On Thursday I appeared on Daily Politics, alongside campaigner Nimko Ali, to discuss the campaign to end FGM within a generation.

Here’s the clip:

Here’s my final blog from last week’s visit to Burkina Faso – also available here.

What do you get when you combine a vibrant First Lady, a country in which most women have undergone female genital mutilation and many are facing health problems and complications in pregnancy, and funding from donor countries to support a country’s desire to achieve change?

I discovered that you get an environment in which it’s OK to talk about really difficult subjects like women’s genitalia and FGM/C-related health problems in school.

You get radio shows that allow women who’ve never felt able to speak up about their bodies to call in and ask how they can get help.

And you get the remarkable Suka Clinic, funded by a foundation set up by the First Lady, Chantal Compaoré. The clinic provides free surgery to repair the damage that FGM/C has done to so many women in Burkina Faso.

During my visit I went to the clinic, and saw hope being restored by the dedicated staff who run it.

After showing us the most harrowing video I’ve ever seen – of a baby girl having her clitoris removed – and photographs of some desperate pregnancy complications suffered by women who were sewn up as young girls, it would have been easy to focus only on the horror suffered by millions of women around the world.

But the clinic provides free reconstructive surgery to dozens of Burkinabé women every week – allowing them to have sex, give birth safely, and avoid a multitude of other health risks. All this costs just 6,000 Central African Francs, or $15, but changes lives beyond measure.

I also visited a school, where I saw a class of 15 and 16 year-olds – both boys and girls – engage in a lively debate about the dangers of FGM/C and design slogans to tackle the practice.

And I joined in the radio show in which a woman who hadn’t even known that her body was different to those of other women called in to seek help for the first time in her life.

At the clinic, I met one of the women who had gone through FGM/C as a little girl, had reconstructive surgery a few years ago, and now had a beautiful child of her own. Would she cut her daughter, I asked? “I don’t think so,” she replied with a wry laugh.

That’s the kind of voice, along with those of leaders like the First Lady of Burkina Faso, that can end FGM/C in a generation.

No woman or girl should ever have to suffer the horrific practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM.) But, in countries like Egypt and Somalia, more than 90% of girls and women over the age of 15 have been cut. Truly shocking statistics.

This has been a taboo for too long – FGM is child abuse and we must help bring the practice to an end.

As a minister for International Development, I have announced a £35million UK Government programme towards this aim, and am doing all I can to raise awareness.

The Department for International Development have launched a Thunderclap in support of ending FGM within a generation.

If over 500 people sign up, the thunderclap app will tweet the same message of support from everyone at the same time. This will get #EndFGM trending, bringing the issue to the attention of millions of twitter users.

Please do sign up and help raise awareness. Together, we can end FGM in a generation.

Today I am in Ziniaré, a village that has abandoned female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C).

While 76% of girls and women from 15 to 49 years old in Burkina Faso have undergone the practice, only 9% of Burkinabés, men and boys included, think it should continue.

So, what is working here?

Sometimes people see for themselves the terrible harm FGM/C can do. In Ziniaré I met Naba Siguiri, a customary chief who lost his 5 year-old daughter when her cutting went wrong. Siguiri has become an important voice in the fight to eradicate the practice in his village.

But where people don’t have a personal experience of the damage FGM/C can do, including complications in childbirth, other methods are needed to shift people’s opinions.

Here in Burkina Faso the government has an action plan that includes a huge communications and sensitisation effort. Community members are trained to educate their peers and across the village there are posters to remind people of the reasons they have committed to abandon the practice.

In Ziniaré I met Savadogo Jean, Zongo-Savadogo Fati and their daughter Savadogo Awa, they were 1 of the first families in the village to announce that they would not cut their daughter. The community was shocked by the decision at first, but as they learnt about the potential health impacts of FGM/C they began to accept their decision, and in the end congratulated their bravery.

Then there are the prosecutions. Burkina Faso has 1 of the most effective and well enforced laws against FGM/C in the world. 117 cases of excision were reported and 192 people were convicted between 2009 and 2013. Police and magistrates also patrol villages to give help and advice to villages and victims and investigate, prosecute and adjudicate on potential or actual cases. The officers I met are passionate about their work and also staff a hotline that people can call anonymously to report cuttings that are about to happen or have recently taken place. I heard many stories of cuttings the police were able to prevent, or victims they were able to help.

I also met an ex-cutter, Abzeta Kabore, an elder woman who used to perform FGM/C. Traditional practitioners undertake more than 95% of excisions here in Burkina Faso, often with knives or razors and with limited medical supplies. Kabore was prosecuted and spent time in prison, though she says that it was not the punishment alone that made her renounce her former livelihood. In prison she learnt about the negative health impacts of FGM/C and on her return to the village she refused further requests for girls to be cut.

DFID supports all of the people I met today and the Burkinabé government, through the largest ever donor programme on FGM/C which backs the African-led fight to eradicate the practice.

But challenges remain here. The government has so far focused on 2 high-prevalence provinces as they do not have the resources to cover the whole country just yet.

So we need to step up to the challenge. I’m calling on the international community to break the silence on this issue, and to raise their voices against this harmful practice.

I learnt today that we can only do this if everyone – the international community, parliamentarians, customary and religious leaders, communities themselves and even those who perform the practice – work together. Let’s do that, and let’s end FGM/C within a generation.

Here’s a blog from my visit to Burkina Faso – also available here.

As a woman, a mother, a Member of Parliament and a government minister, I make my voice heard and take significant decisions every day of my life.

But there are millions of women and girls around the world who don’t have the luxury of having their voice heard or making choices about their futures.

One of the clearest examples of women’s lack of choice, voice and control is female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C), on which I have launched the world’s biggest programme as part of my cross-government campaign to end FGM/C within a generation.

FGM/C is still practised across a swathe of countries in Africa. In some countries, like Somalia, Guinea, Djibouti and Egypt, more than 90% of girls and women over the age of 15 have undergone FGM/C.

Let me be absolutely clear.  Even if it is practised not as a form of cruelty but because it is an entrenched social norm, FGM/C is child abuse.  It simply has to end.

And there are glimmers of hope. This week, I’m in Burkina Faso to see the efforts of a country that outlawed FGM/C in 1996 and is at the forefront of bringing the numbers of girls who have undergone FGM/C down and who are prosecuting those who continue the practice.

Although 76% of girls and women between the ages of 15 and 49 have undergone FGM/C in Burkina Faso, the prevalence among girls aged 15 to 19 has dropped by 31%.  That’s an impressive shift – but there’s a long way to go.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, said last week that: “this year, Britain should lead the charge on women’s equality, women’s empowerment, and the empowerment of women and girls, not only because it is a good thing in and of itself, but because if you look at why countries don’t develop or why countries develop slowly, if they exclude women from the work force, if they do not give them equal rights, if there are not proper systems in place for maternal mortality and for safe childbirth, if you don’t have family planning, that country will be held back.”

With that in mind, I’m here in Burkina Faso to find out what we can learn from the African-led movement against harmful practices that damage women and girls. I’ll tell you about what I find in a series of blogs this week, and through a range of activities for the International Day of Zero Tolerance of FGM/C on the 6^th February.

I hope you’ll join me here in the fight to help give women around the world the voice, choice and control they deserve, and end FGM/C within a generation.

Break the Silence. Take a Stand. Join the Movement. Together we can #EndFGM.