Sudan: Evaluation of the DFID Sudan Free of Female Genital Cutting Programme

At 89%, Sudan has one of the highest rates of Female Genital Cutting (FGC) (for girls and women aged 15-49) in the world. FGC poses serious physical and mental health risks for girls and women, especially for women who have undergone extreme forms of the procedure as in Sudan.

FGC hinders the full empowerment and involvement of girls and women in many areas of Sudanese society. Without comprehensive and coordinated support to Sudan’s National Strategy its ambitious goal of ending FGC within a generation is unlikely to be achieved.

DFID is currently providing £12 million over 5 years (2013 – 2018) to a programme that will strengthen the enabling institutional environment for tackling FGC in Sudan and will simultaneously make a profound shift in the attitudes and behaviours underpinning the practice by scaling up existing social change communications complemented by community-level interventions that facilitate discussion on FGC.

IMC has been commissioned by DFID to carry out an evaluation of the programme. The theory-based evaluation will

• assess the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of the approach adopted by the Sudan Free of Female Genital Cutting programme for the abandonment of FGC in Sudan
• identify the intended and unintended outcomes of the intervention for individuals, communities, implementing partners and will provide recommendations, identify lessons learned, capture good practices, and generate knowledge to inform the refinement of the partnership model and approach in Sudan as well as to inform the shape of future programming on FGC and related programme initiatives.

The learning from the evaluation will also inform a planned second 5 year phase of the programme. IMC is working with the University of Portsmouth and Forcier Consulting in Sudan.