FGM safeguarding gap UK

: Why Are So Few Cases Reaching Help?

The FGM safeguarding gap UK figures should concern every school, health service, police force and safeguarding professional. In 2025, the Forced Marriage Unit recorded only 15 FGM cases within its tailored assistance figures. By contrast, NHS England recorded 6,980 individual women and girls attending services where FGM had been identified in 2024 to 2025. Therefore, the gap between identification and protection is too serious to ignore. However, figures only matter if they lead to action.

What does the FGM safeguarding gap UK data show?

In 2025, the Forced Marriage Unit received 1,295 contacts relating to possible forced marriage and/or possible female genital mutilation. Those contacts included 406 cases where the unit provided tailored assistance and 889 enquiries.

Within those tailored assistance cases, 391 related to forced marriage and only 15 related to FGM. Importantly, that figure does not mean there were only 15 FGM cases in the UK. Instead, it shows how few FGM cases reached the Forced Marriage Unit through that specific route and received tailored assistance.

NHS England’s figures show a much wider picture. Its annual report for April 2024 to March 2025 recorded 6,980 individual women and girls with an attendance where FGM had been identified. During the same period, NHS England also recorded 16,300 total attendances.

Since the collection began, NHS providers have submitted information about 41,645 individual women and girls and 118,530 attendances where FGM was identified. Taken together, these figures raise a serious national safeguarding question. If health services identify thousands of women and girls affected by FGM, why do so few cases appear in specialist safeguarding and forced marriage support routes?

Why the FGM safeguarding gap UK is not only a legal problem

FGM is illegal in England and Wales under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. The law also covers certain acts connected with FGM carried out abroad. Where FGM involves a child, professionals should treat it as child abuse.

Since 31 October 2015, regulated health and social care professionals and teachers in England and Wales have had a duty to report known cases of FGM in under-18s to the police. However, that duty cannot work without confidence, training and clear safeguarding action.

A law can prohibit abuse. It cannot, on its own, make a frightened child speak. Nor can it protect a girl if adults around her stay silent, minimise the risk or treat the warning signs as too difficult to address.

Often, the real failure starts earlier than court. It starts when no one asks the right question, when a concern sits in a record, or when agencies fail to connect health information with wider safeguarding risk.

Why do so few FGM cases reach safeguarding help?

FGM often sits inside a wider pattern of silence, family pressure, gender control and fear. Some girls do not know that what happened to them was abuse. Others may fear getting family members into trouble.

In some cases, mothers may also feel trapped by pressure, shame or community expectation. Meanwhile, professionals can hesitate too. A teacher may worry about saying the wrong thing. A health professional may record FGM but miss the wider risk to siblings, daughters or cousins.

Police and social care may also struggle to gather evidence when a child cannot speak openly or when adults give carefully managed accounts. As a result, concern can remain hidden, even when risk exists.

That hesitation creates the FGM safeguarding gap UK figures now expose. The UK does not only need stronger prosecution. It also needs better prevention, earlier identification and more confident safeguarding practice.

Why FGM safeguarding training matters in schools

Schools sit at the front line of prevention. Children spend more time with teachers than with many other professionals. For that reason, staff need confidence to recognise risk before travel, after absence, during disclosure or when a pupil’s behaviour changes.

Good safeguarding education does not frighten children. Instead, it gives them language, trusted adults and safe routes to help.

Freedom Charity’s education work reflects that principle. Its book Cut Flowers helps open careful conversations about FGM with young people and professionals. Crucially, the resource supports prevention by making a hidden issue easier to discuss safely.

The red triangle badge also has practical value. A visible symbol can tell a child, parent or professional that help exists. It can also show that silence is not the only option.

How Freedom Charity helps close the FGM safeguarding gap UK

Freedom Charity works to prevent FGM, forced marriage and dishonour abuse through education, training and practical safeguarding resources.

The charity does not treat FGM as an isolated issue. In real life, FGM can overlap with forced marriage, coercive control, family pressure, travel risk, school absence and wider dishonour abuse. Therefore, professionals need to understand those links if they want to protect children before harm occurs.

Freedom Charity’s work includes safeguarding training for professionals, school education, prevention resources, the Cut Flowers book, the Not In My Name campaign and the red triangle badge.

These tools matter because prevention depends on trust. A child is more likely to speak when adults know what to ask, how to listen and what to do next.

What must change to protect girls from FGM?

The UK needs to close the space between identification and action.

Schools should provide regular, age-appropriate safeguarding education on FGM, forced marriage and dishonour abuse. One assembly cannot carry the weight of prevention.

Professionals also need practical training. They should know how to ask direct questions, record concerns, share information and report.

Health services must treat FGM identification as more than a clinical record. Where one girl or woman has experienced FGM, professionals should consider whether sisters, daughters, cousins or other girls may face risk.

Local agencies need stronger pathways as well. A concern should not disappear between health, school, police and social care systems.

Above all, Government should treat the gap between NHS identification and specialist safeguarding routes as a warning sign. Data has value only when it leads to protection.

Law without prevention will not close the FGM safeguarding gap UK

The latest figures should not lead to quiet acceptance. Instead, they should lead to harder questions.

Why does the NHS identify thousands of women and girls affected by FGM while only a small number of FGM cases reach the Forced Marriage Unit? Why do professionals still hesitate? Why do too many children rely on chance disclosure?

FGM is not culture. It is not private family business. It is abuse.

The UK has the law. Now it needs stronger prevention, clearer safeguarding pathways, better professional confidence and visible routes to help.

Freedom Charity will continue to work with schools, professionals and communities so that girls know their rights, adults know their duties and silence no longer protects abuse.

FAQs

What is the FGM safeguarding gap UK?

The FGM safeguarding gap UK means the gap between the number of women and girls identified as affected by FGM and the much smaller number of cases reaching specialist safeguarding, protection or forced marriage support routes.

How many FGM cases reached the Forced Marriage Unit in 2025?

The Forced Marriage Unit recorded 15 FGM cases within its 2025 tailored assistance figures. This does not show the total number of FGM cases in the UK. It only shows cases that reached the FMU through that route and received tailored assistance.

How many women and girls were identified by NHS England as having FGM?

NHS England recorded 6,980 individual women and girls with an attendance where FGM had been identified between April 2024 and March 2025.

Is FGM illegal in the UK?

Yes. FGM is illegal in England and Wales under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. Professionals should also treat FGM involving children as child abuse.

How does Freedom Charity help prevent FGM?

Freedom Charity supports prevention through safeguarding education, training, school resources, the Cut Flowers book, the Not In My Name campaign and the red triangle badge.

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Forced Marriage Unit statistics 2025

GOV.UK Forced Marriage Unit statistics 2025

NHS England FGM annual report

NHS England FGM annual report 2024 to 2025

Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003

GOV.UK mandatory reporting duty

FGM mandatory reporting duty guidance

CPS guidance

CPS guidance on Female Genital Mutilation

UNICEF global FGM figures

UNICEF global FGM data