A Nigerian woman won a reprieve from an expulsion order on Tuesday after telling judges her seven-year-old daughter would be subjected to genital mutilation if she were sent back home.
Oghowen Agbi, 39, was ordered to leave Italy in March 2006 after she was found to be living illegally in Citta' di Castello near Perugia.
The separated mother-of-three was given five days to leave the country.
She immediately turned to lawyers to seek help in obtaining refugee status on the grounds that her daughter would be forced to undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) if she returned to Nigeria.
Agbi's lawyers stressed that their client was a Catholic.
"She fears that if she goes back to her home country, she won't be able to protect her young daughter from this harmful practice which is widespread in Africa and most Muslim countries.
"FGM is condemned by the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees. It is also against Italian law to deport a person who would be subjected to such inhumane treatment in their homeland," the lawyers said.
The judicial authorities in Perugia refused to grant Agbi refugee status but accepted her case against returning to Nigeria and provided her with an Italian residency permit on humanitarian grounds.
Agbi, whose three children attend a local school, told reporters she was hoping to open a small restaurant in Citta' di Castello once her permit arrived.
FGM, which is also known as female circumcision, covers a number of different practices, usually involving either removing the clitoris or sewing up the vagina. The most severe form, infibulation, entails both, and accounts for around 15% of all procedures.
An estimated 150 million women around the world have undergone genital mutilation, while some 6,000 girls are mutilated every day, according to the London-based human rights organization Amnesty International.
It is practiced in at least 28 African countries, and is also common in some Middle Eastern states, including Egypt, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates.
The physical effects are numerous, resulting in death in the most severe cases from haemorrhaging and damage to surrounding organs. Chronic infection, intermittent bleeding and abscesses are more common side effects.
Infibulation generally causes even more problems, often giving rise to kidney damage and infertility.
Women often have to be cut open for intercourse the first time, with unskilful cutting by husbands causing further injury. Childbirth can also require cutting.
Italy passed a law in January 2006 outlawing FGM.
The law lays down jail terms of up to 12 years for those who carry out the procedure on adult women and up to 16 years if it is carried out on a minor or in exchange for money.
Doctors caught carrying out FGM are banned from their profession for up to ten years.
The law is applicable even if the woman or girl is operated on abroad.
