254.The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (“the 2003 Act”), which extends to England and Wales and Northern Ireland, and the Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (Scotland) Act 2005, which extends to Scotland, and before them the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, provide for an offence of female genital mutilation (“FGM”). FGM involves procedures which include the partial or total removal of the external female genital organs for non-medical reasons. The practice is medically unnecessary, extremely painful and has serious health consequences, both at the time when the mutilation is carried out, and in later life. Section 4 of the 2003 Act provides that the section 1 offence of FGM (and the related offences, in sections 2 and 3 of the 2003 Act, of helping a girl to perform FGM on herself and of assisting a non-UK person to perform FGM overseas) extend to acts done outside of the UK by UK nationals or permanent UK residents. There has not yet been a conviction under the 2003 Act.
The data on this page is available in the alternative data formats listed:
All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. This site additionally contains content derived from EUR-Lex, reused under the terms of the Commission Decision 2011/833/EU on the reuse of documents from the EU institutions. For more information see the EUR-Lex public statement on re-use.
