Jaha Dukureh

Jaha Dukureh is 25-year-old Gambia native and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) survivor. She currently resides in Atlanta. After experiencing FGM as a child in her home country of Gambia, Dukureh has dedicated her life to ensuring that the girls of her daughter’s generation do not go through the same rite of passage. She is the founder of Safe Hands for Girls​, which is a nonprofit organization set up in 2013 working to protect girls and young women who are at risk from female genital mutilation (FGM), while supporting survivors. Her activism is credited with leading to the banning of female genital mutilation in The Gambia. In the U.S., Dukureh successfully lobbied President Obama and the Department of Health and Human Services to commission a report on the current statistics of women in the U.S. impacted by FGM and girls at risk of being mutilated. Dukureh has used a traveling roadshow and an international documentary to spread her message. In April 2016, she was named to the 2016 Time 100 list.