In less than one month, the Justice for Girls Convening & Festival will take place in Kenya, bringing together activists, survivors, policymakers and governments, funders, and leaders committed to ending female gential mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and child marriage to this generation. It is a space for bold ideas, shared strategies, and collective action, grounded in lived experience and global collaboration, at a critical moment for the gender justice community.
Below, Survivor Expert Leader Saza Faradilla reflects on what she hopes this convening will accomplish, why this gathering matters now, and what it means to her to be an Advocate and a Survivor Expert Leader.
About Saza Faradilla: Saza Faradilla (she/they) is a co-founder of End Female Genital Cutting Singapore, which envisions a world where the practice of FGC is obsolete. She raises awareness on social media and on-the-ground, and participates in local and international lobbying at the United Nations to bring attention to the fact that FGC is a pressing concern in Asia. Equally important, she calls for a culturally-contextual and intersectional feminist approach when dealing with sexual and gender based violence across diverse Asian communities. Saza is currently completing a Masters in Human Rights and Democratisation in Mahidol University and Universities Gadjahmada in Southeast Asia.
From Survivor to Advocate
For Saza, the journey into advocacy began with a moment of personal discovery that changed the course of her life.
“I learned as an adult that I had undergone female genital cutting as a baby. Realizing that something had been done to my body without my knowledge or consent left me feeling violated, angry, and determined to understand why this practice continues to be normalised.
Ultimately, that realization led her toward a movement dedicated to ending the practice.
“That personal experience led me towards advocacy, which has shown me that change is possible. Through End FGC Singapore and my work across Asia, I have seen how sustained advocacy can shift public conversations and institutional positions. For example, after years of engagement by advocates, Singapore’s government publicly acknowledged at the (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) CEDAW review that its position on FGC had changed. That was significant because, for a long time, the issue was treated as invisible or as something too sensitive to discuss.
Whenever I speak about FGC, I see how strongly people respond. There is often an immediate visceral reaction, including from people outside affected communities. Yet that concern is rarely matched by sustained resources for the grassroots advocates, survivor leaders, healthcare workers, religious actors, and community organisers who are doing the difficult work of changing gender norms from within. There is still a huge gap between the scale of the problem and the funding available to the communities and organizations that are working to end it.”
Building a Movement That Lasts
While Saza’s advocacy began with her own experience, her vision for the movement looks far beyond individual stories. As organizers develop a movement-led global plan for the next five years, she hopes the convening produces concrete commitments that strengthen survivor-led organizations, recognize local expertise, and build solidarity across movements working toward gender justice.
“I hope the plan includes serious, long-term funding for grassroots and survivor-led movements. Too often, survivor leaders are invited to share their stories, provide emotional labour, and lend legitimacy to global spaces, while the organisations closest to communities remain underfunded and overstretched. We need funding that allows local groups to build staff capacity, support survivors, conduct research, organise conversations, and respond to community needs without constantly having to prove their worth through narrow short-term indicators.
I also hope the plan recognises that there is no single intervention that will work everywhere. Interventions need to be culturally nuanced, locally led, and responsive to specific contexts rather than imported as universal models.
Finally, the plan should create solidarity across regions and movements. Ending FGC and child marriage cannot be separated from wider struggles against racism, economic inequality, authoritarianism, militarism, and patriarchy. We need to ask why girls’ bodies are controlled in the first place, who benefits from that control, and how systems of capitalism and patriarchy make violence against women and girls easier to normalise.”
Survivors Are Experts
For Saza, a survivor-led movement is about much more than representation. It is about recognizing survivors as experts whose lived experience, professional knowledge, and leadership should shape every aspect of the movement.
“A survivor-led convening is essential because survivors understand the issue not only as a policy problem, but as something that shapes bodies, families, relationships, faith, identity, and everyday life. Survivors can speak to what is actually needed on the ground, including the kinds of support, language, advocacy, and community engagement that feel respectful and effective.
Survivors should be recognised as experts, not simply pitied as victims or invited only to share painful stories. Many survivors are organisers, researchers, healthcare workers, lawyers, artists, religious leaders, and community educators. Their knowledge should shape movement priorities, funding decisions, research agendas, and policy conversations.
Allies are equally important, especially when they use their access, institutional power, and resources to support survivor-led work rather than speak over survivors. Ending FGC and child marriage requires collective action across generations, sectors, and communities.”
Challenging Systems, Not Just Practices
Ending FGC and child marriage, Saza believes, requires confronting more than individual practices. It means challenging the larger systems that normalize violence against girls while building a movement grounded in solidarity, inclusion, and a shared commitment to bodily autonomy.
“We need to challenge anti-rights narratives by addressing the larger systems that make violence against girls seem normal, inevitable, or culturally protected. Patriarchy is central to this, but so are economic systems that leave families without security, place care work on women, and make girls’ futures dependent on marriage, respectability, or control of their bodies.
