DEAR DAUGHTER CAMPAIGN
Ifrah Foundation’s Dear Daughter Campaign is a result of extensive research into comprehensively understanding what it takes to achieve permanent abandonment of the practice. A holistic approach combining an understanding of the medical, reproductive health and human rights abuse consequences overridden by a complex systemic belief system of cultural, spiritual and socio-economic proportions is required.
The dedicated campaign website is accessible here: https://deardaughter.unfpa.org
Please also visit us on twitter, instagram and facebook @deardaughtercampaign/. https://www.facebook.com/DearDaughterCampaign
FGM in Somalia
The Somalia Health and Demographic Survey (SHDS) 1 stated 98% of women and girls still undergo FGM. This, in spite of the resources applied to eradicating FGM in Somalia over many years. A radically different approach is required if we are to bring about an end to Female Genital Mutilation in Somalia as mandated by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal No 5 by 2030.
Campaign overview
The ‘Dear Daughter’ campaign is rooted in the fundamental principle of personal empowerment. Armed with the facts and the knowledge of personal experience, each individual citizen is invited to pledge to protect their daughters and to bear witness to that promise; by writing a letter, or making a video published online, for example. The keys to success are what other FGM abandonment campaigns have evidenced: it needs scale (at national level) and sustained consistently (funded), over a long period of time.
UNFPA and Ifrah Foundation support a holistic approach to the elimination of FGM/C combining the three pillars of action in the areas of Advocacy, Awareness and Community Empowerment.
INTEGRATING THE THREE PILLARS OF ACTION & DEAR DAUGHTER CAMPAIGN
1
ADVOCACY
Legislative reform and policy steering by key decision makers and a wide range of influencers; from politicians and Religious Leaders to Pop Stars.
2
AWARENESS RAISING
Multi-platform public relations and communications integrating and amplifying advocacy and community empowerment efforts.
3
COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT
Training, education, and outreach programs via a range of community stakeholders undertaken in collaboration with existing infrastructures from relevant government ministries to established NGO networks headed up by a network of Dear Daughter Campaign ambassadors trained in the work of empowering communities, families, parents and guardians to commit not to cut their daughters.
Ifrah Foundation and UNFPA launched the campaign in Mogadishu on 30th September 2021 in 2021. The dedicated campaign website is now accessible here: https://deardaughter.unfpa.org
Please also visit us on twitter, instagram and facebook @deardaughtercampaign/. https://www.facebook.com/DearDaughterCampaign
Dear Daughter Campaign is the intellectual property of Ifrah Foundation and UNFPA Somalia.