Advisors

Our advisors are experts in the fields of FGM, EU law, media, health and human rights, amongst others.

Dr Comfort Momoh, MBE

Dr Comfort Momoh, is an FGM Consultant/Public Health Specialist with extensive experience of holistic women centred care management. She joined the National Health Services in 1985 and has worked in a number of departments.

A researcher on women’s health and a strong campaigner for the eradication of FGM, she established and now runs the African Well Woman’s Clinic at Guy’s and St Thomas Foundation Trust, a support service for women and girls who have undergone female genital mutilation.

Dr Momoh acted as an expert witness for the All Party Parliamentary Hearing on female genital mutilation for England and Wales in 2000 and for Scotland in 2005.

She also provides training, workshop, seminars and conferences at local, national and international levels.

A visiting lecturer at King’s College London (University of London), also lectures at the London School of Hygiene to medical, nursing and midwifery students.

Dr Els Leye

Dr Els Leye has a master’s degree in Social and Cultural Welfare Studies and obtained her PhD in Comparative Sciences of Culture at the Ghent University. She has a year-long expertise in the field of sexual and gender-based violence, and more specifically of female genital mutilation (FGM), and is currently team leader of the Sexual and Gender Based Violence unit of the International Centre for Reproductive Health, at the Ghent University in Belgium.

Dr Leye is co-founder of the European Network for the Prevention of Harmful Traditional Practices, and of the association La Palabre in Senegal, for vulnerable children and women. She is actively involved in policy making on FGM in Belgium and is coordinating several interventions for FGM prevention.

Sofia Branco

Sofia Branco is a Portuguese professional journalist since 1999, currently working at the news national agency. She has traveled to Africa (Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Cape Vert); Latin America (México, Argentina, and Cuba); United States of America; Middle East (Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Yemen); Maghreb (Morocco and Libya); Europe (France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Northern Ireland); and the Balkans (Kosovo and Macedonia).

In 2002, she wrote the first article about female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Portuguese daily newspaper Público, where she worked from 1999 to 2009.

She has written a number of articles regarding FGM – in Portugal, in Guinea-Bissau, in the European Parliament – and her work has been awarded several times, including by the Portuguese National Assembly and by the International Federation of Journalists (Natali Prize for Human Rights 2004).

With a degree in Journalism, Advanced Studies in Islam and in Gender/Women, and a European Masters degree in Human Rights and Democratisation, Sofia has also been invited as a university professor of Advanced Studies in Women and Human Rights to lecture in the New University of Lisbon and the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra.