Cards used to educate women about FGM, Minia, 2006

CAIRO — Women’s rights activists hailed the Egyptian government on Monday for advocating increased prison sentences for perpetrators of female genital mutilation but warned that a new law could shroud the practice in greater secrecy.

Egypt’s cabinet on Sunday approved a bill, which must be passed by parliament to become law, imposing jail terms of up to seven years for people who perform FGM and up to three years for those who escort a girl or woman to undergo the practice.

It is currently punishable by between three months and two years in prison under a 2008 law, which was enacted after an 11-year-old girl died following an FGM procedure.

The drive for tougher sentences follows the recent death of a 17-year-old girl of complications during an FGM operation in a private hospital in Suez province.

FGM affects an estimated 140 million girls and women across a swathe of Africa and parts of the Middle East and Asia and is seen as a gateway to marriage and a way of preserving a girl’s purity. It causes numerous health problems that can be fatal.

More than nine in 10 women and girls aged 15 to 49 have undergone FGM in Egypt, and some 80 percent of the procedures are carried out by medical professionals.