Efua Dorkenoo

Efua Dorkenoo, OBE (6 September 1949 – 18 October 2014), affectionately known as "Mama Efua", was a Ghanaian-British campaigner against female genital mutilation (FGM) who pioneered the global movement to end the practice and worked internationally for more than 30 years to see the campaign "move from a problem lacking in recognition to a key issue for governments around the world."
Early years
She was born in Cape Coast, Ghana, where she attended Wesley Girls' High School. She moved to London at the age of 19 to study nursing, and eventually earned a master's degree at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a research fellowship at City University London. She was a staff nurse at various hospitals, including the Royal Free, and it was while training as a midwife that she became aware of the impact of FGM on women's lives.
Campaigning work
She joined the Minority Rights Group and travelled to various parts of Africa to gather information for what was one of the earliest reports published on FGM in 1980. In 1983 she founded the Foundation for Women's Health, Research and Development (FORWARD), a British NGO that supports women who have experienced FGM and tries to eliminate the practice. She began working with the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1995 and was the acting director for women’s health there until 2001. She was Advocacy Director and, subsequently, Senior FGM Advisor for Equality Now (an international human rights organization). She was close friends with Alice Walker, advising on and featured in the documentary film Warrior Marks (1993) made by Walker and Pratibha Parmar and with Gloria Steinem, who wrote an introduction to Dorkenoo's 1994 book Cutting the Rose: Female Genital Mutilation.
Honours and recognition
In 1994, Dorkenoo was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. In 2000, she and Gloria Steinem received Equality Now's international human rights award. In 2012, she was made honorary senior research fellow in the School of Health Sciences at City University London, and in 2013 she was named one of the BBC's 100 Women.
Dorkenoo's Cutting the Rose: Female Genital Mutilation (1994) was selected by an international jury in 2002 as one of the "Africa's 100 Best Books of the 20th Century".
Dorkenoo died of cancer in London at the age of 65 on 18 October 2014, survived by her husband Freddie Green, her sons Kobina and Ebow, and her stepchildren.
Selected publications
Cutting The Rose: Female Genital Mutilation the Practice and its Prevention (Minority Rights Group, 1994).
Report of the First Study Conference of Genital Mutilation of Girls in Europe/ Western World (1993)
Child Protection and Female Genital Mutilation: Advice for Health, Education, and Social Work Profession (1992)
Female Genital Mutilation: Proposals for Change (with Scilla Elworthy) (1992)
Tradition! Tradition: A symbolic story on female genital mutilation (1992)
As Stella Efua Graham with Scilla McLean (eds), Female Circumcision, Excision, and Infibulation (Minority Rights Group Report 47, 1980)
References
External links
Equality Now home page
African Review of Books on "Cutting the Rose"
FORWARD home page
Efua Dorkenoo and others addressing the issue at the Scottish Parliament in 2004
1949 births
2014 deaths
Activists against female genital mutilation
Ghanaian feminists
Ghanaian emigrants to England
Ghanaian health activists
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
Ghanaian women's rights activists
Deaths from cancer in England
People from Cape Coast