Samenvatting

The urgency of analysing the case of female genital cutting (FGC) increases due to the globalisation of today’s world, enhancing multicultural societies dealing with benefits and challenges with respect to cultural differences. Generally, FGC originates from and is promoted as a highly valued cultural practice and social norm in Africa, some countries in Asia and the Middle East. However, due to migration, the prevalence of the practice is also increasingly growing within the European borders, where institutionalised individual rights are maintained but such practices are perceived as unacceptable.
The aim of this research was to investigating the line of acceptation and the governmental and non-governmental approach towards FGC within the liberal European Member States (MS) in terms of hard and soft power. The research was realised by the use of case studies on the United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands and was focused on the nowadays large migration flow, which is likely to become an important point of focus for the future of FGC. Consequently, the main question to be answered within this dissertation is: What is the national response from the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands regarding female genital cutting and how could they improve their policy with respect to the nowadays large migration flow?
Analysis of primary and secondary literature showed that within Europe, FGC is perceived to be a violation of human rights and is considered to be a prosecutable crime. The opposing European opinion of FGC could be legitimised because of the threats on health and well-being of citizens due to the practice. However, throughout Europe, MS face a lot of difficulty in tracking cases of FGC and prosecuting offenders, despite of the assistance and multi-level hard and soft power efforts of European institutions and various national governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Regarding the magnitude of the current migration flow, new measures need to be taken with respect to the national governmental and non-governmental approach to engage more efficiently in the matter of FGC. Recommendations were mostly made to increase the number of prosecutions and to disassociate the practice of FGC. These recommendations were mainly focused on the creation of community-based solutions, which should be enforced by the establishment of a network containing various (non)governmental bodies. Finally, to research if new measures turn out to be effective, it is important that all European MS investigate their prevalence rates each year to evaluate the situation within the country.