Village leaders have called for all people living in the Tillabery region of Niger to end the practice, reports CNN. "We have decided to definitively put an end to female genital mutilation in our villages and to continue sensitizing neighboring villages so they also give up the practice," said N. Babobou Pana, leader of one of the villages.

According to UNICEF, the rate of FGM among women ages 15 to 49 in Niger has decreased by half, from 5 per cent in 1998 to 2.2 per cent in 2006. However the statistics conceal how prevalent the practice is in certain regions and ethnic groups, where the rate may be higher than 65 percent. The Tillabery region has one of the highest rates of FGM.

Between 100 to 140 million girls and women across the world have undergone FGM, according to World Health Organization statistics. It is most widely practiced in Africa, where about 92 million girls above the age of 10 have been mutilated. 28 countries in Africa perform FGM, and as shown in the graphic below from the World Health Organization, rates vary widely by region.

While FGM is most prevalent in Africa, it is also widely practiced in some regions of Asia and the Middle East. WADI, a German nongovernmental group that advocates against female circumcision, has been studying the problem in Iraqi Kurdistan since 2004 and found that more than 60 percent of women in the region underwent the procedure, according to the group Stop FGM in Kurdistan. However, in some areas the rate is as high as nearly 100 percent.

A bill banning FGM was submitted to Kurdistan's Regional Parliament in April 2007 and according to a female MP and a doctor who have been campaigning against the practice, it is expected to pass soon. But many women are still being mutilated. One of the latest victims is Iraqi Kurdish four-year-old Shwen, who is pictured above screaming during her circumcision in Suleimaniyah earlier this week.

[Graphic via WHO.]

African Villages Denounce Female Genital Mutilation [CNN]
Turning Former Practitioners Against Female Genital Mutilation In Niger [UNICEF]
Female Genital Mutilation: Prevalence And Age [World Health Organization]
FGM In Kurdistan [Stop FGM Kurdistan]
The Atlantic: Face of the Day [Andrew Sullivan]

Earlier: Womanhood Brings Pain To Kurdish Girls

(Remember, kids: Don't do drugs!) In this episode, Rich and I answer questions about pubes, gossip, and female circumcision. Got a burning question? Send it to potpsych@jezebel.com. (Or send us your phone number! We wanna talk.)

How Long Do I Have To Wait To Have Sex After An Abortion? from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

Mukasey's order sends the case back to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which, one hopes, will not act like complete assholes the second time around. Mukasey pointed out that female genital mutilation can, indeed, be inflicted more than once — making the ruling factually wrong — and that further persecution need not take the same form as the initial persecution to qualify the woman for asylum. So, the Bush Administration finally did something right... only, actually, it's all their fault in the first place.

Because, lest you forget, the immigration court judges are some of the many people Alberto Gonzales's minions — Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson — helped get onto the bench based on a thorough vetting of their loyalty to George W. Bush and a not so thorough vetting of their immigration law background. In fact, many of them had no immigration law qualifications whatsoever when they began to serve as immigration judges. Some had previously attempted to get non-immigration judgeships and failed, due to a lack of qualifications in the field of law they'd actually practiced, but Gonzales, Goodling and Sampson ran the immigration court appointment process with little attention to pesky details like that. In fact, when they were running the immigration courts as a loyalty-reward outlet center, only 4 seats on the immigration courts were open to a competitive application process. Studies have shown that those who were hired while the Three Musketeers were at the helm (most of whom remain on the bench) are significantly more likely to reject asylum applications than judges hired under competitive application processes that actually have an immigration law background.

So, really, Mukasey wasn't doing anything more than he was hired to do — which is clean up the shit at the Justice Department that Alberto Gonzles, left behind. So, hooray for doing the right thing, eventually and under pressure from Congress! At least this asylum seeker will get to stay. The other ones the Bushies have been busy deporting, well, good luck to them.

AG: Don't Deport Genital Mutilation Victim [CNN]
Genital Mutilation Victim Gets A New Chance At Asylum In U.S. [LA Times]
Immigration Judges Lack Apt Backgrounds [LA Times]
Immigration Judges Often Picked Based On GOP Ties [Washington Post]
Vetted Judges More Likely to Reject Asylum Bids [NY Times]

Filipino teachers are becoming more popular hires as school officials in Prince George County, MD see a shortage in staff. • Presented without comment: "A herpes virus is killing young oysters in France because they have spent too much energy developing their sexual organs rather than their natural defenses, an oyster crisis team has found." • Bacterial vaginosis, a common vaginal infection, can make women more likely to contract HIV, perhaps due to chemical changes in the vaginal canal. • Incarcerated women in Afghanistan find that keeping their children with them in prison, despite the health risks, is safer for the children than giving them to an orphanage. • Pregnant Australians are having a difficult time finding a job since many prospective employers view pregnancy a hinderance on their business. • Miss USA (you know, the one who fell this year) admits to having plastic surgery done to her but only advocates it to "enhance what you have." • Elissa Steamer won the gold medal for women's skateboarding at the 2008 X Games and is quickly becoming one of the top female street skaters around. • Tinkerbell will be given a starring role in a new DVD film from Disney as they begin to create a Fairies franchise similar to their Princess franchise.

