A project by Emanuela Zuccalà, co-produced by ActionAid NGO, curated by Zona

UNCUT is a multimedia journalism project on female genital mutilations (FGM) and an ongoing campaign for the end of this traditional harmful practice. According to Unicef and the World Health Organization, more than 200 million women in the world have undergone a type of FGM: it causes women’s subordination, early forced marriage, school dropout, and exclusion from the social and economic life.

An obligatory ritual in certain societies, it is believed to “purify” women from their own femininity, sentencing them to undergo excruciating pain to make them virgins for life, resistant to sexual pleasure, and therefore – the main aim – make them devoted and faithful wives. According to the available data, the victims are concentrated in 30 countries, of which 27 are in Africa. The European Parliament estimates that in the EU around 500,000 immigrant women are affected by a wound that comprises severe health consequences and complex integration paths.

UNCUT is an immersive and data-driven web-documentary that, through a strong interaction of text, photography and video, explains the spread of FGM and showcases engaging stories of women who have formed coalitions to eradicate this practice in three African countries: Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somaliland. An interactive map of Africa, coming from a a data-journalism survey, presents the statistics of the continent and an in-depth analysis of each involved country, while a map of Europe provides the most recent estimates on the prevalence of FGM in the European Union, Norway and Switzerland.

The web-documentary UNCUT was launched on February 6, 2016, on the International Day for Zero Tolerance of FGM, by 3 European media (Corriere della Sera, El Pais, Worldcrunch), as the conclusion of an awareness campaign that opened on November 25, 2015, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

UNCUT is also a series of articles (see the links below), a photo exhibition, two short documentaries.

• Emanuela Zuccalà: author, research and data, video
• Simona Ghizzoni: photography in Somaliland, Kenya, Ethiopia and France; video
• Valeria Scrilatti: photography in Liberia
• Alessandro d’Alfonso: graphic design, maps, web development
• Valeria De Berardinis: data research, director of production
• Paolo Turla, Aline Hervé: video editing
• Giulia Tornari for ZONA: executive producer

Our special thanks to Renata Ferri and to Barbara Antonelli.

The project has the support of the NGOs ActionAid Italy and No Peace Without Justice.

Cover video: the trailer of the short movie Uncut, launched on October 8, 2016, at A Window on the World, Images from Reality International Documentary Festival (Milan, Italy).