TEARFUL AND TERRIFIED, YOUNG GIRLS ARE LINED UP BEFORE VILLAGERS TO UNDERGO TRIBAL CIRCUMCISION CEREMONY IN KENYA

These pictures show frightened girls lined up before villagers in Kenya to be circumcised - even though the brutal practice is now illegal in the country.

But in many African tribes, traditions are more important than laws and circumcision is considered a rite of passage that marks their transition into womanhood so they can marry.  

Reuters photographer Siegfried Modola captured this ceremony in rural Kenya for four teenage girls of the Pokot tribe, in Baringo County.  

After the ritual, the girl’s faces are painted white to show they have been circumcised and transitioned into womanhood

Draped in animal skin and covered in white paint, the girls squat over large stones in the remote village after being circumcised - a life-threatening custom banned in the country three years ago.

More than a quarter of Kenyan women have undergone the ordeal, despite government efforts to end the practice in the East African country.

'It's a tradition that has been happening forever,' the father of one of the girls, who asked not to be named fearing reprisal from the authorities, told Reuters from the isolated Pokot settlement some 80km from the town of Marigat.

'The girls are circumcised to get married. It's a girl's transition into womanhood,' he said.

culled from dailymail.uk