Despite a 2015 ban, Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) remains practiced in The Gambia. A recent bill to repeal the ban now endangered legislative progress so many Gambian women have been holding onto as well as longstanding efforts of civil society organizations. On 15 July 2024, following extensive community engagement and advocacy, the bill was successfully rejected. In the face of a global backlash against sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), what can activists worldwide learn from this success? This blog features an interview with Fatou Baldeh, founder of Women in Liberation and Leadership (WILL) and a leading activist in maintaining the FGM/C ban.
Could you briefly introduce yourself?
My name is Fatou Baldeh I am a women’s rights advocate from The Gambia and also a survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM).
What is the focus of your work in The Gambia, Fatou?
My work focuses on addressing sexual and gender-based violence. I work with women and girls and through that I create safe spaces for adolescent girls to learn about their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). I organize intergenerational dialogues between older women and younger women to have a conversation about issues that affect them. I also work with men and boys to promote positive masculinity through which I also engage religious leaders and community leaders that are known as “Alkalos” in The Gambia so that they support women’s rights, gender equality and act as agents of change within their communities
FGM/C has been banned in The Gambia since 2015. Yet, the issue has never been off the table and particularly caused a furor in the past 11 months. What happened and why is that?
FGM/C is a deeply rooted cultural practice that has been practiced in The Gambia for centuries. It’s very much a cultural identity for many within the Gambian society and because of that, even though a law banning FGM was introduced in 2015, the implementation of the law has been a problem.
An example: It took eight years before a conviction was registered for the first time when three women were convicted of performing FGM/C on a group of girls in August 2023. The conviction of the women was celebrated by many women’s rights advocates as a significant milestone in the fight against FGM/C. However, this celebration was cut short by a backlash from prominent religious leaders who felt that the ban against FGM/C prevented Gambian Muslims from practicing their religious obligations. They argued that FGM/C was an Islamic obligation and a cultural practice that Gambians should have a choice to practice.
It is however worthy to note that there is no evidence that FGM/C is mandatory in Islam and there is no indication of the need to practice FGM in the holy Quran. Furthermore, the practice predates Islam and there are many majority Muslim countries that do not practice FGM/C. However, these misconceptions are very much widespread among Gambian communities and many people hold these believes especially since it is influential religious leaders within our society who have been spreading this narrative. This pressure to lift the ban on FGM/C quickly gained momentum and Gambian members of parliament picked up the issue and tabled a bill at the National Assembly and proposed for the Women’s Amendment Act 2015 to be repealed to make FGM/C legal again in The Gambia.
Would you please share with us how you experienced these last few months? What has your work mainly looked like? How did you experience the parliamentary process but also the advocacy activities outside parliament? How have the women you are working with experienced this time?
As a survivor of FGM myself, the last few months of fighting to make sure that the law against FGM/C is not repealed in The Gambia have been very difficult and re-traumatic. Survivors like myself were forced to relive our experiences. We were forced to come out and share our pain and suffering so that the men who were advocating for the law against FGM/C to be repealed understood how the practice has effects on women and girls.
But also as a women’s rights advocate, I saw this threat as a regressive act towards women’s rights in The Gambia. I knew what was at stake if the ban was lifted. This was not just about FGM/C but rather an effort to roll back on the freedom and the many gains that have been achieved towards the empowerment of women and girls in the Gambia. FGM/C is one of the strongest manifestations of the low status of women and girls. It is an indication of violence against women and girls. Yet it is a practice that is normalized and accepted within Gambian society and there is still a very strong support for the continuation of the practice. I think that the religious leaders, the men, that were pushing to have the ban lifted wanted to use this as an entry point to gain momentum, to exercise power over women and to use women’s bodies as an entry point to gain political recognition.
So, as a survivor, my work included mobilizing other survivors and amplifying our voices to share our experience and to use our voices to effect change and to maintain the FGM/C ban. My work has also involved going out in the communities and talking to community leaders both men and women, young and old, just so they understand that what we are doing as human rights advocates, as advocates against harmful traditional practices, was not a fight against our culture or our religion (as we were being painted by the Pro-FGM/C camp).
We emphasized that we love our culture and we love our religion but we just didn’t want to continue with any culture or tradition that harms women and girls. We also engaged these community members on mass sensitizations using health care professionals and religious leaders who were against the practice to counter misconceptions and provide evidence. This led us to register impact by changing mindsets and mobilizing more support from the grassroots to convince our parliament into maintaining the law against FGM/C.
We also extended our advocacy efforts with members of the National Assembly including one to one conversation, conducting capacity building trainings in which we invited healthcare professionals, religious leaders and survivors to share evidence and experiences. These engagements, as members of parliament (MPs) have reported, have had a big impact on why there was a shift of mindset which resulted in the majority of MPs voting to maintain the ban.
The bill got rejected on 15 July. Looking back, what were the main ingredients for this success?
