While Women's History Month sharpens our focus on reflection and celebration, the responsibility to confront not only the progress we celebrate but also the silences we sustain is not seasonal; it is constant, urgent and ongoing. Among the most enduring of these silences is female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that continues to shape, scar and govern the lives of millions of girls worldwide. In this context, A Permanent Wound, the searing documentary series by Somaya Abdelrahman (@somayabdelrahman), stands as both a testimony of horror and a form of resistance. The project transcends the boundaries of visual reportage; it is an intervention on the history, memory and politics of control over women's bodies.
Born in Cairo in 1996, Somaya Abdelrahman is an Egyptian photojournalist and visual artist whose practice is rooted in social justice and human rights. Educated in journalism at Hochschule Hanover, where she later specialised in photojournalism and documentary photography, her work draws deeply on the lived realities of women whose bodies have been marked by horrific violence justified as tradition.
A Permanent Wound is a personal documentary exploration of FGM in Egypt, a country that records one of the highest numbers of cases globally. Although Egypt criminalised the practice in 2008, legislation alone has not dismantled the social architecture that sustains it. With a high majority of procedures now performed by medical professionals, there is a troubling phenomenon of "medicalisation" that cloaks violence in the language of care.
Egyptian law criminalises the partial removal of female genital tissue in the absence of a legitimate medical necessity. Yet the language of "medical justification" is routinely manipulated to legitimise what the law forbids. Doctors - driven by social pressure, financial incentives, or religious misinterpretation - perform procedures that the law explicitly prohibits. No convictions have meaningfully disrupted the cycle. The contradiction between legislation and lived reality reveals a deeper truth: FGM is not sustained by ignorance alone, but by a complex system of gendered power.
The World Health Organisation defines FGM as the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons; this is a clinical description that scarcely captures the magnitude of its violation. FGM offers no health benefits and instead inflicts severe and lifelong physical and psychological harm. Globally, more than 125 million girls and women have undergone the procedure. In Egypt, the practice is often referred to as "khatna" or "tahara" - terms that invoke purification and honour. Language here is not incidental; it is instrumental. It recasts harm as morality, reframes mutilation as virtue, and conditions girls to interpret suffering as a prerequisite for dignity. It is precisely this moral inversion that Abdelrahman's project so powerfully captures and refutes.
Abdelrahman does not approach FGM as a distant reporter collecting statistics. Her work emerges from experience. This positionality transforms the project from documentation into embodied witness. Through monochrome imagery, she evokes the secrecy surrounding the practice. Her photographs refuse spectacle. Instead, they dwell in quiet intensity.
Abdelrahman's lens exposes the insidious reach of patriarchy, showing how it is enforced not only by men but also through women, woven into familial care, communal expectation and generational tradition. FGM is not sanctioned by any religion; yet it spans Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities despite the absence of any scriptural mandate. Instead, it functions as a hetero-patriarchal instrument, meticulously designed to control female sexuality, enforce obedience and dictate the terms of marriageability.
In this way, A Permanent Wound transcends the borders of Egypt, confronting a global system in which women's bodies are contested terrains, battlegrounds for honour, nationalism and moral authority. Throughout her own escape from Egypt, Abdelrahman encountered repeated manifestations of gendered violence. Across borders, the female body remains a site of control, surveillance and oppression.
What makes A Permanent Wound especially resonant when reflecting on women's rights is its uncompromising assertion that bodily autonomy is non-negotiable. Rights to political or economic participation are meaningless without sovereignty over one's own body; a sovereignty that FGM violently denies. Abdelrahman's visual storytelling transcends statistics, transforming abstract data into an intimate human experience. Monochrome images strip away distraction, rendering the emotional weight of the practice visible and forcing viewers from across the world to witness the enduring scars and silences imposed on women's lives.
Abdelrahman's work intersects powerfully with global efforts to eradicate FGM. While programs like the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Initiative and campaigns such as #ProtectHerFromFGM have begun shifting norms, progress remains fragile. Through her lens, art becomes both archive and catalyst, documenting abuse while galvanising action. Supported by the Arab Documentary Photography Program, the Prince Claus Fund, and the Magnum Foundation, her photographs reach beyond Egypt and assert that FGM is not a "cultural issue" but a human rights violation demanding urgent, global accountability.
A Permanent Wound exemplifies the profound power of survivor-led documentation. Rejecting detached objectivity, the series demonstrates how ethical proximity can amplify truth. Abdelrahman does not exploit trauma; she transforms it into testimony, wielding her camera as a tool of reclamation and resistance.
In the end, the title resonates with profound weight. A permanent wound is not merely physical; it is psychological, social and political. It lingers in memory, in the trauma of childbirth, and in intimacy marred by pain. Yet its permanence also embodies resistance: once named, witnessed and visualised, the silence that sustained it can never fully return.
Women's History Month should not be merely commemorative. It is and must be confrontational. Through A Permanent Wound, Somaya Abdelrahman forces the invisible into visibility, giving voice to those long silenced and revealing the intimate violations inflicted in the name of honour. Her work asserts an unassailable truth: dignity cannot be imposed, controlled, or carved into the body; it must be recognised, respected and defended.
