Via Reuters:
DIABOUGOU, Senegal, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Marietou Ndiaye waited in vain for her daughter as the other children were brought back bloodied from an initiation ceremony in the woods.
She was told there had been complications during the ritual, in which the elder women of this Senegalese village used razor blades to cut out the girls’ clitoris, an age-old custom meant to prepare them for marriage.
"My daughter was bleeding. When I said I want to see her, they said no you cannot, the parents cannot go in. There will be no exception for you," said Ndiaye, 50, tears in her eyes.
"The child was already dead. They hid it from me. It was only when the other children emerged that I realised I had lost her," she said in the local Wolof language, lowering her face and twisting a handkerchief nervously around her fingers.
Two decades on, Ndiaye has become a leading campaigner for the eradication of a ritual known variously as genital cutting, genital mutilation, or, euphemistically, female circumcision.
Her village is one of many being educated in human rights by local aid group Tostan, which receives the world’s largest humanitarian award, the $1.5 million Conrad N. Hilton Prize, at a ceremony in New York late on Wednesday.