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Jean Lambert London's Green MEP

Green MEP signs international appeal to ban Female Genital Mutilation

Jean Lambert, the Green MEP for London, has signed an international appeal calling for a 2010 UN resolution to ban Female Genital Mutilation worldwide.

The appeal was launched by No Peace Without Justice (NPWJ), The Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (I-AC), Euronet-FGM and La Palabre to promote and to ensure the adoption, at the 65th United Nations General Assembly in 2010, of a Resolution explicitly banning female genital mutilation and by doing so to strengthen this decisive battle for human rights worldwide.#

A worldwide ban on FGM adopted by the United Nations General Assembly would significantly help to complete the shift of perspectives on FGM from a “public health” or “cultural” problem, to the universal recognition of its true nature as a human rights violation and a form of violence against millions of women around the world. In addition, this instrument would give new impetus to efforts to improve national laws banning FGM where they exist, or to adopt one, where they do not, as well as provide strong and clear support for all activists that are struggling to put an end to this human rights violation at the national and regional level.

The appeal reads:

We, the undersigned, human rights activists and citizens worldwide, joining together after years of
struggle for female genital mutilation to be recognized and condemned as a violation of the human
right to physical integrity, and conscious that a United Nations ban will give new strength and impetus
to the efforts that are still needed to end the practice worldwide;

– call upon the 65th session of the United Nations General Assembly to adopt a Resolution to ban
female genital mutilation worldwide;
– call upon all governments, and upon all international and regional organizations, to support and
promote the adoption of this Resolution in 2010;
– invite all citizens of the world to support this initiative and sign the petition to put an end to this
widespread and systematic form of violence committed against women and girls, in violation of their
fundamental right to physical and personal integrity.

The appeal, which was published on 15 November 2010 in the International Herald Tribune, has already been signed by prominent political leaders from 42 countries among whom Chantal Compaoré, First Lady of Burkina Faso, Mariana Mane Sanha, First Lady of Guinea Bissau, Janet Kataha Museveni, First lady of Uganda, Chantal De Souza Yayi, First lady of Benin, Clio Napoletano, First Lady of Italy, Moushira Mahmoud Khattab, Minister of State for Family and Population, Egypt, Raid Fahmi, Minister of Science and Technology, Iraq, Hicham El Tall, Minister of Justice, Jordan, Naha Mint Mouknass, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mauritania, the Nobel laureates Nadime Gordimer, Desmond Tutu, Shirin Ebadi and Marty Ahtisaari, as well as parliamentarians, political leaders and civil society activists from countries concerned by the practice of FGM and beyond.