00:00 "Young girls between the ages of 7 and 11 sing songs and rhymes urging their parents
00:07 to save them from FGM.
00:10 It's part of an alternative rite of passage ceremony organized by a local non-profit in
00:15 Kenya's Kisii County.
00:18 While Kenya banned female genital mutilation in 2011, the practice persists, particularly
00:23 in Kisii, where 80 percent of the time it's carried out by health care workers.
00:28 "In Kisii, because of the complexity, because of the medicalization and the secrecy, and
00:34 our parents really feel like they know what they are doing, it's very complex in Kisii."
00:39 Doris Kamunto Onsomu no longer does the procedure, but spent years performing it on young girls
00:45 in medical establishments.
00:47 At the time, she believed it to be a safer way of preserving the cultural custom that
00:51 she herself went through as a teenager.
00:54 "One reason was that if you were uncircumcised, they felt that you would be sexually active
01:02 unnecessarily, and so it's like when you are circumcised, they reduce the libido a
01:07 bit.
01:08 Yeah.
01:09 That was one of the major reasons."
01:13 But even when FGM is carried out in a sterilized environment, there are still major risks to
01:18 the girls' physical, psychological and sexual health.
01:21 "I went through the cut, but I wouldn't want my children to have to go through the same
01:28 thing.
01:29 At a seminar I attended, we were taught about the complications women who were cut had when
01:35 giving birth.
01:37 I experienced the same thing when I went to the hospital to give birth."
01:43 UNICEF warns that the increase in medicalized FGM could ruin the progress Kenya has made
01:48 in stopping the practice.
01:50 According to Kenyan authorities, FGM rates fell to just 15 percent in 2022.
01:56 But NGOs say the real figure could be much higher.
01:59 - [Children] Boom, zah, dah.
