Record $15.5m fund launched to accelerate global fight against FGM

More than 230 million women and girls alive today have undergone female genital mutilation. The practice has scarred continents, shortened lives, and persisted despite decades of activism and international condemnation. Now, for the first time, a single philanthropic commitment of $15.5 million has arrived with the explicit aim of breaking that cycle—not through charity alone, but by placing resources directly into the hands of the survivors and frontline activists who know their communities best.

The Her Horizon Fund, seeded with $14 million from the Wallace Global Fund and $1.5 million from an anonymous donor, represents the largest single philanthropic contribution ever directed at ending FGM. But its significance lies not just in the dollar amount. It arrives at a moment of acute crisis. The UN's joint programme to eliminate the practice—a collaboration between UNFPA and Unicef operating across 18 countries—saw its funding plummet 45 percent in a single year, dropping from $29.6 million to $16.3 million. Simultaneously, the legal protections that activists have fought for are being challenged and rolled back. The UN has set 2030 as the target year for global elimination, but progress is stalling.

Ifrah Ahmed knows this terrain intimately. A Somali-Irish activist and survivor of FGM, she founded the Ifrah Foundation to combat the practice in Somalia, where it remains nearly universal. Last year, UNFPA cut $300,000 in funding to her organization. She scrambled to replace it from other sources and succeeded, but the message was clear: the money was drying up. Yet her work has borne fruit. Three of Somalia's seven federal member states have now enacted anti-FGM laws. Two others have passed cabinet-endorsed bills awaiting parliamentary approval, though religious leaders in some areas have mounted opposition. "If we don't continue to raise money, the dream where this practice will end will have died for young girls," Ahmed said. The new fund means her foundation and others like it can continue.

But the gains are fragile. In The Gambia, the supreme court is currently considering a constitutional challenge to the country's 2015 ban on FGM—a ban that lawmakers themselves tried to repeal in 2024, only to face fierce resistance from women's rights groups. In Sierra Leone, a new Child Rights Act conspicuously fails to prohibit FGM, despite sustained pressure from advocates. These are not abstract setbacks. They represent the reversal of years of organizing, negotiation, and risk-taking by activists in their own countries.

Susan Gibbs, senior adviser on women's rights and FGM at the Wallace Global Fund, frames the moment plainly. "Female genital mutilation is a global crisis, an extreme manifestation of gender-based violence and violence against children, and a public health emergency," she said. The data supports the urgency. A 2025 study found that FGM causes approximately 44,000 deaths annually across just 15 countries examined, making it one of the leading causes of death for women and girls in those nations. The immediate complications—severe pain, excessive bleeding, infection—give way to long-term consequences: complications during childbirth, chronic pain, lasting psychological trauma. More than 144 million women and girls in Africa alone have endured it; 80 million in Asia; 6 million in the Middle East.

The Her Horizon Fund's stated goal is to pool $100 million from multiple donors, creating what organizers call a "tipping point" toward elimination within a generation. The fund was officially launched at a Justice for Girls global gathering in Kenya earlier this month. Gibbs, who attended, described the momentum there as "incredible." But she also emphasized a principle that shapes the fund's entire approach: "Lasting change must be led by the frontline—it cannot be imposed from the outside." Frontline survivors and activists, she argued, know their communities and know what will work. They have been, in her words, "absolutely starved for resources." Direct funding to them, rather than flowing through international bureaucracies, allows them to sustain and scale their work.

The timing is urgent. Women's rights globally are increasingly under attack. Donor funding is in sharp decline. The activists and survivors who have carried this fight for decades are exhausted and underfunded. Yet the evidence suggests that when they have resources and autonomy, they deliver results. Somalia's legislative progress, The Gambia's resistance to repeal, Sierra Leone's ongoing campaigns—all of these reflect the work of people who refused to accept the practice as inevitable. The Her Horizon Fund represents a bet that with adequate resources, they can finish what they started.