Gambia moving to overturn ban
DAKAR, Senegal — Gambian lawmakers have voted to advance a measure revoking a ban on female genital cutting by removing legal protections for millions of girls, raising fears that other countries could follow suit.
Of the 47 members of the Gambia National Assembly present Monday, 42 voted to send a bill to overturn the ban onward to a committee for consideration before a final vote. Human rights experts, lawyers and women’s and girls’ rights campaigners say overturning the ban would undo decades of work to end female genital cutting, a centuries-old ritual tied up in ideas of sexual purity, obedience and control.
If the bill passes the final stages, the small West African nation will become the first nation globally to roll back protections against cutting.
Government committees will be able to propose amendments before it comes back to parliament for a final reading in about three months — but analysts say it has now passed the key stage and will probably become law.
Gambia banned cutting in 2015 but did not enforce the ban until last year, when three practitioners were given hefty fines. An influential imam in the Muslim-majority country took up the cause and has been leading calls to repeal the ban, claiming cutting — which in Gambia usually involves removing the clitoris and labia minora of girls between ages 10 and 15 — is a religious obligation and is important culturally.
Anti-cutting campaigners gathered outside parliament in Banjul, Gambia’s capital, on Monday morning, but police set up barricades and prevented many from getting inside — while allowing in the religious leaders who advocate cutting and their supporters, according to Fatou Baldeh, one of Gambia’s leading opponents of genital cutting.
“It was very sad to witness the whole debate, and men trying to justify why this would continue,” Baldeh said after the vote. She said she feared that if the men leading the charge — whom she described as extremists — succeeded, they would next try to roll back other laws, like one banning child marriage.
Inside parliament, lawmakers — all of them men — traded arguments. “If people are being arrested for practicing [cutting], then that means they are being deprived of their right to practice religion,” one member of parliament, Lamin Ceesay, said, according to Parliament Watch, a project that promotes parliamentary transparency and accountability.
“Let’s protect our women,” another, Gibbi Mballow, said. “I am a father, and I can’t support such a bill.” He added, “Religion says we should not harm women.”
Cutting takes different forms and is most common in Africa, although it is also widespread in parts of Asia and the Middle East. Internationally recognized as a gross violation of human rights, it frequently leads to serious health issues and is a leading cause of death in the countries where it is practiced.