A/HRC/44/33 comprehensive and rights-based policy frameworks; the enforcement of legislation; cross-border female genital mutilation; the medicalization of the practice; and data collection. Innovative approaches at the community level to address social norms were discussed throughout the meeting. Leadership, political commitment, long-term vision, a participatory and inclusive approach and accountability were stressed as key requirements to advance the elimination of female genital mutilation. Set out below are a number of recommendations stemming from the meeting in addition to those included throughout the text: (a) Develop well-defined, comprehensive, rights-based and locally relevant holistic strategies, which tackle the root causes of the practice, protect and assist women and girls and ensure accountability for perpetrators, in line with international human rights standards; (b) Hold meaningful consultations with practising communities, in particular with women and girls, to ensure ownership and the legitimacy of interventions; (c) Adopt comprehensive, gender- and age-sensitive legislation on female genital mutilation, which covers the prohibition and criminalization of the practice, including prevention, punishment and remedies for victims. The human rights impact of legislation should be regularly monitored, as well as obstacles to its enforcement, in consultation with, inter alia, communities and women’s human rights groups; (d) Make use of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure as a tool to enhance the protection of girls at risk of female genital mutilation; (e) Continue strengthening coordination and collaboration at the regional level to eliminate female genital mutilation through diverse initiatives and strategies (for example the Saleema initiative); (f) Conduct research on the impact of cross-border female genital mutilation on the human rights of the women and girls who are affected to better inform interventions; (g) Undertake research on the meaning of consent, bodily autonomy, choice and harm in the context of patriarchy and its implications for adult women, to better inform policy and legal approaches on female genital mutilation, including in relation to the medicalization of the practice; (h) Enhance efforts to address medicalized female genital mutilation, including with the support of WHO by, for example, integrating female genital mutilation issues in the curricula of medical schools and training for midwives and health-care providers, developing medical codes and guidance for medical practitioners and supporting medical professional associations and civil society organizations initiatives to raise awareness of the unacceptability of the practice; (i) Document the long-term complications resulting from medicalized female genital mutilation, including sexual, psychological and obstetric complications, take measures to address its drivers, such as material gain for health-service providers, and avoid interventions which result in adverse consequences, in particular for women and girls, such as punitive approaches and mandatory reporting of the practice; (j) Promote social accountability frameworks through, for example, innovative approaches and the use of technology at the community level, including with the support of the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme to Eliminate Female Genital Mutilation. 10