Gambia could overturn a historic ban on female circumcision

Gambian lawmakers are preparing to decide whether to repeal a ban on cutting female genitals by removing legal protections for millions of girls, raising fears that other countries will follow suit.

Members of Gambia’s National Assembly plan to vote on whether to overturn the ban after the bill’s second reading on Monday. Human rights experts, lawyers and women’s and girls’ rights activists say it threatens to undo decades of work to end female genital cutting, a centuries-old ritual intertwined with ideas of sexual purity, obedience and control.

If Gambia lifts the ban, it will become the first country in the world to roll back protections against austerity, and activists fear it will open the doors for other countries to take similar action.

“They are using girls’ bodies as a political battlefield,” said Fatou Baldeh, one of the biggest opponents of genital cutting in the small West African country. She said she fears that if the men leading the charge — whom she described as extremists — were successful, they would then try to roll back other laws, such as one banning child marriage.

If the bill is passed on Monday, government committees could propose amendments before it goes to parliament for final reading. Analysts say that if the bill is not defeated at this stage, its proponents will gain momentum and it will likely be passed into law.

Gambia banned cutting in 2015, but only enforced the ban last year, when three practitioners were hit with hefty fines. An influential imam in the Muslim-majority country took up their cause and led calls for the ban to be rescinded, claiming that the cuts – seen in Gambia usually entails Removal of the clitoris and labia minora from girls between the ages of 10 and 15 is a religious obligation and culturally important.

Cutting takes several forms and is most common in Africa, although it is also widespread in parts of Africa Asia and the Middle East. It is internationally recognized as a gross violation of human rights and often leads to serious health problems, such as infections, bleeding and severe pain. cause of death in the countries where it is practiced.

Worldwide, Genital cutting is on the rise despite campaigns to stop the disease – mainly due to population growth in countries where the disease is common. According to UNICEF, more than 230 million women and girls have undergone it – an increase of 30 million people since the agency last estimated it in 2016.

In Gambia, only five of the 58 lawmakers expected to vote on the bill are women, meaning men will take the lead in a discussion about a practice being forced on young girls.

“They have nothing to say,” said Emmanuel Joof, head of Gambia’s National Human Rights Commission.

The proposal to repeal the ban “has serious, life-threatening consequences for the health and well-being of Gambia’s women and girls,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues.

From 1994 to 2016, Gambia was led by one of the region’s most notorious dictators, Yahya Jammeh. truth commission found in 2021, had people tortured and killed by a murder squad, raped women and threw many people in jail for no reason. He called on those fighting to end female genital mutilation, often known by the acronym FGM: “enemies of Islam.”

So it came as a shock to many Gambian opponents of austerity when Jammeh banned the practice in 2015 – something many observers attributed to the influence of his Moroccan wife.

The new law was hailed as a turning point in Gambia, where three-quarters of women and girls are circumcised. But the law was not enforced, encouraging pro-cutting imams who are “determined to have a theocratic state” to try to repeal it, Mr Joof said.

Clergy in the Muslim world disagree on whether cutting is Islamic, but it is not in the Quran. The most vocal of the Gambian imams, Abdoulie Fatty, has done just that argued that “Circumcision makes you cleaner” and said that the husbands of women who are not circumcised suffer because they cannot fulfill their wives’ sexual desires. Many Gambians accused Mr Fatty of being a hypocrite, pointing out that when Mr Jammeh banned the cutting, Mr Fatty was the presidential imam but apparently said nothing.

At the first reading of the bill two weeks ago, Mr Fatty brought in a group of young women to chant pro-inflammatory slogans outside parliament. With veiled faces – unusual in Gambia – they sang and waved pink posters that read: “Female circumcision is our religious belief.”

Mrs. Baldeh, the opponent of circumcision, was 8 years old when she was pinned and cut. But when she first heard the term “female genital mutilation” while studying for a master’s degree in sexual and reproductive health, she didn’t recognize it as something she had experienced because she saw it as part of her culture. not something violent that harmed women. Her own grandmother, a traditional birth attendant, was involved in the circumcision.

But after reading and speaking to other women, Ms. Baldeh realized what she had been exposed to and began speaking out against circumcision — first by trying to change the minds of her own family members. She became one of the most prominent voices speaking out against austerity in Gambia.

The cutting could be ended within a generation if there was the will to do it, Ms. Baldeh said.

“If you don’t cut a girl, she’s not going to cut her future daughters,” she said.

On March 4, Ms. Baldeh was at the White House with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jill Biden, the first lady, and received an International Women of Courage award for her anti-cutting work. But that same day, Gambian lawmakers heard the first reading of the bill to overturn the cutting ban — a bill that would reverse the legal gains made by Ms. Baldeh and other opponents of cutting.

She and other observers said they expected Monday’s vote to be extremely close — not because most lawmakers believe in austerity, but because they fear losing their seats in Parliament and would therefore pass the legislation.

“The saddest thing is the government’s silence,” she said.

This silence even extends to the ministry in charge of protecting women and children, which is led by Fatou Kinteh, who was previously the United Nations Population Fund Coordinator on Gender-Based Violence and Female Genital Mutilation in The Gambia. Reached by telephone on Saturday, Ms Kinteh declined to comment on a possible overturning of the cutting ban. She said she would call back later. She never did that.

Ms Baldeh said the imams’ recent rhetoric in support of austerity has spread to many Gambian men, unleashing a torrent of online abuse against women who speak out against the practice, undermining a thriving movement to reduce labor force participation women and girls. rights in Gambia. But she said the online abuse would not derail their efforts.

“If this law is repealed, we know they will come for more,” Ms. Baldeh said. “So we will fight it until the end.”