A/HRC/44/33 tracking; and potentially hold Governments accountable. Experiences shared in that regard included, for instance, “U-Report”, a free SMS-based platform launched in Uganda in 2011 with the support of UNICEF, which allowed people to report on issues affecting them and their communities, as well as get real-time information and feedback on new initiatives. 14 The reporting system of the platform has been supporting the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme to Eliminate Female Genital Mutilation to initiate dialogue with the youth on female genital mutilation as a means to further engage partners and communities in the effort to end the practice. In addition, it was being used to collect real-time data on female genital mutilation cases that had been recorded by other management information systems that reach the relevant communities, follow up programme achievements and monitor the implementation of activities in real time. It had also served as a tool to measure trends in perceptions of female genital mutilation.15 32. During the meeting, participants also analysed the benefits of using digital technology at the community level to address female genital mutilation. Examples of innovative approaches in this regard included “Crowd2Map” in the United Republic of Tanzania, which since 2015 had been improving the mapping of rural Tanzania into “OpenStreetMap” (a free open-source mapping application) and building the capacity of local civil society organizations to use those maps to inform their protection interventions for girls at risk of female genital mutilation. 16 Better and detailed mapping had facilitated access for these organizations to remote villages to locate girls at risk, with the purpose of placing them in safe houses during the “cutting season”.17 33. Another issue that was discussed throughout the meeting was the importance of data collection on female genital mutilation to make the practice visible and inform planning, management and decision-making. While recognizing the various efforts made to support country-level initiatives to improve data collection by UNFPA and UNICEF through their joint programme,18 the expert meeting noted with concern the lack of accurate and reliable data on female genital mutilation in many countries where the practice continued to exist. That was due to, among others, the absence of female genital mutilation indicators in health information systems; the absence of robust monitoring and evaluation frameworks; the lack of capacity of relevant officials; and the absence of standard guidelines on the collection of data. 34. Innovative initiatives supported by the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme were also shared during the meeting, including the use of demographic modelling techniques (socalled “survival analysis”) to improve data collection, which were based on the risk that a girl faced of being subjected to female genital mutilation each year of her life; 19 and the ACT framework, a pilot monitoring and evaluation project in Ethiopia and Guinea, that sought to measure change in social norms on female genital mutilation and was flexible enough to be contextualized in each country. 20 It was stressed that the absence of accurate statistics undermined efforts to promote the eradication of female genital mutilation and provide services to women and girls who had undergone the practice. The need to continue supporting efforts in that regard was therefore considered critical. VI. Conclusions and recommendations 35. Participants in the expert meeting discussed progress and gaps in and challenges to ensuring the elimination of female genital mutilation with a focus on 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 See UNICEF, “U-Report: amplifying voices for young people”, available from https://www.unicef.org/uganda/what-we-do/u-report. See https://ureport.ug/stories/. See https://crowd2map.org. United Nations Population Fund, “For girls escaping FGM in rural Tanzania, crowdsourced maps show the way to safety”, 22 October 2018. See, for example, UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation, Accelerating Change. Annual Report 2018 (August 2019). See for example, United Nations Population Fund, “Bending the curve: FGM trends we aim to change” (2018). Ibid. See also UNFPA and UNICEF, “Changing social norms around FGM/C: the development of a macro-level M & E framework” (April 2018). 9