A campaigner against female genital mutilation is due to speak in Bermuda tomorrow.

Salimata Badji Knight, from Senegal, West Africa, was subjected to the painful procedure at the age of five.

She has now undertaken a mission to campaign against the practice ? and speaks out on the medical and emotional impact its has on girls and women forced to undergo it.

Most human rights groups in the West, Africa, and Asia consider female genital cutting rituals a violation of human rights.

Mrs. Knight, who now lives in the UK, has been invited by Amnesty International Bermuda to speak at the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce on Thursday night for the Colin Horsfield Memorial Lecture.

Details of the lecture were confirmed yesterday by Lucy Attride Stirling, executive director of Bermuda Amnesty.

She was speaking at a Rotary Club meeting, where she stood in at the last minute for the scheduled speaker, Mrs. Knight.

She was unable to attend due to travel problems but is due to arrive on the Island today.

Mrs. Attride Stirling told Rotarians about the human right group's latest six-year campaign to end violence against women, and she said that despite "significant advances" in the protection of women's rights through landmark treaties, discrimination was still rife.

She said: ""Despite the ratification of these treaties there has been little difference for the majority of women on the ground. In practice, gross violations of women's human rights continue and discrimination against women is not challenged."

She said women were particularly vulnerable in countries where armed conflict was rife, while Amnesty was also putting pressure on Governments to halt violence inside families.

Mrs. Attride Stirling said that female genital mutilation on girls as young as five was still imposed in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

The practice is common in parts of Africa, where some believe it will maintain a girl's honour.

And she said that Amnesty was campaigning against the treatment handed out to adulterous women in Islamic states, where the punishment is getting stoned to death. Adulterous men, she added, get fined or get 20 lashes.

Human rights campaigners are now pushing Governments to ensure that women are fully equal before the law, the meeting heard.

Mrs. Knight will give her powerful message from 7.30 p.m. at an open forum at the Chamber's offices at Point Pleasant Road, Hamilton, next to the ferry terminal.

Admission is free. For more information call 296-3249.