The BBC has revealed that there were 17 women admitted to hospitals in the Belfast area having suffered genital mutilation over nine months from April 2017 to 15 January 2018. The country of origin or cultural/religious background of the women was not recorded.
The information was confirmed by the BBC via Freedom of Information.
Reporting Female Genital Mutilation is not mandatory for hospitals and doctors in Northern Ireland, so the full scale of the problem is not clear however, in England were reporting FGM is mandatory for medical professionals over 5,000 cases were documented in 2016-2017 alone.
A 2017 report commissioned by the African and Caribbean Support Northern Ireland noted that there is a lack of information regarding the prevalence of FGM in the six counties, the Belfast Telegraph reports.
In December the Irish Times reported that it was estimated that by 2016, 5,790 women and girls living in Ireland had undergone genital mutilation.