Female Genital Mutilation: Winning the Argument, Losing the FundingMONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 3 2026 (IPS) - Last August, a one-month-old girl in The Gambia bled to death after being subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that had been illegal in the country since 2015. A practice in retreatOver 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM, with an additional four million cut every year. Funding for the Joint Programme fell from US$29.6 million in 2024 to US$16.3 million in 2025. The dismantling of USAID removed the largest single source of civil society funding worldwide, and total US foreign aid halved in a year. The Joint Programme estimates that treating the health consequences of FGM currently costs US$1.4 billion a year.