Two hundred million women across the world have been subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). That’s more than the combined populations of the UK, France and Italy. Involving the physical alteration of the female genitalia, the practice has been described by activists as “cruelty of the first order”. It has been documented in South Asia, the US, Canada and Europe. In Africa and the Middle East, FGM goes back a couple of thousand years.