Gambia parliament maintains ban on feminine genital mutilation

Lawmakers’ rejection of the invoice adopted months of intense activism led by Gambian ladies, who confronted threats and harassment as they led campaigns to clarify the unfavorable results of reducing on their lives and that of their households. In March, the overwhelming majority of lawmakers had voted to advance the invoice, sparking widespread concern that Gambia could possibly be the primary nation on the earth to roll again such a safety.

“I’m relieved however unhappy that we needed to be taken by means of this torment,” mentioned Fatou Baldeh, a Gambian activist and survivor who has obtained worldwide consideration for her advocacy towards the apply. “I’m so happy with Gambian ladies for not giving up. We refused to let go.”

Standing exterior parliament as ladies hugged and danced and music blasted, Sirreh Saho, 29, mentioned she was so excited she might barely course of the information, which they’d “fought a lot for” over the course of months. She and her older sister, Fatou Saho, have been combating for justice for Fatou’s daughter, who was minimize with out her permission — and towards the legislation.

“The one factor that’s left is to implement the legislation,” Sirreh Saho mentioned. “So long as the legislation just isn’t enforced, then it’s simply black writing on a white paper.”

In Gambia, a nation of about 2.5 million, the United Nations estimates that about 75 p.c of girls ages 15 to 49 have been topic to reducing, which may contain eradicating a part of the clitoris and labia minora and, in probably the most excessive circumstances, a sealing of the vaginal opening. Globally, greater than 200 million ladies and ladies are estimated to be survivors of feminine genital reducing, most of whom reside in sub-Saharan Africa.

Proponents of the apply mentioned it’s linked to custom and faith on this majority-Muslim nation, claiming it was taught by the prophet Muhammad. (Different Muslim leaders have mentioned it’s not required by Islam, and it’s not practiced in lots of Muslim-majority nations.)

Gambia’s legislation, which was put in place in 2015, comes with a possible jail sentence of as much as three years, or a superb of about $740. However there have solely been three convictions below the legislation — and it was these convictions that sparked the present debate, with Abdoulie Fatty, a distinguished imam, paying the fines of the ladies convicted and launching the marketing campaign to overturn the ban.

Sitting in parliament Monday with different spiritual leaders, Fatty watched the proceedings stone-faced. He mentioned they deliberate to focus on lawmakers who rejected the invoice in upcoming elections, declaring them “not actual Muslims.” And he vowed that reducing — which he calls “feminine circumcision” — would proceed.

“We’re imams,” he mentioned, noting that greater than 95 p.c of individuals in Gambia are Muslim. “They hearken to us.”

Medical consultants say the procedures, which don’t have medical advantages, may cause a spread of short- and long-term harms, together with infections, extreme ache, scarring, infertility and lack of pleasure.

“We are able to breathe now,” mentioned Jaha Dukureh, a Gambian activist whose little sister died on account of a botched process and who came upon on her wedding ceremony night time, at 15, that she had been sealed as a child. “We stood on the correct facet of historical past. And whatever the threats we confronted, we stood our floor.”

Lawmakers mentioned that turning factors concerned an announcement final month by President Adama Barrow — whose workplace had earlier than then been silent on the matter — that he supported sustaining the ban and a visit by members of the well being committee to Egypt, the place they heard from lawmakers, civil society members and non secular students about why Egypt had criminalized the apply.

“We’re all spiritual,” mentioned Amadou Camara, who chairs a joint well being and gender committee that really useful in a report earlier this month that reducing ought to stay outlawed. “However in some unspecified time in the future you need to use your good sense and your thoughts.”

Camara and different lawmakers who supported sustaining the ban mentioned at an occasion Friday that they’ve obtained quite a few threats for his or her positions.

Abdoulie Ceesay, the deputy majority chief, mentioned that lawmakers know that some Gambians really feel “we denied them their proper” and that there must be continued training campaigns in regards to the apply.

Aminata Ceesay, an investigating officer with Gambia’s Nationwide Human Rights Fee who has been working in communities in latest months on points associated to reducing, mentioned that too many ladies have accepted the unwanted effects as “regular.”

“With training, they understand that this stuff usually are not regular,” she mentioned in an interview. “It has by no means been straightforward, even among the many educated, for folks to speak about their experiences as survivors … however I feel issues are altering now.”