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It's estimated that up to 140 million girls and women worldwide have undergone a coming-of-age

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ritual that is shrouded in secrecy and controversy. Now, for the first time,

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there are serious efforts to end this potentially dangerous practice. Here's our story.

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There's a feeling in the air that something important is about to happen.

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A celebration is underway for the girls who will soon become women

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in the eyes of their people, the Kuria in southern Kenya.

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It's a rite of passage rooted in at least 2,000 years of tradition.

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Some call it circumcision, others female genital mutilation or FGM.

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Whatever the name, the reality is the same. Later that day, girls under the age of 16

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will have their clitorises cut out.

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Every day, 6,000 girls, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa,

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will endure procedures like this one.

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Zainab Bangura is an activist and a politician from Sierra Leone,

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where more than 90% of the women undergo FGM.

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If you do not become a member of that ceremony, you can't have a husband.

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You can't even have somebody to marry you. It's completely out of the question.

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Because men don't marry women who have not gone through the ceremony.

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16-year-old Rayal is about to undergo the ceremony.

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Her uncle says girls must be cut for a very simple reason.

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Kuria said that tradition is to tame women's sex drive, for them not to sleep around.

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Even women who suffered the agony and lifelong consequences of FGM defend the practice.

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Rayal's mother Boke.

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I see people refusing circumcision and I'm surprised because I was circumcised.

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I find it surprising since it's our culture and tradition.

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But the fact is this tradition, common in more than two dozen African countries,

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inflicts agony on nearly two million girls a year.

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It also dooms many to a lifetime of pain, infertility and deadly infections,

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especially for those who are forced to undergo an extreme form of FGM,

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known as infibulation, in which the entire genitalia is removed and then sewn up.

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Because I was the youngest and I was afraid, they grabbed me first.

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After that, they all held me down and cut me.

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It hurt so much and I screamed. I can still remember the lady who did it to me.

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This simulation suggests the girls are often bound and blindfolded.

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The blades are not sterile. The girls get no anesthesia.

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A girl must be cut open a few days before her wedding night

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or forcibly ripped open during intercourse.

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The first time my husband came to have sex with me, I was asleep.

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He came back very late and I didn't want to have sex with him.

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But he forced me. I was very young and it was very painful.

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A World Health Organization study shows that the trauma and reoccurring infections

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from genital mutilation often lead to infertility.

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What's worse, it increases up to 50% the likelihood

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that the woman or her baby will die in childbirth.

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The practice also leads to hemorrhage, shock and makes a woman

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and therefore her children far more susceptible to HIV.

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But you cannot stand out there and criticize it

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because it means you're criticizing your very existence as a person.

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And so your whole family, your whole community will abandon you.

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So this is why the debate has never been open in Sierra Leone.

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While more than a dozen countries in Africa

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have enacted laws to criminalize the practice,

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Sierra Leone is not one of them.

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So activists like Rugi Atu Turei are attacking the problem on a more grassroots level.

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She's reaching out to the poverty-stricken girls and women

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who are trained and paid to perform the ritual.

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Our problem now is the financial support

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because when we ask them to drop, they need an alternative way of making income.

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Some girls are as young as five years old when they begin training.

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In just a few years, these girls will start using their blades

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to cut other girls as a means of providing income for their families.

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I started initiating girls when I was 13

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and I've now circumcised 23 girls in total.

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It is from this society that I earn my living.

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My mother and father are dead, so there's no other way for me to get sustenance.

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Rugi Atu Turei has single-handedly convinced over 400 practitioners

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from 111 villages to stop circumcising girls

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by offering them other ways to support themselves.

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Unlike Sierra Leone, Ethiopia's government does have laws for those caught performing FGM.

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And the government there supports classes like this one

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which teaches girls and boys about the dangers of FGM.

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There is evidence that these awareness campaigns and government laws are having an effect.

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In Ethiopia's capital alone, there has been a nearly 20% reduction in the practice.

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Kenya has also enacted laws against FGM.

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Anyone caught practicing the ritual can be jailed or fined.

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And a growing number of girls, like this 14-year-old in Rayal's village,

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are choosing not to be cut.

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When I was told the badness of being circumcised, I stopped it.

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Not far away, Rayal has undergone her circumcision.

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She chews a herb to stop the bleeding,

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and she sings a song that to many will sound sadly ironic.

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Now I am circumcised, she sings.

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Now I can have my home.

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Truly, I am a woman.

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An estimated 430,000 girls a year could avoid FGM if efforts such as those in Ethiopia begin worldwide.