In recent months, activists, doctors and survivors It launched a massive education campaign about the practice.This is widely considered by medical professionals to be unnecessary and potentially harmful.
Worldwide, it is estimated that more than 200 million women and girls have been victims of female genital mutilation, which can include removal of the clitoris and part of the labia minora and, in the most extreme cases, obliteration of the vaginal opening.
“We won,” said Gambian activist Jaha Doucouré, standing outside parliament after the verdict. “We were on the right side of history, and we stood our ground, regardless of the threats we faced.”
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Women hugged and danced outside the Capitol. “Now I can breathe,” one young woman said, holding hands with another.
“I feel relieved but sad that we had to go through this,” said Fatou Bardeh, who has been a staunch opponent of the practice. “I’m so proud of the women of Gambia who didn’t give up. We refused to let go.”*
Supporters of lifting the ban, including several leading religious leaders in Muslim-majority Gambia, argue that families should be free to choose and that the practice was taught by the Prophet Muhammad. (Other Islamic leaders have condemned it, and it is not practiced in many Muslim-majority countries.)
Since female genital mutilation, commonly known among opponents as FGM, was made illegal in Gambia in 2015, only three people have been charged under the law. The United Nations estimates that 75 percent of women in the country between the ages of 15 and 49 are subject to the practice. When the women were convicted in August, it sparked a massive backlash, including proposals for a bill to repeal the ban.
One of the bill’s authors, Sheikh Abdoulie Fatti, watched the parliamentary debate with a blank look on Monday. He said he and other religious leaders plan to declare those who vote against the bill in upcoming elections “not true Muslims.” He vowed that “female circumcision,” as it is called in Gambia, will continue.
“We are the imams,” he said, “and they listen to us.”
