In states like Egypt, most women are cut. The practice is now spreading from Africa and Asia to immigrant communities worldwide. More than 100 million suffer globally.

The annual circumcision event begins and ends with prayer services. (Stephanie Sinclair)

Some religions state that female sex organs are sinful, and must be removed to stop intimate pleasure. Hawa Greou served five years in French prison for mutilating 48 girls.

“It’s my tradition, my grandmother and ancestors are all excisors. No one’s ever died after my operations,” she said.

Critics insist the practice is barbaric and must be stopped regardless of cultural traditions. Lawyer Linda Weil-Curiel, who put Greou behind bars, has to fight white male colleagues, who say banning foreign tradition is neocolonialism, and dub the method “female circumcision”.

“They would use the word circumcision, which I will not hear of. Because if you did to a young man what

The girl who was being soothed in the second photograph, after her circumcision. (Stephanie Sinclair)

is done to a young woman, he wouldn't say I have been circumcised, he would say I have been mutilated, and right he would be, because it’s equivalent to chopping off the penis for the boy, so for the girl it’s the clitoris and the labia,” the lawyer said.

Linda Weil-Curiel's success in court made the state go after the practitioners, but has just pushed the problem elsewhere. Even though the practitioner case has led to France convicting mothers who mutilate their daughters, many instead take their children on special “holidays” abroad.

Hawa Greou now says mutilation is wrong, but in many communities girls will continue to be cut, and men order the crime to be committed. Officials say France alone has more than 50,000 victims.