Yup, it's the Raelians. Maybe you've heard of their support for human cloning and free love, or the fact that they think humans were the creation of extraterrestrials who also created religion — the very religions that gave us the wacky practice of circumcision. Did you know women and men were originally circumcised because the Pharaohs believed the clit was the center of female masculinity and the foreskin was the center of male femininity and removing them differentiated us from the gods and thus offered up some sort of sacrifice that would in turn provide them favors over the generations? (Funny how history did all those favors for the cultures most closely associated with circumcision!) But yeah, anyway, think too long about it and Raelism or whatever will start to make a certain kind of sense. And like, who wouldn't like to clone Jon Stewart for a husband? Except I might leave him uncircumcised. I hear sex is better that way.

Raelians Rocket From Clones To Clitorises [Wired]
Earlier: Clitoral Circumcision Will "Make This Baby More Beautiful In The Eyes Of Her Husband"

That sentence comprises the first 45 of over a thousand words devoted to female circumcision in Sunday's NY Times. (Sorry guys, this is the last of our Blue Monday-type stories for today.) According to Lukman Hakim, a (male) chairman of an Indonesian foundation that sponsors mass circumcisions, the benefits include the "stabilization" of a female's libido and balancing "her psychology".

The article, written by Sara Corbett, also features a series of upsetting photographs by Stephanie Sinclair (a slideshow, including the newly-circumcised, teary 9-month old girl pictured above, can be found here). Asks Jezebel reader Elizabeth: "What kind of person can stand there and photograph little girls screaming while parts of their genitalia are removed? This isn't a question of religion, or yearning to understand another culture more — it's recording barbarity with an objective lens, which somehow makes it okay."

A Cutting Tradition [NY Times]
Inside A Female Circumcision Ceremony [NY Times]

• The STD of yore, syphilis, is back, baby, and on the rise in New York City! This obviously has nothing to do with Zach Braff being in town all summer. [NY Times]
  
• Kate Hudson may think that men are whores by nature (and that it's okay!), but nerds beg to differ. UC Berkeley math professor Dr. David Gale says it's mathematically impossible for men to have more sexual partners than women — we would tell you more about the handy-dandy equation he uses to back up this claim, but we didn't quite get it. [NY Times]
  
• An alarming percentage of women are unaware that HPV can cause cervical cancer and even fewer know that there is a vaccine available. Now you know ladies, so get thee to Dr. Pap Smear and thank us later. [BBC News]
  
• A 13-year old Egyptian girl died during a circumcision procedure, only a few weeks after a similar death prompted health officials in the country to ban the heinous practice. [Fox News]

• Maryland police accidentally let a sexual assault suspect go after they arrested him for molesting a 9-year old girl. The perv is still on the loose. Way to fucking go, Maryland PD. [Fox News]
• Yay, Ohio! The state's Civil Rights Commission is pushing for companies with four or more employees to grant their workers 12 weeks of unpaid maternity leave, regardless of how long they've worked for the company. Wait, unpaid? That sorta sucks, actually. [NY Times]
• Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a Civil Rights pioneer whose refusal to make room for a white bus passenger preceded Rosa Parks by a decade, has died at the age of 90. [NY Times]
• Dr. Howard Judd, whose expertise in menopause led to significant advances in estrogen and hormone treatments, died at the age of 71. How he knew so much about hot flashes, we'll never know. [NY Times]
• A new study shows that taking a birth control pill for an extended period of time can affect fertility down the road. [Telegraph]
• The latest trend in bodice rippers comes out of Australia, as romance writers are penning hunky heroes that are more like your average Joe. Eh, we prefer the perviness of VC Andrews incest-laden paperbacks anyday. [Reuters]
• In the stupid legal battles department, some schmo is suing 1-800-Flowers for $1 million for revealing his affair to his wife. Something tells us he's going to have a hard time getting a date after this. [ABC News]
• We're not sure where we stand on the Mexico City street vendor debate — aside from the fact that we think the tacos are super tasty — but we do think the woman fighting the Mayor's plans to clean up the city is one bad-ass great grandma. [LA Times]

• Scientists studying over 900 sets of female twins claim that people with moles are "younger biologically" and could be at lower risk of diseases like heart disease or osteoporosis. [DailyMail]
  
• Police in the UK are cracking down on female genital mutilation among African immigrants by offering a reward of almost $40,000 for information on those who engage in the atrocity . [BBC]
  
• All breast cancer charities are not created equal, particularly The Susan G. Komen Foundation, which, in addition to funding research, takes money from the corporate behemoths that help create the chemicals that likely cause the disease in the first place. [Feministing]
  
• A survey of Australian men and women has found that most believe that "nice" rapists should get more lenient sentences than others. [The F Word]

• Ann Coulter refers to self in third-person, suggests she may own a pair of testicles. [Radar]
  
• Sad news for female sports fans: ESPN is apparently just as sexist and hostile a workplace as you'd think it would be. [NYPost]
  
• Egypt has finally outlawed female circumcision. [Salon]
  
• Meanwhile, a little farther to the northwest, the country of Portugal is finally set to make abortion legal. [Ms]
  
• The best-loved taunts in the war between the sexes. [DailyMail]

• Young Nepalese girls — as young as 10 — are routinely sold into slavery in Indian circuses by their parents. And yes, a lot of them are raped. [Telegraph]
• Women may be a larger part of the spread of HIV in Africa than previously thought, particularly in Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire and Lesotho. [Economist]
• One woman in the NY Times' obituary section today: Architect Margaret Hefland, 59, former president of the NYC chapter of the AIA. [NYTimes]