I think one of the biggest impacts on the success was the fact Gambian civil society organizations, particularly women-led organizations, came together, worked together and put together our collective efforts to ensure that we reach our communities, parliamentarians and other partners to ensure that the ban was maintained. CSOs and Gambian women, young and old, came out in numbers and mobilized efforts to reject the threat to our bodies and those of our little girls. For the first time Gambian women were fighting for their protection.
Civil society organizations had one common goal and we all worked collectively towards that goal, which was to maintain the ban. We also had a very strong coordination team who met regularly to strategize. We were also up with the game, keeping an eye on what the pro-FGM/C camp was up to and countering their myths and misconceptions through our community engagements.
At the beginning we thought that we would just be respectful of our culture and traditional norms that condition us to not respond or react when our elders (who in this case were mostly the religious leaders and the men who were the pro-FGM camp) made any statements. So, we were going around tiptoeing and trying not to offend our elders. We soon realized that if we continued that way the pro-FGM camp was going to win as they had access to more platforms and as such were able to spread their agenda and gain support from our communities. We also changed our tactics and really started challenging misconceptions and countering the narratives the pro-FGM camp was using.
What were and are challenges in your work? Where are you experiencing resistance and how are you dealing with it?
One of the main challenges in our work especially against FGM/C is the fact that for many Gambians the practice still remains a taboo subject and as such people are still reluctant to talk about the issue or how it affects women and girls. Also, because the practice is deeply rooted, many people within Gambian communities want to uphold the practice which also makes it challenging. The resistance is mostly from men and religious leaders. In some cases, from older women as well.
What are the main controversies in the fight against FGM/C?
One of the main controversies is that those advocating against FGM/C are influenced by Western ideologies or that they are paid by donors. Another controversy is around the practice of FGM/C itself where people believe that if girls are not cut they are unclean, unmarriageable, promiscuous, or that the clitoris will grow into a penis and affect a woman during childbirth. These beliefs that communities hold makes the fight against the practice difficult.
What is the controversy when the pro-FGM camp says they are against FGM but in favor of circumcision?
We continue to hear from many pro-FGM advocates that in The Gambia “we do not perform mutilation of girls”. They argue that it is circumcision that is performed, unfortunately this isn’t the reality as FGM type 2 which is the removal of the whole clitoris and the labias (that’s the outside lips of the female genitalia) is the most common type of FGM in The Gambia. And for me personally, I will not even differentiate the two in my advocacy as I believe that any sort of cutting of women’s genitals is mutilation. When they use the term “circumcision”, this is their effort to trivialize the pain of survivors of FGM.
There is a global backlash against gender equality norms. How would you situate the Gambian experience in this?
The global backlash against women’s rights and freedom is no different in The Gambia. The effort to repeal the ban against FGM/C is a strong indication of the backlash against women’s rights in The Gambia. Additionally, FGM/C is practiced in many countries and the SDGs have specifically dedicated SDG 5.3 to ending FGM by 2030. Therefore, had this threat against the FGM/C ban in The Gambia been successful, not only would it have been the first country to see such a reversal of a ban on FGM, but it would have set a very bad precedent in the fight against FGM globally.
How do you see the future?
I have been relieved that the ban has been maintained but this fight was also a reminder of how vulnerable women and girls are. Nonetheless the fact that women and girls stayed firm and strong for their rights and protections also showed the strength and resilience of women and girls. From my end, I want to use this opportunity to continue advocating for broader gendered issues such as the need to increase women in decision-making positions. I also recognize the need to amplify efforts to build girls’ agency, so they are equipped with knowledge around their SRHR. In that same vein, I am also very keen to engage men and boys and promote positive masculinity. Importantly there is a need for community sensitization on the harm of FGM/C and other traditional practices that continue to harm and disadvantage women and girls.
Last but not least, what encourages you in your daily work?
I am very encouraged by seeing so many young people join the movement against FGM/C. I believe that FGM can be ended in a generation, therefore if young people are engaged to realize the impact that the practice has on them they will hopefully break the circle of violence.
Thank you, Fatou, for taking the time for this interview.
The interview was conducted by Sophia Birchinger.
Recommended Readings
General
Backlash against and resistance to feminist peacebuilding (prif.org)
Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Statistics – UNICEF Data
Sexual and reproductive health- Fact sheet 28-05-2020.pdf (who.int)
Ending FGM is essential to give girls control over their own lives | UN Women – Headquarters
FGM/C in The Gambia
Genug gelitten: Genitalverstümmelung in Gambia (fluter.de)
The Gambia: Parliament upholds FGM ban but concerns over enforcement remain – The Africa Report.com
Gambia: Debatte um Verbot von Genitalverstümmelung – DW – 08.03.2024
National Assembly Vote: Ministry of Information – The Gambia auf X: „National Assembly Votes to Maintain Ban on FGM https://t.co/rwU5a2QB7Z“ / X (twitter.com)
Fatou Baldeh
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Sophia Birchinger
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- Keeping up the Ban against FGM/C: A Strong Signal for Reproductive Health and Rights from The Gambia to the World - 8. August 2024
