Rights-based advocacy and organised international mobilisation against female genital mutilation (FGM) have emerged in the past 30 years, including at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). During the 1995 Beijing Conference, African feminists led efforts for the explicit condemnation of FGM in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (POA). This resulted in the POA’s call for governments to ‘[e]n act and enforce legislation against the perpetrators of practices and acts of violence against women, such as female genital mutilation’.However, this framing is not universal. African feminists have decried the Western framing of FGM premised on colonial and neo-colonial underpinnings.In this book the term ‘FGM’ is used to highlight its human rights implications, especially in respect of sexual and reproductive health. However, it is acknowledged that FGM as a practice, including its naming as ‘FGM’, is contested on various grounds.