A/HRC/27/36 the practice, with care and support for women and girls who had already undergone the procedure. In this regard, she highlighted that WHO was developing guidelines for medical staff on different types of genital mutilation and their management, and in particular the management of acute and chronic complications. It was also encouraging the inclusion of female genital mutilation in the curriculum of all health-care service providers. 16. Ms. Temmerman pointed out that, in many contexts, parents put pressure on their doctors to perform genital mutilation on their daughters in order to avoid risks to their health. She stated that 18 per cent of all mutilations were performed by medical practitioners, and that this number was on the increase. It was thus critical to have guidelines that would enable doctors to refuse to perform female genital mutilation by showing that it was a violation of a girl’s rights. She recommended that States strengthen monitoring and accountability, routinely collect data on the practice. She also recommended the creation of supportive legislative and regulatory frameworks. Lastly, Ms. Temmerman highlighted the importance of ensuring that legal action was part of a broader set of initiatives that included the empowerment of practising communities to abandon the practice. To this end, there was a need to work with schools, the media and parliaments. 17. Nafissatou J. Diop reported on the work of the UNFPA/UNICEF Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting, which was launched in 2008 with the goal of accelerating the abandonment of the practice of female genital mutilation and cutting in one generation. The Programme, which was based on human rights and had a cultural-sensitive approach to addressing the issue, had assisted and supported Governments and civil society in 15 countries in addressing female genital mutilation in a coordinated and comprehensive manner. It had succeeded in changing its perception from that of a cultural tradition to one of a harmful practice that violated the rights of the girl concerned. Following intensive education and community dialogue sessions, the Programme encouraged public declarations by communities as a means to express their commitment to abandon female genital mutilation. Ms. Diop gave examples from Kenya and the Sudan. In the case of the latter country, she reported on the Saleema programme (subsequently been extended to Somalia and Egypt), which promoted positive values associated with women in their natural God-given form. Saleema in Arabic in fact means “whole, healthy in body and mind, unharmed, in a God-given condition and perfect”. The first key objective of the initiative was to model and popularize the use of the word saleema itself as a positive term to describe uncut girls and women. Other programmes in Ethiopia and Senegal had used community empowerment and dialogue strategies to stimulate a widespread grass-roots discussion on how certain cultural practices did not uphold human rights. 18. The Programme had reached some 12,000 communities and more than 10 million people, who had publically declared that they had abandoned the practice of female genital mutilation. It had supported the enactment and enforcement of laws in Kenya, Uganda and Guinea-Bissau. Moving forward, the international community should continue to strengthen and expand the network of support to end female genital mutilation. Ms. Diop also shared the results of an independent evaluation of the Programme. The evaluators had found that the Programme had been relevant with regard to existing national and international commitments of national Governments to abandon female genital mutilation/cutting in programming countries. 6