A court in France has sentenced a woman from Mali to eight years in prison for the ritual genital mutilation of forty-eight young girls.

The woman practised what is known as excision over a period of eleven years in France on girls between one and ten years of age.

The removal of the clitoris is practised in several countries in Africa where it is considered a customary step towards womanhood and marriage.

Opponents condemn the act as a gross violation of human rights as well as being medically dangerous.

The French case involves a national with Malian parents who laid charges against a woman known as Mama Greou who performed the excision. More than twenty parents who had allowed their daughters to be mutilated by Mrs Greou were given suspended prison sentences.