Gambian lawmakers are preparing to decide whether to lift a ban on female genital cutting, removing legal protections for millions of girls, raising fears that other countries could follow suit.
Members of the Gambia’s national assembly plan to vote on whether to overturn the ban on Monday after the second reading of the bill. Human rights experts, lawyers and women’s and girls’ rights advocates say it threatens to undo decades of work to end female genital cutting, a centuries-old ritual linked to ideas of sexual purity, obedience and control.
If The Gambia lifts the ban, it will become the first country in the world to withdraw protections against the cut and activists fear it will open the door for other countries to take similar action.
“They are using girls’ bodies as a political battlefield,” said Fatou Balde, one of the leading opponents of FGM in the small West African nation. He said he feared that if the men leading the charge – whom he described as extremists – succeeded, they would then try to roll back other laws, such as the one banning child marriage.
If the bill is passed on Monday, government committees will be able to propose amendments before it returns to the House for a final reading. Analysts say that if the bill is not repealed at this stage, its supporters will gain momentum and it will likely pass into law.
The Gambia banned the cuts in 2015 but did not enforce the ban until last year, when three practitioners were heavily fined. An influential imam in the Muslim-majority country has taken up their cause and is leading calls to overturn the ban, arguing that cutting — which in Gambia usually involves the removal of the clitoris and labia minora of girls between the ages of 10 and 15 — is religious obligation and culturally significant.
Cutting takes different forms and is most common in Africa, although it is also widespread in parts of Asia and the Middle East. Internationally recognized as a gross violation of human rights, it often leads to serious health problems such as infections, bleeding and severe pain, and is the leading cause of death in countries where it is practiced.
Globally, genital cutting is on the rise despite campaigns to end it — largely because of population growth in countries where it is common. More than 230 million women and girls have suffered it, according to UNICEF — an increase of 30 million people since the organization last did an estimate in 2016.
In Gambia, only five of the 58 lawmakers expected to vote on the bill are women, meaning men will lead the debate on a practice forced on young girls.
“They have no say,” said Emmanuel Joof, head of The Gambia’s National Human Rights Commission.
The proposal to lift the ban “has serious, life-threatening consequences for the health and well-being of Gambian women and girls,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, the US 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, who, according to a truth commission found in 2021, tortured and murdered people from a hit squad, raped women and flew many in prison for no reason. . He called those fighting to end female genital mutilation, often known by its acronym, FGM, “enemies of Islam.”
So it came as a shock to many Gambian opponents of the cut when, in 2015, Mr Jammeh banned the practice – which many observers attributed to the influence of his Moroccan wife.
The new law was hailed as a watershed moment in The Gambia, where three-quarters of women and girls are cut. But the law was not implemented, which encouraged imams who “had a theocratic state” to try to abolish it, according to Mr Joof.
Clerics in the Muslim world dispute whether the cut is Islamic, but it is not in the Koran. The most vocal of Gambia’s imams, Abdoulie Fatty, has argued that “circumcision makes you cleaner” and said the husbands of uncircumcised women suffer because they cannot satisfy their husbands’ sexual appetites. 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 he apparently said nothing.
At the first reading of the bill two weeks ago, Mr Fatty bussed a group of young women to chant pro-cut slogans outside Parliament. With their faces covered – which is unusual in The Gambia – they sang and waved pink posters that read: “Female circumcision is our religious beliefs.”
Ms. Baldeh, an opponent of genital cutting, was 8 years old when she was pinned down and cut. But when she first heard the term “female genital mutilation” when she was studying for a master’s degree in sexual and reproductive health, she didn’t recognize it as something she had passed on because she saw it as part of her culture. not something violent that hurt women. Her own grandmother, a traditional birth attendant, was engaged in cutting.
After reading and talking to other women, however, Ms Baldeh realized what she had suffered and began speaking out against the cut – first by trying to change the minds of her family members. He became one of the most prominent voices speaking out against austerity in The Gambia.
The cut could be finished 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,” he said.
On March 4, Ms. Baldeh was at the White House with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Jill Biden, the first lady, to receive the International Women of Courage Award for her anti-cutting work. But on the same day, Gambian lawmakers were hearing the first reading of a bill to overturn the austerity ban – a reading that would reveal the legal gains made by Ms Baldeh and other opponents of the austerity.
She and other observers said they expected Monday’s vote to be extremely close — not because most lawmakers believe in the cut, but because they fear they will lose their seats, and thus vote for the legislation.
“The saddest part is the silence from the government,” he said.
This silence even extends to the ministry charged with the protection of women and children, which is headed by Fatou Kinteh, who was formerly the United Nations Population Fund’s Gambia coordinator for gender-based violence and female genital mutilation. female genitalia. Reached by phone Saturday, Ms. Kinteh declined to comment on a possible reversal of the cut ban, saying she would call later. He never did.
Ms Baldeh said the imams’ recent rhetoric in support of the cuts has spread to many Gambian men, who have unleashed a barrage of online abuse on women who speak out against the practice, undermining what had been a thriving movement to increase of the number of women and girls. rights in The Gambia. But he said online abuse will not derail their efforts.
“If this law is repealed, we know they are coming for more,” Ms Baldeh said. “So we will fight it to the end.”
