These guidelines are intended primarily for health-care professionals involved in the care of girls and women who have been subjected to any form of female genital mutilation (FGM). This document also provides guidance for policy-makers, health-care managers and others in charge of planning, developing and implementing national and local health-care protocols and policies. The information contained in this document will also be useful for designing job aids and pre- and in-service professional training curricula in the areas of medicine, nursing, midwifery and public health for health-care providers caring for girls and women living with FGM.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• Glossary
• Executive summary
• 1. Background
  • 1.1 Types of FGM
  • 1.2 Reasons why FGM is performed
  • 1.3 Health risks from FGM
  • 1.4 FGM and human rights
  • 1.5 Medicalization of FGM
  • 1.6 Objectives of the guidelines
• 2. Methods
  • 2.1 Guideline contributors
  • 2.2 Declaration of interests by external contributors
  • 2.3 Identification of priority research questions and outcomes – scoping exercise
  • 2.4 Evidence retrieval
  • 2.5 Quality assessment, synthesis and grading of the evidence
  • 2.6 Qualitative research and human rights evidence
  • 2.7 Formulation of recommendations
  • 2.8 Document preparation and peer review
• 3. Guidance
  • 3.1 Guiding principles
  • 3.2 Recommendations and best practice statements
  • 3.3 Interventions for which no recommendations were issued
• 4. Dissemination and implementation
  • 4.1 Dissemination of the guidelines
  • 4.2 Implementation of the guidelines
  • 4.3 Monitoring and evaluating the impact of the guidelines
  • 4.4 Updating the guidelines
• 5 References
• Annex 1 International and regional human rights treaties and consensus documents providing protection and containing safeguards against female genital mutilation
• Annex 2 Guideline contributors
• Annex 3 Summary of declared interests from Guideline Development Group (GDG) members and how they were managed
• Annex 4 Factors considered while rating the quality of the evidence
• Web annex GRADE tables

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