Hiding from the cutters: the fight to save girls from mutilation in Kenya

As girls are paraded through Kuria's streets in the school holiday cutting season, hundreds more are hidden by a network of neighbours working to change attitudes on FGM from the ground up

• Opinion: Girls should be educated, not mutilated. The cutting of women must end, now

Half rising from the plastic white chair, he jabs a finger toward a girl and her school friends sitting across the circle from him. She will have a future," says Patrick Ikware, almost shouting. This cult is diminishing, but to eliminate it, we need to substitute education, send our daughters to school and block our ears to the elders."

The handful of others sitting on mismatched chairs on the grass outside the school in Masaba nod. A parents' meeting held for those opposed to female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice almost universal among women in the Kuria districts of Migori county, western Kenya, is sparsely attended.