Lawmakers who had been moving toward repealing Gambia’s landmark ban on female genital cutting overwhelmingly changed course on Monday, voting instead to keep the legislation in place after women staged an intense three-month campaign.
Gambia, a sliver of a country on the west coast of Africa, had grabbed international attention earlier this year as it appeared headed to becoming the world’s first nation to roll back protections against cutting.
“It would have faced pariah status,” said Satang Nabaneh, a Gambian legal scholar focused on sexual and reproductive rights and women’s rights.
Of the 53 members of Gambia’s National Assembly present on Monday, 34 voted to keep the ban, and 19 to overturn it. In March, when 47 members were present, 42 of them voted to overturn the ban.
Women’s rights campaigners, many of whom were in the National Assembly in Banjul, Gambia’s capital, to hear the ruling, greeted it with jubilation and relief. Their lobbying of politicians and efforts to educate communities about the harmful effects of cutting — which in Gambia usually means removing the clitoris and labia minora — had paid off.
“We did everything we could collectively to ensure the law stays,” said Jaha Dukureh, an anti-cutting campaigner.
As it is, the ruling maintains legal safeguards for Gambian girls, who are usually cut as young teenagers, and also affects girls in the wider West African region, as girls are often taken across borders to be cut.
“This is a significant win for women and girls in The Gambia but also beyond,” Ms. Nabaneh said.
Three quarters of Gambian girls and women of reproductive age have been cut, according to the United Nations children’s agency, UNICEF, and two-thirds of girls and women in the nation think cutting should continue.
“I don’t believe that female circumcision is dangerous at all,” said Kaddy Sanno, one of dozens of Muslim women protesting the decision outside the National Assembly building in Banjul on Monday.
Vocal imams and some lawmakers in the overwhelmingly Muslim country led moves to repeal the ban, which had been initiated in 2015 by Gambia’s autocratic former president, Yahya Jammeh. Some lawmakers supported the ban’s repeal because it played to their voting base, analysts said.
Many Muslims in Gambia believe that cutting is an Islamic practice — a claim made by some religious leaders in the country but disputed by many Muslim scholars.
Although the ban remains in theory, many Gambians are waiting to see whether in practice it will be enforced. Last year saw the first ever prosecutions under the 2015 law, with three women convicted of violating it. But proponents of cutting used the women’s convictions to stir up opposition to the ban, claiming that cutting is important culturally and that its outlawing was an imposition of the West.
Since the ban came under threat almost a year ago, there have been more instances of cutting, said Fatou Baldeh, a survivor of cutting and an anti-cutting campaigner who has won a string of high-profile prizes for her work.
People in some communities felt that while the fate of the ban was uncertain, it was acceptable to cut their girls, she said, and she heard of several mass cuttings in rural areas. Police did not react even when they were informed that girls were being cut, she added.
Despite her relief that the ban was still in place, Ms. Baldeh said that she was sad that the protection and health of women and girls had been put on the line.
“This bill could have gone any way,” she said. “And that is scary.”
Matty Jobe contributed reporting from Banjul, Gambia.
