Gambian parliament rejects proposal to repeal historic ban on female genital mutilation

CNN
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Gambia’s parliament has voted in favour of a landmark law banning female genital mutilation (FGM) in the predominantly Muslim country, after religious groups pushed for the legislation to be repealed.

If Monday’s attempt had been successful, the small West African country would have been the first in the world to re-legalise FGM after criminalising it.

MP Amadou Camara, who chairs a joint committee on health and gender that recommended that FGM remain banned, told CNN that none of the clauses aimed at repealing the ban in the Women’s Amendment Bill 2024 have been adopted.

Parliament Speaker Fabakary Jatta ruled that it was “impossible” for the bill, which was passed on second reading four months ago, to be read a third time and passed without the clauses. “I therefore rule that the bill is rejected and the legislative process is exhausted,” Jatta told Monday’s plenary meeting.

FGM was banned in Gambia in 2015 by former President Yahya Jammeh, who authorised fines and prison sentences of up to three years for those found to have practised it.

The law also punishes perpetrators with life imprisonment in cases where the practice resulted in death.

Pro-Islamic groups and lawmakers have opposed criminalization, saying FGM is “one of the virtues of Islam.”

Other Gambian figures, such as opposition leader and former interior minister Mai Ahmad Fatty, have also defended the practice, saying: “There is no FGM in Gambia. We cut, we don’t mutilate.”

Human rights group Amnesty International has called efforts to repeal the ban on FGM a “step backward” in human rights protections in the country. In Gambia, 73% of women aged 15 to 49 had undergone FGM in 2020, according to the United Nations.

More than 65% of these women were subjected to this practice “before the age of five”, the UN said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on International Women’s Day in March that he was “outraged” by the Gambian parliament’s decision to legalise FGM, calling the practice “horrific”.

Despite the ban, female genital mutilation (FGM) continues to be performed on children in some parts of the country. Last year, three women were convicted of performing the practice on eight minors and sentenced to pay fines of about 15,000 Gambian dalasi ($220) each or a one-year prison sentence. The fines were reportedly paid by a Muslim cleric.

In 2016, two women were also charged after a five-month-old girl died from genital mutilation.