Senegal: Villages to stop cutting girls

It takes at least two people to circumcise a girl, one to hold her legs and the other her arms," said Ourey Sall, who for years performed the procedure. "Afterwards, we apply a mixture of goat droppings and plants to stop the bleeding." It has been five years since she put down the knife, breaking a tradition handed down from her mother, and her mother before that. It was a difficult decision but one being made more and more in Senegal today. On this day, Sall was among a crowd of men, women and children attending a ceremony in which members of 70 villages from the country's northeastern Matam region publicly renounced female genital mutilation (FGM) as well as forced and early marriages, according to IRIN.