Question 12760 — women

Summary

Ms. Gabrielle Cathala draws the attention of the Keeper of the Seals, Minister of Justice, to the effectiveness of public policies for the prevention, detection and repression of female genital mutilation (FGM). Female genital mutilation constitutes particularly serious attacks on the physical and psychological integrity, health and dignity of women and girls. They are recognized as violations of rights human rights by competent international organizations and constitute, under French law, criminal offenses punishable by severe sanctions, particularly when committed against minors. According to the latest official health estimates, nearly 139,000 women who have undergone female genital mutilation lived in France in 2024. Internationally, UNICEF indicates that the number of girls and women who have undergone female genital mutilation increased by around 15% between 2016 and 2023. The United Nations also estimates that several million girls are exposed to the risk of these practices each year around the world, a significant proportion of them before the age of five. Despite these worrying data, the judicial response appears very limited. Prosecutions and convictions for acts of female genital mutilation remain extremely rare in view of the available health and association estimates. Public data relating to the criminal response also appears to be incomplete. According to the information accessible and relayed by specialized institutional and associative actors, no conviction was recorded over a period of approximately ten years, until a recent trial which led to the conviction of a mother for the excision of his three eldest daughters. Subject to the exhaustiveness of the available data, this situation highlights a particularly worrying gap between the estimated scale of the phenomenon and the criminal response actually implemented. It questions the capacity of judicial institutions to identify, qualify and prosecute these offenses, even though they constitute crimes or aggravated violence, as well as to ensure effective protection of minors and to prevent the reproduction of this violence. Furthermore, many associative actors and professionals in the field underline the still insufficient nature of awareness-raising and training of the general public as well as health, education, social work, justice and child protection professionals. Female genital mutilation remains little discussed in initial and continuing training courses and insufficiently identified early, which contributes to the under-reporting of risk situations, the isolation of victims and late treatment. In this regard, the Excision association, let’s talk about it! estimates that around three in ten adolescent girls whose parents come from a country where these practices are traditionally widespread remain at risk of mutilation, particularly during stays abroad. If this data is an associative estimate, it highlights the persistence of proven risks on the national territory and the need to strengthen prevention and protection policies. If the Government has reaffirmed its commitment through the interministerial plan for equality between women and men and the announcement of a 2025-2028 Ile-de-France plan providing for awareness-raising actions, training of professionals, strengthening of reporting and the testing of a multidisciplinary care pathway for victims, these measures appear partly territorialized or experimental. Their evaluation, their articulation with existing national policies and the conditions for their generalization to the entire national territory require clarification. Mrs. MP therefore regrets that this interministerial plan is just another communication plan with no real operational follow-up. She also wishes to draw attention to the institutional recognition of the harm suffered by victims. Recent academic work has highlighted that certain compensation scales used in the assessment of disabilities do not explicitly identify impairments to female sexual organs such as the clitoris, vagina or vaginal lips, which is likely to lead to an undervaluation of specific sexual harms resulting from female genital mutilation. In this context, it asks him to present a quantified, updated and made public assessment of the number of reports, investigations, prosecutions and convictions for acts of female genital mutilation over the last ten years. recent years; to specify the results of the evaluations carried out on the real impact of the existing national plans and the recently announced Ile-de-France plan, as well as the timetable and methods envisaged for the generalization of the experimental systems on a national scale; to indicate the budgetary and human resources specifically devoted to the initial and continuing training of professionals in the identification and reporting of female genital mutilation; and to clarify whether a revision of the compensation scales is envisaged in order to guarantee full recognition of the specific sexual harm suffered by victims of female genital mutilation.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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