Summary: An overlooked category of enslavement.

I caused some surprise recently when, speaking to a group of anti-trafficking professionals, I mentioned that female genital mutilation can be a form of human trafficking. I was somewhat surprised at the surprise so I thought it might be useful to set out the basis for my statement.

First, the definition of human trafficking is set out in various international conventions including the Palermo Protocol and the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings. 

But, put most simply, human trafficking may be thought of as the process of rendering a person into a situation of exploitation, that is, at minimum, “the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs.”

The list of exploitative purposes in these instruments should not be read as exhaustive. The language is expressly framed as a minimum. The question, therefore, is not simply whether female genital mutilation is named in the conventions. It is whether, in particular factual circumstances, the acts and means required by the trafficking definition are present, and whether the purpose is one of exploitation. My argument is that, in many cases, FGM does meet that test.

Many forms of female genital mutilation involve the partial or total removal of the clitoral glans – the external and visible part of the clitoris, which is itself a larger organ extending internally. So, when a child has been recruited, transported, transferred, harboured or received for that purpose, then the Convention elements of child trafficking may be satisfied. 

Where those same trafficking acts are carried out in relation to adult women, and where FGM is imposed by trafficking “means” such as force, coercion, deception, abuse of power, abuse of vulnerability, or payments to a person exercising control over them, then the Convention elements of trafficking may also be satisfied. 

The absence of FGM from the usual examples of trafficking should not be mistaken for its incompatibility with the legal concepts of trafficking, slavery or slavery-like practices. And the trafficking argument is only part of the issue. FGM should also be understood as a slavery-like practice of coercive sexual control. 

The 1926 Slavery Convention defines slavery as “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised.”

The World Health Organization notes that “FGM is often considered a necessary part of raising a girl, and a way to prepare her for adulthood and marriage. This can include controlling her sexuality to promote premarital virginity and marital fidelity.”

Where individuals or groups within a community claim the power to impose permanent control over such a fundamental aspect of a girl’s or woman’s humanity as her sexuality, they are, in effect, exercising powers attaching to the right of ownership. Put bluntly, this is the sort of power human beings more commonly claim over livestock: the power to alter bodies, control sexuality and regulate reproductive capacity in the interests of those claiming ownership-like powers over another body.

Hence female genital mutilation is not simply a harmful traditional practice or an assault on bodily integrity. It is a coercive process by which adults exercise permanent control over a girl’s sexuality, marriageability and social status. At minimum, the omission of FGM from the Global Estimates of Modern Slavery – produced by the International Labour Organization, Walk Free and the International Organization for Migration, and focused on forced labour and forced marriage – exposes a serious gap in how ownership-like control over women and girls is counted.