 2 September 2025]. a local grassroots health organisation supporting ethnically minoritised communities, to specifically consider the healthcare needs of women and their families and whether and how they were recognised and responded to within statutory healthcare settings. Caafi Health led the recruitment of participants and facilitation of seven focus groups and fourteen qualitative interviews with men and women from ten different national backgrounds from affected communities (see Pantazis et al. 2023).

Understood as a research process in which ‘the contribution of stakeholders’ knowledge is vital to create knowledge’ (Turnhout et al. 2020:16), an ethical commitment to knowledge co-production has been a fundamental part of our work on FGM/C. Our research has been driven by a feminist approach that recognises the intersectional marginalisation of racially and ethnically minoritised communities (Crenshaw 1991). As white researchers, guided by ethical principles, we have tried to be sensitive to polarising FGM/C debates, even within affected communities. Mindful of the importance of giving voice to marginalised communities, we nonetheless had to navigate complicated power hierarchies which are often inherent in a research process (Alcalde 2007).