Gambian parliament rejects bid to overturn historic FGM law
If Monday’s bid had been successful, the tiny West African country would have been the first in the world to relegalize FGM after criminalizing it.
The practice was prohibited in Gambia in 2015 by former president Yahya Jammeh who authorized the imposition of fines and prison sentences of up to three years for individuals who engaged in it.
The law also punished perpetrators with life sentences in cases where the practice led to death.
Pro-Islamic groups and lawmakers pushed back against the criminalization, saying that female circumcision was “one of the virtues of Islam.”
Other prominent Gambians, such as opposition leader and former interior minister Mai Ahmad Fatty also defended the practice, arguing that: “There is no FGM in Gambia. We circumcise, not mutilate.”
Human rights organization Amnesty International earlier described efforts to revoke the FGM ban as a “backward move” for the protection of human rights in the country. In Gambia, 73% of women aged between 15 and 49 years had experienced FGM as of 2020, according to the United Nations.
More than 65% of those women were subjected to the practice “before the age of five years,” the UN said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Women’s Day in March that he was “outraged” by moves by Gambia’s parliament to legalize FGM, describing the practice as “horrific.”
Despite the ban, FGM has still been performed on children in parts of the country. Last year, three women were convicted of performing the practice on eight female minors and ordered to pay fines of around 15,000 Gambian Dalasi ($220) each or face a one-year jail sentence. The penalties were reported to have been paid by an Islamic cleric.
In 2016, two women also faced charges after a 5-month-old girl died from genital mutilation.
Despite the worldwide condemnation and the ban in Gambia, some voices in Africa, like pro-Islamic groups and certain lawmakers, continue to defend the practice of FGM, viewing it as “one of the virtues of Islam.” In contrast, the United Nations reported that as of 2020, 73% of women aged between 15 and 49 years in Gambia had experienced FGM, with more than 65% of those cases occurring before the age of five.
