FGM FLASHCARDS CMD

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  • Created by: cwhite682
  • Created on: 28-06-17 09:58

INTRODUCTION SLIDE 1

  • Hello I’m Claire and I am the front page editor of the Guardian website.  
  • The Global Media Campaign to end FGM is a remarkable thing. I have worked in newspapers for more than 20 years,
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SLIDE 2, SLIDE 3, SLIDE 4

  • I’ve sat through horrors against children such as Dunblane and Beslan, I’ve watched the abuse scandal in the Catholic church unfold across the world and I’ve typed up a handwritten letter from Moors murderer Myra Hindley.
  • But as a journalist I am ultimately an observer. I watch things happen to other people.  
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SLIDE 5

  • I watch things happen to other people.
  • This campaign goes deeper. We are trying to make a change.

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SLIDE 6

  • It may sound very obvious but news is about what is new and exclusive. 
  • If we cover the same subject it mostly has to be in a new way. FGM is not unknown now thanks to Maggie O’Kane and her team at the Guardian, and we have worked with Ban Ki Moon, foreign governments and many victims of FGM around the world. 
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SLIDE 7

  • At the Guardian we have a tool that lets us know how many people are reading our articles and how long they are spending doing so. 
  • I can tell you that FGM is one of the hardest topics to sell. 
  • Lack of understanding, cultural oversensitivity, and shock factor all play their part. But there is also another element.
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SLIDE 8

  • For the reader there is much angst and horror but little momentum. We tell them how bad things are and how cruel this practice is, but we don’t have an answer for what to to next. 
  • Raising awareness into a swirl of well-meaning discussion while very important, does not take the fight to end FGM forward. 
  • And if we don’t move forward with the campaign against FGM we are moving backwards and losing ground. Sustained pressure on governments has brought about law change, but laws are pointless unless they are enforced. 
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SLIDE 9

  • The stories from across rural Africa are depressingly similar.
  • Before a girl is born, her life is pre-determined. Her value is a set price, a dowry will be boosted by her skin colour, her perceived physical beauty and her known chastity. Her choices are often worse than death: undergo FGM and life in constant pain, or be married as a child and die giving birth.  She can pay with her life for the ripples of war and poverty that hit her community, anointed with the universal 'bad luck' of being born female.
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SLIDE 9 PART 2

  • These are not issues that are diminishing, these are not issues that can be solved in one year. But they are issues that must be covered by journalists. These are people that have no voice, because their complaints are seen as moaning or insignificant, or others are speaking for them. If we don't give them a platform, there is no one to tell their stories.
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SLIDE 10

  • As Maya Angelou said: 'There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you' - My job has been to tell the story, but with your help we can try and change it.
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