The Gambia today faced a 30-year setback. The National Assembly of Gambia debated this Monday a bill to repeal the ban on female genital mutilation (FGM, clitoral cutting), which has been increasing in recent years despite legal attempts to stop it.
If this project is approved, the smallest state in Africa would become the first country in the world to eliminate that prohibition.
A total of 42 lawmakers out of 47, including five women, voted today to begin steps to repeal the ban. According to MP Alimameh Gibba, who presented the legislative project on March 4, "the current ban on the circumcision of women is a direct violation of the rights of citizens to practice their culture and religion as guaranteed by the Constitution of the Gambia".
Following today's votes, committees will be able to propose amendments before it returns to Parliament for a final reading in three months. Despite this, several analysts believe that the momentum of today's votes is almost definitive for the project to become law and the ban to finally be annulled.
In 2015, The Gambia passed a law prohibiting FGM with penalties of fine or prison that received criticism from several politicians and religious leaders such as the radical imam Abdoulie Fatty, known for having been the spiritual advisor of the dictator Yahya Jammeh, in the power from 1994 to 2016, in addition to his homophobia and his defense of FGM for religious reasons.
Fatty argues that the mutilation of the clitoris and sometimes even the vaginal lips makes girls “cleaner” and that the husbands of women who have not been mutilated suffer because they cannot satisfy their wives' sexual appetite. According to a Unicef report, 73% of Gambian adolescent girls between 15 and 19 years old have been subjected to this practice.
Carloine Lagat, of the human rights group Equality Now, warned of the danger of the situation in Gambia being an example for other countries. “If the law is repealed in The Gambia, there is a risk that efforts by civil society and human rights groups in other countries will fail or regress.”
FGM is a centuries-old ritual linked to sexual purity, obedience and control that is very common in many African countries - and to a lesser extent in Asia -, despite the fact that majority religions such as Christianity and Islam expressly condemn it.
Almost four and a half million girls around the world risk suffering genital mutilation this year, "an atrocious violation of basic human rights," UN Secretary General António Guterres said last February.
