Ms Anne O'Mahoney:

FGM is huge in many of the countries in which we operate. It is not linked to religion but to culture. We run a programme in Marsabit in northern Kenya, where FGM is a big part of the communities' culture, using a tool we call community conversations in order to engage adults on the impact of the practice. We also engage the girls themselves through girls' clubs in school where they can come together and talk about the fact that they do not want FGM. Girls are then able, with the support of their mothers, to challenge community norms and say it is no longer acceptable. Religious leaders or government decrees or laws will not change this. It is about getting into the fundamentals of the communities and changing behaviours and age-old cultural practices that seem unstoppable. We must turn it around and give the power to the girls themselves, with the support of their mothers. While the grandmothers are almost the enforcers of FGM in many communities, the mothers in particular are our allies in changing this dreadful human rights abuse, as Ms Pender has said.

Conflict is a huge issue which pushes back progress towards getting girls into school. We are currently looking at northern Syria and what has happened to its education system, which was re-established eight or ten years ago when peace came to the region. That has been destroyed in one weekend and people are running all over the place. The tragedy of what is happening there is immeasurable, and we are all powerless to do anything to reverse it at this point.

On the quality of education, as mentioned earlier, there was a huge drive as part of the millennium development goals to get enormous numbers of children into school. However, when we looked at the quality of the education those children were getting, it seemed there was a lack of investment in developing quality. Children were going to school and learning nothing, and so parents pulled them out because there was no great advantage in keeping them in school. We now have to tackle and reverse that trend. A combination of factors has contributed to the levelling off of progress in getting children into school and keeping them there.

Girls' absences from school during their periods is also a huge issue, although some countries are beginning to tackle it. Some girls are staying out of school for three, four or five days a month. They are not making progress or keeping pace with their classmates. They then find they have missed too much and just give up. We must enable girls to stay in school during their periods by providing the resources which enable them to do that. That is working in some places but it is a long, slow battle.