This means building solidarity with working-class communities and ensuring that our advocacy does not shame or isolate the people we hope to engage. We need to be honest about structural inequality while also respecting the complexity of people’s lives, beliefs, and relationships.
The movement must also be willing to confront difficult questions within our own spaces. Bodily autonomy should apply consistently. This includes conversations about non-consensual genital cutting of children of all genders, and ensuring that trans people and trans survivors are included, supported, and placed at the forefront of discussions about bodily autonomy. A movement for justice cannot be selective about whose bodies, identities, or experiences are seen as worthy of protection.”
Healing Is Part of the Movement
The Justice for Girls Convening & Festival places healing alongside advocacy, recognizing that sustainable movements require spaces for both action and restoration. For Saza, caring for survivors is not separate from the work of advancing gender justice but fundamental to it.
“Creating spaces for healing is essential because advocacy can be emotionally demanding, especially for survivors who are repeatedly asked to speak about experiences that may bring up difficult feelings. Survivors should not be expected to turn pain into public education without care, community, and support around them.
Healing spaces acknowledge that survivors are whole people, not only advocates or spokespeople. They create room for rest, connection, joy, grief, creativity, and reflection. Art, music, storytelling, and celebration are especially important because they allow people to imagine different futures. They remind us that our movements are not only about resisting harm, but also about building communities where people can feel safe, valued, and free.”
Investing in Grassroots Power
For Saza, meaningful change requires more than short-term projects or one-time grants. Sustained investment gives survivor-led and grassroots organizations the stability to build trust, respond to community needs, and create lasting social change on their own terms.
“With sustained, long-term investment, survivor-led and grassroots organisations can do the kind of deep work that creates real social change. They can build relationships over time, work alongside communities, respond to emerging needs, support survivors, train new leaders, and create programmes grounded in trust rather than in short funding cycles.
Long-term funding also gives organisations breathing room. It means they are not constantly writing reports, chasing the next grant, or being micromanaged through narrow KPIs that do not capture the slow and relational nature of systemic change. Funders need to understand that ending FGC and child marriage are not quick projects. It involves changing beliefs, family expectations, religious understandings, institutional practices, and social norms that may have existed for generations.”
Creating New Ways Into the Conversation
Some of the most meaningful conversations begin in unexpected ways. Through End FGC Singapore, Saza has learned that art, culture, and creativity can open doors that traditional advocacy sometimes cannot.
“One lesson from End FGC Singapore is that creative and culturally grounded approaches can open conversations that formal advocacy sometimes cannot. For our fifth anniversary, we organised a dance performance that brought together Malay dance, bodily autonomy, and empowerment. We also used small symbolic moments, such as sharing oranges together, to create a warmer and more inviting space for conversations about female sexuality, consent, and control over our bodies.
That experience reminded us that advocacy does not always have to begin with statistics, policy language, or confrontation. Art can make people feel something first. It can invite people into difficult conversations without making them defensive.
Another lesson is the importance of maintaining consistent pressure on political office holders and institutions. FGC is often dismissed as a minority issue or treated as something too sensitive to address publicly. It is important to show policymakers that this issue matters deeply to survivors, families, professionals, and wider communities. Persistent engagement can shift what institutions believe they are allowed, expected, or required to say on the issue.”
Looking Beyond Kenya
For Saza, the conversations that begin in Kenya should be the foundation for a stronger, more connected global movement. She hopes the convening leads to lasting relationships, shared accountability, and sustained collaboration that continues long after participants return home.
“The convening must be the beginning of ongoing coordination. We need clear commitments, shared accountability, regular opportunities to reconnect, and practical mechanisms for collaboration across regions.
That could include working groups, survivor-led regional networks, shared advocacy priorities, collective fundraising efforts, and follow-up spaces where participants can report back on progress and challenges. We also need to continue putting pressure on governments, donors, multilateral institutions, and NGOs to match their commitments with real resources and action.
Lasting change comes from relationships that continue after the photographs, speeches, and closing ceremony are over.”
Ultimately, Saza hopes the convening’s legacy reaches beyond the movement to end FGC and child marriage. She envisions it helping reshape the broader human rights movement by centering survivor expertise, investing in grassroots leadership, and addressing the root causes of gender-based violence.
“My hope is that this convening helps steer the global human rights movement towards a deeper understanding of FGC, child marriage, and women’s rights. These are not isolated practices that can be solved only through laws, awareness campaigns, or individual behaviour change. They are rooted in broader systems of patriarchy, inequality, and economic control.
I hope the convening strengthens a movement that is brave enough to address those root causes while remaining grounded in local realities and survivor knowledge. I also hope it demonstrates that survivors are not only people who have experienced harm. We are thinkers, organisers, artists, strategists, and leaders who can help shape more just futures.
The legacy I want is a movement that protects bodily autonomy, invests in grassroots power, centres care and healing, and refuses to separate the fight against FGC from the wider struggle for gender justice, economic justice, and human dignity.”
