Rights teams say proposed rollback of 2015 regulation will overturn girls’s rights throughout the area as an entire.
The Gambia has taken steps in direction of lifting a ban on feminine circumcision, a transfer that would make it the primary nation on the earth to reverse authorized protections in opposition to the apply for hundreds of thousands of ladies and women.
Politicians within the West African nation’s parliament voted 42 to 4 on Monday to advance the controversial invoice, which might repeal a landmark 2015 ban on feminine genital mutilation (FGM) that made the apply punishable by as much as three years in jail
Almameh Gibba, the legislator who launched the invoice, argued that the ban violated residents’ rights to “apply their tradition and faith” within the overwhelmingly Muslim nation. “The invoice seeks to uphold non secular loyalty and safeguard cultural norms and values,” he stated.
However activists and rights organisations say the proposed laws reverses years of progress and dangers damaging the nation’s human rights report.
Jaha Marie Dukureh, of Protected Arms for Women, an NGO looking for to finish FGM, advised Al Jazeera that the apply was “youngster abuse”. She, herself, underwent the apply and watched her sister bleed to dying following the process.
“The individuals who applaud FGM on this nation, lots of them are males. These are males who don’t have the identical lived experiences that we do, and girls who’ve been by means of this apply proceed to inform them each single day what their struggling is, what their ache is,” she stated.
The talk over repealing the ban, imposed by former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, who dominated the nation with an iron fist for 22 years earlier than being toppled in 2016, has divided the nation.
The talk flared up in August, when three girls have been fined for finishing up FGM on eight toddler women, turning into the primary individuals convicted underneath the regulation.
The invoice will now be despatched to a parliamentary committee for additional scrutiny earlier than a 3rd studying, a course of that’s anticipated to take three months. The committee could make amendments to the measure.
Well being dangers
UNICEF, the UN company for kids, defines FGM as “the partial or complete removing of the feminine exterior genitalia or different harm to the feminine genital organs for non-medical causes”.
Seventy-six % of Gambian females aged between 15 and 49 have undergone FGM, in accordance with a 2021 report by UNICEF.
It could actually result in severe well being issues, together with infections, bleeding, infertility and problems in childbirth, and impairs sexual pleasure.
“Women’ our bodies are their very own. FGM robs them of autonomy over their our bodies and causes irreversible hurt,” stated the UN’s The Gambia workplace on X forward of the talk.
#FGM is a dangerous apply that violates girls and women’ #HumanRights.
We stay dedicated to supporting🇬🇲 efforts in upholding & defending the rights and dignity of all residents, together with #Women and #Girls.
Learn the UN assertion on the proposed Ladies’s Modification Invoice ⤵ pic.twitter.com/JNNMYjKCVJ
— UN The Gambia (@UNGambia) February 23, 2024
The variety of girls and women who’ve undergone FGM worldwide has elevated to 230 million from 200 million eight years in the past, UNICEF reported this month.
It stated the biggest share of these girls and women have been present in African nations, with greater than 144 million circumstances, adopted by greater than 80 million in Asia and the quantity surpassing six million within the Center East.
Rights teams consider that The Gambia’s transfer will set a harmful precedent for girls’s rights.
“There’s the inherent danger that that is simply step one and it may result in the rollback of different rights such because the regulation on youngster marriage … and never simply in The Gambia however within the area as an entire,” stated Divya Srinivasan, from girls’s rights NGO Equality Now.
Criminalisation was a vital step within the struggle in opposition to feminine circumcision, Equality Now stated, however famous that greater than half of the 92 nations the place FGM is practised have legal guidelines banning it.