Gambia Upholds Landmark Ban On Female Genital Cutting

(MENAFN- Live Mint) (Bloomberg) -- Gambian lawmakers have defeated an attempt to overturn a historic ban on female genital mutilation in a boost for the global century-old campaign against the practice.

The West African nation outlawed FGM in 2015, but growing pressure to reverse the ban on the procedure, which typically involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia for cultural or religious reasons, led to the introduction of a bill to overturn it this year.

The amendment blocked by a majority of lawmakers Monday would have made FGM a“matter of choice”, according to the MP who had sponsored the bill, Almameh Gibba.

“The Women's (Amendment) Bill, 2024, having gone through the consideration stage with all the clauses voted down, is hereby deemed rejected and negative,” Speaker Fabakary Tombong Jatta told parliament Monday.

The consideration stage is the last legislative step a bill has to scale before it can be passed by parliament via a vote.

Historic Ban

Getting FGM criminalized in Gambia was a major milestone in the global campaign against the practice. Former president Yahya Jammeh, an Islamic fundamentalist who ruled the tiny West African nation for 22 years, banned FGM through an executive order in 2015.

With the pronouncement, Gambia became the first country in West Africa - one of the regions of the world where the practice is the most prevalent - to ban FGM since a global anti-FGM campaign kicked off in Egypt in the 1920s.

But in reality, the practice, which is deeply rooted in tradition that crosses ethnic and religious lines, has persisted. About eight in 10 women aged between 15 and 49 years in the country have undergone FGM, according to Gambia's statistics agency.

Pressure against the ban grew after a court prosecuted the first-ever criminal FGM case last August. Mba Yasin Fatty, a 95-year-old cutter, was fined for attempting to mutilate eight girls between the ages of four months and one year old. The girls' mothers were also fined.

By the time someone intervened, three of the eight infants had already been cut.

An Islamic cleric paid the fines to protest the women's conviction and Gibba introduced the bill to overturn the ban less than a month after the women's sentencing, with backing from Gambia's Supreme Islamic Council.

Infant Victims

FGM, which was traditionally practiced as part of a coming-of-age ritual as girls reach puberty, has been performed on younger children in recent years to prevent them from resisting, according to the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, known as GAMCOTRAP.

The practice has costly health implications. The World Health Organization estimates that complications arising from FGM cost the Gambian health system $4.5 million in 2019, representing 11% of the government's spending on health that year.

Victims can suffer excessive bleeding to urinary problems and even death, according to the WHO. Delayed consequences could also include difficulty delivering children. FGM is widely considered a human rights violation.

Monday's parliamentary decision allayed fears that Gambia would be the first country to lift a ban on FGM. A similar attempt was made in Kenya, but a court upheld the ban there in 2021.

“We will celebrate,” said the executive director of GAMCOTRAP, Isatou Touray.“Because the fact is, we have won.”

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