I have spent many years listening to women and girls describe things others expected them to accept. Things that hurt them. Things that frightened them. They were told these were necessary for the family, the community, their future, or somebody else’s happiness.

After a while, you begin to recognize certain patterns. You hear the explanations change, but the expectation remains familiar. Somebody wants a woman or girl to endure something, and somebody else has a very convincing explanation for why she should.

Still, every now and then, something stops me in my tracks.

This week, as Somalia’s parliament considered legislation addressing female genital mutilation, a video circulated of a male lawmaker apparently discussing the practice in relation to men’s sexual experience.

I had to sit with that for a moment.

Here we are, in 2026, discussing whether girls should be protected from having healthy parts of their bodies cut or injured for nonmedical reasons. And in the middle of that discussion, men’s sexual interests are apparently being brought forward as something lawmakers ought to consider.

There is bold, and then there is this.

I want to be careful about one thing. I have not found a reliable, complete translation of the lawmaker’s remarks, so I will not pretend to know every word he said. But the reported framing deserves serious attention, particularly because it reflects a much larger history of treating girls’ bodies as something society can prepare for men.

And I want us to consider what that means for the child. The little girl.

A Girl’s Body Is Not Something Society Owes a Man

On October 17, 2026, Somalia’s Minister of Family and Human Rights Development, Khadija Mohamed Al-Makhzoumi, presented legislation seeking to prohibit female genital mutilation. She urged lawmakers to recognize the physical and psychological harm the practice causes and strengthen protections for women and girls.

Why should anyone cut a girl’s healthy genital tissue in the first place?

Why should a child endure pain, bleeding, infection, or the possibility of lifelong complications because adults believe her body must meet certain expectations?

And why, when discussing those risks, should the sexual interests of a man she may not even know become part of the justification?

We need to be willing to ask these questions without being accused of disrespecting an entire people or culture.

Somali girls are not separate from Somali culture. They belong to it. Their lives, their health, their futures, and their voices deserve to help shape it.

Protecting them is not an attack on their community.

It is an investment in its future.

The Numbers Should Trouble Every One of Us

According to UNICEF’s statistical overview, approximately 99 percent of Somali women between the ages of 15 and 49 have undergone female genital mutilation. Somalia has the highest recorded national prevalence among countries with comparable data.

UNICEF and UNFPA have also reported that approximately two out of every three Somali women underwent infibulation, sometimes called Pharaonic cutting. This form involves narrowing the vaginal opening by cutting and repositioning genital tissue, sometimes with stitching.

We are talking about injuries that can affect urination, menstruation, sexual health, childbirth, and emotional well-being. Some girls experience severe bleeding and infections. Some women live with chronic pain. The consequences vary, but there is no health benefit that justifies the practice.

And we should remember that a percentage represents human beings.

Girls who wanted to play. Girls who trusted the adults around them. Girls who had no way of knowing what would happen or why someone believed it needed to happen.

A child does not have to understand the politics of her body to deserve protection from harm.

UNICEF estimates that more than 230 million girls and women worldwide have undergone FGM, including more than 144 million in Africa, over 80 million in Asia, and approximately 6 million in the Middle East.

And despite decades of advocacy, UNICEF warns that another 27 million girls could undergo FGM by 2030 if progress does not accelerate.

What Are We Teaching Girls About Their Own Bodies?

One of the things that concerns me about grooming and abuse is how early children can learn that other people’s needs outrank their own discomfort.

Sometimes the lesson arrives through words. Sometimes through punishment. Sometimes through the quiet approval adults give to obedience, even when obedience comes at a terrible cost.

A girl may learn that being good means being agreeable. That respecting elders means never questioning what they decide. That being accepted by her community requires her to tolerate something she fears.

And when those lessons become part of her upbringing, refusing can feel like betraying everyone she loves.

That is an enormous burden to place on a child.

I understand that many families continue harmful practices because they genuinely believe they are protecting their daughters’ futures. They may fear rejection, lost marriage opportunities, or social isolation. Some mothers and grandmothers endured the same procedures themselves and were taught to see them as necessary.

We can recognize those pressures without excusing the harm.

We can understand how a practice survives across generations while still insisting that it end.

Compassion does not require us to pretend that every tradition deserves preservation. Sometimes compassion requires the courage to say that a tradition has harmed enough children already.

Somali Women Have Been Fighting This Battle for Years

There is something else I want readers to understand.

Somali women are not sitting quietly, waiting for the rest of the world to discover their suffering.

They have been organizing, educating families, challenging political resistance, supporting Survivors, and demanding legal protections for years.

Former Somali Minister of Women and Human Rights Development Deqa Yasin has described the obstacles she encountered while working to advance legislation protecting women and children. Proposals addressing sexual violence, children’s rights, and FGM faced significant resistance. She also endured gender-based attacks connected to her public advocacy.

IPI Global Observatory

Women working to protect girls must sometimes spend years defending the very idea that girls deserve protection. Meanwhile, another generation of children grows older. And that is why I am particularly interested in the women who refuse to give up.

