Banjul, Gambia

Years after being excised as a little girl in Gambia, Fatou Sanyang still suffers greatly in her life as a woman, regularly feeling as if “boiling water” is being poured over her. Banned in her country since 2015, this form of genital mutilation could become legal again.

Female genital mutilation (FGM)—which includes the partial or total removal of the clitoris, or more broadly of the external genitalia—is the subject of sensitive debate in The Gambia, where the practice remains deeply rooted in society.

Despite the ban in force, Gambia is one of the ten countries in the world with the highest rates of FGM: 73% of girls and women aged 15 to 49 had undergone the practice in 2020, according to UNICEF.

In 2025, the deaths of two infants who had recently undergone female genital mutilation sparked outrage across the country.

The issue of FGM is at the center of a case before the Supreme Court, which is reviewing a complaint seeking to overturn its ban in this Muslim-majority country. Gambia would become one of the few countries in the world to take this decision

In 2024, Parliament rejected a bill introduced by Representative Almameh Gibba, who sought to decriminalize the practice, arguing that it was a matter of respecting tradition. In April 2025, the representative and religious associations filed a complaint with the Supreme Court.

The Court’s review, which began in December, has been suspended but is expected to resume soon.

– “Screams” –

Fatou, now 30, was circumcised at the age of six. She found herself in an unfamiliar place with “several old women,” known as “cutters.”

Blindfolded, she did not immediately understand what was happening, but could “hear the cries of the other girls” trapped in the same place, she explains from her home in the town of Brikima, 40 km from the capital Banjul.

Even today, she “feels a lot of pain every time” she has her period. “And when I have intimate relations with my husband, at some point, I feel like someone is pouring boiling water on me…”

The victims of FGM are mostly girls or pre-teens. In addition to pain, trauma, and consequences for women’s future sexuality, these mutilations can cause death, infections, bleeding, and later infertility and complications during or after childbirth.

Despite the ban in force since 2015, fewer than ten cases have been prosecuted and the first convictions were only handed down in 2023.

Imam Kalipha Dampha, a member of the Supreme Islamic Council of The Gambia, which oversees Islamic issues, supports decriminalization.

“Female genital mutilation is part of our religious beliefs. Banning it is tantamount to hindering our religious freedom,” he told a reporter who came to meet him at the Council’s headquarters in Kanifing, west of Banjul.

“Everything in Islam is based on purity,” and according to him, this includes “circumcision, whether for men or women.”

For her part, Oumie Jagne, program coordinator at the Gambian NGO Think Young Women, responds that “FGM is not a requirement or a religious imperative.”

According to her, one of the reasons for the persistence of this painful practice is that it is seen as a rite of passage to be accepted into the community.

Refusing to submit to it can lead to difficulties integrating, social isolation, and pressure.

Even though the ban on FGM is rarely enforced in Gambia, the law “has set a clear precedent that this practice is not acceptable,” she believes.

– “Trauma” –

Jaha Dukureh endured numerous traumas as a result of female genital mutilation. She became a regional ambassador for UN Women in Africa, founded the NGO Safe Hands for Girls, which helps victims of FGM in Africa, and now works in the tech sector in the United States.

As a child in the 1990s, she witnessed the death of her one-week-old sister. The infant bled to death after undergoing female genital mutilation.

Then Jaha Dukureh was married at the age of 15 to a man much older than her. Coming from the Soninke community—which practices this mutilation due to values centered on virginity—she underwent “infibulation,” a narrowing of the vaginal opening by covering it, cutting and repositioning the labia minora or labia majora, sometimes by suturing.

At the time of marriage, women are “reopened without anesthesia,” and then their husbands are told to have intercourse on the same day, so that “it doesn’t close up again,” Ms. Dukureh laments.

Mariama Fatajo, 28, was also a victim of excision.

The young woman says she suffered so much during the birth of her two children that she decided not to have any more, she testifies.

She is very afraid of decriminalization.

“It will be shocking for us survivors, but also for the little girls we are trying to protect,” she fears. “Because FGM can be a trauma that you suffer from for the rest of your life.”

Humaniterre avec AFP