In the communities we serve, female genital mutilation is seen as a necessary rite of passage. A girl is cut so that she can be considered a grown woman, and so that a marriage can be arranged, bringing resources (often cattle) into the family. The cut itself is the removal of part of a girl’s external genitals for no medical reason. It is done to girls when they are still children. After cutting, the girl’s family treats school as optional. Beads are placed on a girl’s ankles to signify she is marriageable, and parents begin looking for a husband.

The 2022 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey shows while declining across Kenya, FGM is still very common in the areas we work: in Samburu—about 76 percent. Across Kenya, most of the cutting happens between the ages of five and fourteen.

Kenya banned female genital mutilation in 2011. Eighteen is the legal age of marriage. Sexual violence against a child is a crime whether or not a family has given permission. The problem is that in remote areas – and especially in nomadic communities – the government has been unable to enforce these laws. FGM has become so accepted in the culture, that a girl who is not cut is considered unclean and undesirable for marriage.

A police station or school can be hours of rough road away from the homesteads where girls actually live. Drought moves the herds, and the herds move the family. In a harsh and arid climate, daughters are seen as a burden, or as an asset. Families typically receive a dowry of 8 cows when they give a young girl into marriage. Elders who have married girls this way for generations do not experience the Kenyan law as a fact. They experience it as an opinion from far away.

The missing piece that can change this scenario is ongoing presence and realistic alternatives. A community that knows someone will come back next month — to ask whether a girl is still in school, to sit with the chief, to notice when the talk of a marriage ceremony starts — behaves differently from a community that was visited once, told that FGM and child marriage are illegal, and given no options for educating their daughters.

SGF’s model:

• Believe in the girl as a person with a future
• Offer concrete support to make that future possible – ongoing education, shelter, individual and family counseling
• Stay in a girl’s life until she, her family and her community take that future seriously and until she has the resources to live independently and protect herself (and others) from exploitation

A marriage arranged for a girl under eighteen is, in Kenyan law, not a marriage. However, in remote areas where most girls in Samburu live, it can still look like one: cattle changing hands, a feast, a girl leaving with a man her father’s age.

A daughter who stays in school is a cost. A daughter who marries brings resources (a dowry payment, usually cattle) and status to the family. Female genital mutilation and child marriage often travel together. The cut first. Then a child walks bleeding to her new husband’s house.

That husband is often an elder. In these communities marriage belongs to older men. Young warriors are forbidden to take a wife until around age thirty. Samburu County carries this weight more heavily than almost anywhere in Kenya. In a 2022 survey, about half of girls aged 15 to 19 in the county had already been pregnant — the highest rate Kenya recorded. Only about eighteen percent of women in Samburu attended high school. The national story, that roughly one in five Kenyan women are married before age eighteen, is the mild version. This is the sharp one. Many girls in our program were married (or were about to be married) before age 10.

Once a girl is married, education is no longer an option. She bears children before her body is ready. She has no one to turn to and nowhere to go. Younger sisters watch, waiting for their turn. Everyone believes the same story: this is what a girl is for.

In the pastoralist communities where SGF works, a boy is circumcised in his mid-teens and becomes a moran — a warrior. For the next decade and more, that is his job. He protects the herds. He lives with the other young men of his age group. He is treated as a man. But he is not yet allowed to marry.

Marriage belongs to elders. A moran is not permitted to take a wife until he has been released from warriorhood, around age thirty. This practice keeps young men in service and young girls in the hands of older men.

While the young warriors cannot marry, they can claim a girl by beading. A moran will choose a young girl and place a specific kind of beaded necklace around her neck. The beads are the public mark: this girl has been claimed for his sexual use until he is old enough for a real wife. The girl is frequently still of primary-school age. She has no choice in the matter.

Parents will often build a small shed outside the house for the beaded girl to live in, and to receive the warrior who has claimed her. It is a highly traumatic and isolating experience for the girl child, and often leads to lifelong physical and emotional damage.