Nahid Toubia

Nahid Toubia (born 1951) is a Sudanese surgeon and women's health rights activist, specializing in research into female genital mutilation.

Toubia is the co-founder and director of RAINBO, the Research, Action and Information Network for Bodily Integrity of Women. She is an associate professor at Columbia University School of Public Health. She sits on scientific and advisory committees for the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and UNDP. She is also vice-chair of the advisory committee of the Women's Rights Watch Project of Human Rights Watch.

Focusing on reproductive health and gender inequality in Africa and the Middle East, Toubia is the author or co-author of several books, including Women of the Arab World: The Coming Challenge (1988), Female Genital Mutilation: A Call for Global Action (1995), and Female Genital Mutilation: A Guide to Worldwide Laws and Policies (2000).

Toubia was born in Khartoum, Sudan, and attended medical school in Egypt. In 1981 she completed her surgical training in the United Kingdom, gaining an MPhil and a PhD in Public Health & Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1981, and the first female surgeon in Sudan.

In 1985 she returned to Sudan, where she was head of paediatric surgery at Khartoum Teaching Hospital, and set up her own emergency clinic. As a result of the country's political instability she returned to the UK, and began her research into female genital mutilation (FGM). From 1990 she worked for four years at the Population Council in New York City.

Toubia is the founder and president of Research, Action and Information Network for the Bodily Integrity of Women (Rainbo), an international organisation which works to eliminate FGM through women’s self-empowerment and social change. The organisation has offices in New York City and London, and works in Uganda, South Africa, the Gambia, and Nigeria. Rainbo played a prominent role in changing the view of FGM from being a predominantly medical concern to a human rights issue.

...
Wikipedia