This progress report reviews current information on FGM based on recent studies in the field supported by WHO. The first section includes information about the prevalence, the human rights implications and the health risks associated with the practice. It also explores some of the factors that account for its persistence despite growing awareness of its dangers to health and its infringement of human rights. The second section focuses on the efforts to abandon the practice, as well as the challenge of its “medicalization”. The final section of this progress report summarizes the results of some of the most recent WHO-supported studies that have been initiated by HRP in Burkina Faso, Egypt, Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Sudan.