I think of Fadumo, a Somali mother whose story UNICEF published. She survived FGM at seven years old. Years later, her newborn daughter also underwent the practice. When Fadumo became pregnant with another girl, she resolved to protect that child from the same harm.

UNICEF Somalia

There is a great deal of courage in that decision.

It is one thing to disagree with a practice from a comfortable distance. It is another to challenge something your own family and community may believe is necessary, knowing that the consequences of refusing could be painful.

Women like Fadumo deserve to be seen. Their courage reminds us that culture is not frozen in time. People shape it. They question it. They preserve what nourishes life and challenge what harms it.

And Somali women have every right to help determine the future their daughters inherit.

We Have to Stop Making Girls Responsible for Men’s Expectations

I keep returning to the same troubling question.

Why are we so comfortable discussing what girls must endure to meet expectations that somebody else created?

Across the world, girls receive messages about how they should dress, sit, walk, speak, behave, and protect their reputations. They learn to consider what men might think of them, what men might want from them, and what men might do if they fail to comply.

Sometimes the demands are relatively small. Sometimes they reshape a girl’s entire life. And sometimes, as with FGM, adults permanently injure a child’s body in the name of preparing her for a future she has not chosen.

The circumstances are not identical, and we should not pretend they are. But there is a familiar belief running through many of these expectations: that girls must make themselves suitable for other people’s approval.

I have never believed that a girl’s body should be treated as a project for society to complete.

She arrives here as a human being. Her body is not unfinished because a tradition says it is. Her dignity does not depend on her marriage prospects. Her right to safety does not begin when she becomes someone’s wife or mother.

She deserves protection right now.

And we should be especially concerned when adults start debating how much harm might be acceptable instead of asking why the harm is happening at all.

There are times when compromise helps people live together. There are other times when compromise asks the person facing danger to absorb just a little more of it.

Protection Cannot Always Wait for Everyone to Agree

I believe in education. I believe in listening to communities, working with families, supporting women who have survived harmful practices, and helping people understand why change is necessary.

But I also believe that children deserve protection while those conversations continue.

Somalia’s proposed FGM prohibition is an opportunity to turn years of advocacy into stronger legal protection. As of October 20, 2026, the proposal was still undergoing parliamentary consideration, not yet enacted into national law.

Dawan Africa

A law alone will not end FGM. Families need education, accessible healthcare, community support, and practical alternatives to the social pressures that sustain the practice. Governments must also make protection real, not merely something written in legislation.

But we should not confuse the complexity of ending a practice with uncertainty about whether girls deserve to be protected from it.

We already know enough about the harm.

We have heard from Survivors. We have medical evidence. We have generations of women who can describe the physical and emotional consequences.

How many more girls must experience something before adults decide the evidence is sufficient?

And why should the burden of waiting fall on children who have the least power to protect themselves?

What I Hope We Remember

I do not want this story to become another opportunity for people to look down on Somalia or African communities. That would be far too easy, and it would ignore the women who have spent years fighting for change.

Nor do I want us to overlook the ways other societies place men’s expectations ahead of women’s and girls’ well-being.

We should be willing to examine those habits wherever we find them, including close to home.

What I want is for us to listen carefully when people explain why girls must endure something. Listen for whose future receives consideration. Listen for whose comfort becomes important. Listen for who is expected to sacrifice and who benefits from that sacrifice.

And when somebody offers a tradition, a belief, a social expectation, or a man’s sexual preference as justification for harming a girl, we ought to be able to say, calmly and without apology, that none of those things gives anyone ownership of her body.

I am grateful for the Somali women who continue to fight this battle. I hope their daughters and granddaughters inherit a world where they do not have to spend so much of their lives explaining why they deserve to remain unharmed.

Because the goal should never be to make girls more capable of enduring what adults refuse to change.

The goal is to change what adults are willing to do to girls.

A girl should not have to grow up, survive the harm, find her voice, and spend the rest of her life fighting to protect the next little girl from experiencing it.

We have enough knowledge to do better than that.

And the children deserve for us to use it.

Sources and further reading

The statistics and reporting in this article draw on UNICEF, UNFPA, and reporting on Somalia’s October 2026 legislative proceedings.

• UNICEF: A Statistical Overview of Female Genital Mutilation in Somalia. National prevalence, severity, and comparative data.

• UNICEF and UNFPA: Call to End FGM in Somalia. February 2021 joint statement documenting prevalence and the need for legislation.

• UNICEF: More Than 230 Million Girls and Women Affected Worldwide. March 2024 global estimates.

• UNICEF Somalia: Breaking the Cycle. A Somali mother’s account of surviving FGM and protecting her daughter.

• Dawan Africa: Somalia Minister Presents Bill to Ban FGM. October 18, 2026 reporting on the proposed legislation.

Editorial verification note: The circulating parliamentarian video remains incompletely verified. This article deliberately does not identify or directly quote the speaker. The statistics describe the populations and survey periods identified by their sources, not newly collected 2026 survey results.