According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 100 to 140 million girls and women worldwide are currently living with the consequences of FGM. The inhuman procedure is mostly carried out on young girls some time between infancy and post-puberty (15 years). FGM intentionally alters or injure the female genital organs and causes severe long-term medical problems.

Inequality in marriages, unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions are also issues Fatayat NU encountered during reproductive health campaigns it conducted in villages in 11 provinces from 2005 to 2010.

Fatayat's programs focused on reproductive health and gender mainstreaming and awareness building in cooperation with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the National Family Planning Agency (BKKBN) since 2006, as well as programs with its long-time partner the Ford Foundation.

The programs included workshops on reproductive and sexual health, and occasionally the organization held discussions on abortion and female circumcision.

It also handed out booklets on reproductive health education "for future brides and grooms".

These booklets contained information on subjects including sex, labor and sexually transmitted diseases.

The schoolmaster at Kursawat, a rural area in the Afar region of Ethiopia, is struggling to bring awareness of the benefits of girl education and the risks of female genital mutilation.

Ethiopia outlawed female genital mutilation in 2004 but the practice is deeply rooted and nearly universal in the Afar and Somali regions. In 2005 a government health survey found that 74 percent of girls and women nationwide had undergone the ritual cutting.

"Circumcision is still going on here," Schoolmaster Kadesang Fasile told Women's eNews. "Most of the Afar are nomads so they can't be reached through educational broadcasts."

She leans against an old stone wall and chats with friends as chickens and geese cluck around her feet. Rocky mountains form a towering backdrop. This is Iraqi Kurdistan, where the people are as tough as their environment.

Sitting on the empty floor of her family’s mud brick home in this remote village, Delan’s smile quickly fades. She speaks of the day, when she was 6 years old, that an “old woman” came to visit.

“I was in the room playing with my cousin and they called us to come,” Delan said. “They cut my cousin. I was very afraid. I was crying and crying. My mother is very fat; I knew if I could run she could not catch me, but she held me too strong. I could not get away. There was a lot of blood from that place. I cried and cried. I hated my mother.”

About 20 people, many of them Somali women, handed out leaflets in the Easton area. An estimated 2,000 girls in the city are at risk.

The practice, which is illegal in the UK, can cause urinary infections, kidney failure and death.

Bristol midwives say they are coming across a large number of women with complications caused by it.

Also known as female circumcision, the practice is carried out in more than 28 countries in Africa, as well as in parts of Asia and South America.

Social services say they are investigating one case of female genital mutilation in Bristol a month.

Female genital mutilation involves the removal of a girl's clitoris and sometimes also other genital parts, usually shortly after birth or at a young age. Critics say it can lead to painful sexual intercourse, complications in childbirth and eliminates any pleasure for women during sex.

The procedure was performed on nearly 73 percent of 1,408 Kurdish women and girls, aged 14 and over, who were interviewed as part of a study conducted between September 2007 and May 2008. The survey was conducted by the Association for Crisis Assistance and Development Co-operation, or WADI, a German-Iraqi non-governmental organization and published this year. It did provide a margin of error.