U.S. says to bolster efforts to end female genital mutilation

By Hanan Abdel-Khalek LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The United States unveiled plans on Thursday to ramp up efforts to end female genital mutilation (FGM) after figures showed more than half of million women and girls were living at risk. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said the U.S. Department of State would host a summit on Dec. 2 in Washington involving various government departments and women's rights groups to come up with an action plan to rid the country of FGM. A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released earlier this year showed 513,000 women and girls in the United States live at risk of FGM, a threefold increase in recent years due to the rise in immigrants from countries where it is practiced.

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