A cut that crosses borders by Shanna Shepard

On February sixth, the calendar politely asks us to observe the International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation. The phrasing is bureaucratic almost antiseptic, as if the horror it names can be neutralized by a well-pressed title. Zero tolerance sounds firm, resolved, modern. And yet the practice it condemns persists, quietly stubbornly, within the borders of the European Union, a political project that congratulates itself on enlightenment, human rights and the moral arc of progress.

Female genital mutilation is often spoken about as if it were an imported relic, something sealed in distant villages and foreign pasts, safely quarantined from European life. This framing is convenient. It allows Europe to play saviour without examining its own living rooms, its own schools, its own clinics. The uncomfortable truth is that FGM is not only a problem of “elsewhere.” It exists in Europe because people live here, raise families here and carry traditions with them, including those that harm.

What makes this fact so difficult to confront is not ignorance but politeness. European societies pride themselves on tolerance, on multicultural coexistence, on the idea that respect means not asking too many questions. Cultural sensitivity, once a necessary corrective to colonial arrogance, has at times curdled into cultural paralysis. When harm is wrapped in the language of tradition, institutions hesitate. Social workers worry about appearing racist. Teachers fear overstepping. Doctors suspect but do not press. Silence becomes the compromise and girls pay for it with their bodies.

There is a peculiar hypocrisy in how Europe handles this. On one hand laws are clear. FGM is illegal across the Union prosecuted in theory with severity. On the other hand enforcement is timid, uneven, almost embarrassed. We prefer awareness campaigns to courtrooms, leaflets to indictments. We talk about education, dialogue and community engagement, all of which matter but often in ways that conveniently delay confrontation. The result is a soft fog of good intentions in which responsibility diffuses and urgency evaporates.

The language we use reveals our discomfort. We speak of “at-risk communities,” not of men and women who actively enforce control over girls’ sexuality. We speak of “harmful practices,” not of violence. We speak of “safeguarding,” a word so gentle it barely suggests blood. This euphemistic drift may soothe policy documents, but it does little to protect a child facing a blade during a summer trip abroad or a clandestine procedure in a European apartment.

It is also worth saying plainly that this is not about faith. FGM predates religions and ignores their boundaries. It survives because it serves power: regulating desire, ensuring marriageability, signalling obedience. To treat it as a religious issue is to grant it an unearned legitimacy. To treat it as a cultural quirk is worse. Culture is not a museum artefact. It changes and when it harms, it must be challenged, not curated.

Europe likes to imagine itself as a finished moral product, the end point of a long ethical evolution. But the persistence of FGM within its borders suggests something less flattering, that rights exist not because they are declared, but because they are defended. A law unenforced is a suggestion. A taboo unspoken is permission. Zero tolerance, if it is to mean anything, cannot be symbolic. It must be awkward, disruptive and at times, unpopular.

This means listening to survivors, not only as witnesses of pain but as experts in the mechanisms of silence. It means supporting those within affected communities who resist the practice and often face ostracism for doing so. And yes, it means prosecution when necessary, not as an act of cultural aggression but as a declaration that a child’s body is not negotiable terrain.

The European Union does not lack values. It lacks nerve. The challenge of FGM exposes a broader anxiety about how to defend universal rights in a plural society without collapsing into either relativism or repression. But there is nothing pluralistic about allowing irreversible harm to continue in the name of respect. Respect that demands silence in the face of suffering is not respect at all. It is abdication.

An international day will come and go, as they always do. Hashtags will circulate. Statements will be issued. But the measure of seriousness is not found in calendars. It is found in whether Europe is willing to look past its self-image and accept that zero tolerance is not a slogan. It is a choice, renewed daily, to side clearly, unmistakably, with those who cannot choose for themselves.

Until then, the cut remains a reminder that borders do not stop violence, only vigilance does, and that progress is not proven by declarations but by interventions made early, loudly and without apology, especially when the victims are young, female and inconvenient to protect in modern Europe today.