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Female genital mutilation practice in Senegal

women with lower education, poor women, and Poular women. Although the Senegal’s central and local governments
have been working together with international governmental and non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders
using a variety of strategies to reduce FGM practices and prevent women from STI and HIV, and the country even
has a strong law against the FGM practices (Kloning et al., 2018; Rouzi, 2013), our findings suggest that the Senegal
Government needs to make more efforts to further reduce and eventually eliminate FGM practices in order to achieve
SDGs within less than a decade. Specifically, the Senegal Government may consider implementing intervention programs
that focus more on promotion of women’s education, their economic empowerment, poverty reduction, and dissemination
of knowledge about consequences of the FGM practice, especially among rural and Poular women.
5. Conclusions

To prevent and eliminate FGM harmful practice, it’s essential to understand patterns associated with such practices and its
adverse consequences, especially among women. With this motivation, this study used the 2019 DHS and the 2010 – 2011
DHS to examine factors associated with FMG among reproductive aged women in Senegal. Overall, the findings of this
study suggest that economic empowerment, poverty reduction, education promotion among women may help reduce and
eventually eliminate FGM practice in Senegal. The Senegal Government and its local governments should make more
efforts in disseminating knowledge and increasing public awareness about the negative health consequences of FGM
practice, launching more effective intervention programs to promote education and poverty reduction that not only target
Goal 5 Target 5.4, but also target other SDGs.
Acknowledgments

None.
Funding

None.

Conflict of interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Author contributions
Conceptualization: Ramu Rawat and Noli Nivedita Tirkey
Formal analysis: Ramu Rawat
Writing – original draft: Ramu Rawat and Noli Nivedita Tirkey
Writing – review & editing: Ramu Rawat and Noli Nivedita Tirkey

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.
Consent for publication

Not applicable.
Availability of data

Data utilized to this paper is from secondary sources and available to public (https://dhsprogram.com/data/available-
datasets.cfm).
References

Adigüzel, C., Baş, Y., Erhan, M.D., & Gelle, M.A. (2019). The female genital mutilation/cutting experience in somali women: Their
wishes, knowledge and attitude. Gynecologic and Obstetric Investigation, 84(2): 118-127.
https://doi.org/10.1159/000493130

110 International Journal of Population Studies | 2021, Volume 7, Issue 1