This chapter examines how the United Nations became a crucial yet contradictory site in the history of decolonization, where anti-colonial aspirations and technocratic governance intersected around the female body. Focusing on the UN’s engagement with female genital modification (FGM) from the 1950s to the 1970s, it argues that debates over “ritual operations” highlight the institutional and epistemic limits of Third-Worldist internationalism. Drawing on archival materials from the Commission on the Status of Women, the Trusteeship Council, and the World Health Organization, the chapter reconstructs the transformation of the UN’s moral vocabulary—from the humanitarian rhetoric of “dignity” to the developmental language of “efficiency.” At the height of decolonization, leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah and Ernesto Guevara turned the UN into a symbolic stage of liberation, yet the same institution perpetuated colonial hierarchies through its gender politics. The UN’s handling of FGM reveals how postwar internationalism reassembled the moral and racial hierarchies of empire under the guise of universal rights. Early resolutions on women’s “physical integrity and moral dignity” framed African women as victims of “ancient customs,” while missionary NGOs and medical experts reinforced a logic of moral rescue and epistemic paternalism. By the 1970s, the practice had been redefined as a problem of medical cost and productivity, reflecting the broader shift from anti-colonial solidarity to developmental management. Through the case of FGM, the chapter traces how the UN’s technocratic language displaced the political content of Third-Worldism, transforming liberationist ideals into bureaucratic instruments of global governance. Ultimately, this study shows how the history of women’s bodies at the UN exposes the intimate continuities between colonial humanitarianism and postcolonial internationalism, revealing how the promise of emancipation was gradually reabsorbed into the rationalities of modernization and human rights.