Respect The Gambian Women Who Have Fought To Outlaw FGM For Decades.

The situation in The Gambia regarding FGM is currently very serious. A previous post here – Please DO NOT RESCIND #EndFGM Legislation In The Gambia – explains why this petition urges that a law which forbids female genital mutilation (FGM) should not be reversed, despite calls by some Gambian politicians to do just that.  One major rationale for again permitting FGM is particularly unacceptable.  Banning FGM was not, as some claim, a move by Westerners, or by people who disrespect Islam.  Rather, this prohibition came about after much lobbying by Gambian women for years to secure a ban on FGM.

This post offers some of the historical background to achieving the prohibition of FGM in The Gambia, in support of the women in that country who have worked so hard to eradicate it.  They must be respected for working so hard to ban that cruel ‘traditional’ practice, with all the harm that it imposes on babies, girls and women (and their families) who have been its victims.

Many women in The Gambia have campaigned for decades to end FGM:

A note on the historical background to #EndFGM legislation efforts in The Gambia

1998, July 22, in Banjul, capital of The Gambia:
A Symposium for Religious Leaders and Medical Personnel on FGM as a Form of Violence was organised by the Inter-African Committee (IAC) on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women & Children of The Gambia (GAMCOTRAP).

The Banjul Declaration stated that the practice has neither Christian or Islamic origins or religious justifications and condemned its continued practice.
The campaign created a committee of religious leaders to support BAFROW (Foundation for Research on Women’s Health, Productivity & Development) and thirty-five administrative-district-level chiefs, 50 village heads, and many local government officials were subsequently invited and attended a workshop to plan the execution of the alternative method of rites. Previous circumcisers were trained as village health promoters and as designated facilitators of the new rite-of-passage with specially built sites in selected districts where the new rights of passage would be performed.
An analysis of the project’s results found a reduction in female circumcision cases: in Fulladu District, 412 girls were circumcised in initiation ceremonies in 1996 which fell to 190 girls in 1997. In Niamina District, 92 girls were cut as part of their initiation ceremonies in 1996 which fell to 12 girls in 1997. There was also a change in attitudes held about FGM. After the project 78% of women surveyed were in favour of FGM abolition, compared to between 30% to 40% in 1996.

2016, 21 October to 4 November, in Banjul, The Gambia:
Banjul Declaration of the 59th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights under the theme “Women’s Rights: Our Collective Responsibility”

Section 24: “States should work in close collaboration with indigenous communities and organizations as well as other stakeholders for the elimination of harmful traditional practices within indigenous communities.…”

2024, 22 to 24 January, in Banjul, The Gambia:
Banjul Declaration: African Women Local Leaders Unite to Combat Violence against women under the auspices of REFELA

“We, Honorable Mayors and representatives of local and regional governments:
Recognize the important role of female political leaders in the fight to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women, especially female genital mutilation, forced marriages and sexual violence;
Discussed of the necessity to speed up actions at the global, continental, national as well as the local level to eradicate all forms of violence against women especially female genital mutilation, forced marriages and sexual violence….”

Other human rights and legal documents relevant to The Gambia and FGM include:

November 2010: African Conventions, Declarations and Agreements – Women’s Economic Empowerment and Gender-Based Violence

February 2024: A Statement by The United Nations in The Gambia on Protecting the Rights of Girls and Women from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)

There are also particular Gambian women who have fought hard to eradicate FGM:

Dr Isatou Touray

Dr Isatou Touray, born in 1955, has a PhD in Development Studies and co-founded (later becoming Executive Director of) the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices (GAMCOTRAP) in 1984.  She was instrumental in producing the Banjul Declaration (above) and was from 2009 – 2014 Secretary-General of the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (the IAC).   Dr Touray also founded a Gender and Development Unit whilst Deputy Director of the Gambian Management Development Institute, but her campaigns were met with resistance and she was twice arrested.

In September 2016  Isatou Touray became the first woman to run (as an Independent) for President of the Gambia, but later withdrew in a coalition pact to oppose President Yahya Jammeh  and support Adama Barrow, the (2024) current President.   In 2019 President Barrow appointed Dr Touray as Gambia’s Vice-President, later relinquishing the role she held alongside her previous position as Health Minister.   She remained Vice-President until 2022, continuing to the present her insistence, as Gambia’s highest profile campaigner against the practice, that FGM must be eradicated:

[It is] not just a legal imperative but a moral obligation… With the world watching, history will judge us based on the actions we take.

Fatou Baldeh

Fatou Baldeh, born 1983, is a Gambian FGM survivor. She holds an MSc in Sexual and Reproductive Health and spent some years as Director of the Edinburgh-based Dignity Alert Research Forum in Edinburgh working to strengthen the women’s rights and human rights and campaigning against FGM in Scotland, for which she received an MBE. In 2018, Fatou moved back to The Gambia and founded Women in Liberation & Leadership, a Gender Justice organisation working to empower Gambian women and girls, address violence against them, and protect their sexual and reproductive health.

Fatou reports that the landscape for women and girls in The Gambia remains extremely challenging.  Despite legislation in recent years, the numbers tell a different story: 76% of girls undergo FGM, 30% of girls marry before age 18 and 18% of women aged 15-19 become pregnant.  Referring to the poster of a Gambian Poets event to promote FGM on 9 June 2024, she says…

Despite the Women’s Amendment Act (2015), Section 32 B (1) stating incitement and promotion of female Circumcision as a crime, we continue to see pro FGM advocates promoting and inciting for the practice with no consequences!

Jaha Dukureh

Jaha Dukureh, born in The Gambia in 1989, underwent Type 3 (the most severe) FGM at one week old.  She survived but ten years later her baby sister, cut at the same age, did not.  At age 15, after her mother died, Jaha left The Gambia for New York City, USA, for a long-arranged marriage to an older man.  FGM and other issues led to the dissolution of the marriage and at age 17 Jaha moved to Atlanta Georgia, where she remarried.  She became an American citizen in 2015 and subsequently gained a Master’s degree in Non-Profit Management.

Jaha became a leading figure in The Guardian newspaper campaigns to End FGM of a decade-plus ago (in which, for complete transparency, I was deeply involved) and has been the subject of striking films about her engagement in that struggle.

Jaha is the founder and CEO of non-profit organization Safe Hands for Girls which seeks to end FGM, Childhood, Early and Forced Marriage (CEFM) and other forms of violence against women and girls, and to provide support to women and girls who are survivors of these practices.  She is UN Women Ambassador for Africa.

The film Jaha’s Promise tells the story of Jaha’s life, and her return to The Gambia to persuade leaders there that FGM must be forbidden by legislators so that this cruelty will finally stop.

To quote Jaha’s organisation Safe Hands for Girls on the current attempts to re-legalise FGM in The Gambia: