Gambia Mission: Lessons Learnt 

This September, Equality Now’s End Harmful Practices team took a much needed and anticipated mission to The Gambia. This visit came off the back of a heated campaign to protect Gambia’s anti-FGM legislation – the Women’s Amendment Act, 2015  led by civil society organizations, survivors and activists in The Gambia.

In July this year, a motion was brought before the National Assembly to amend this law, potentially rolling back the only legal protection for women and girls in The Gambia against FGM. 

This was in response of a significant court ruling in August 2023, where the Kaur/Kuntaur Magistrates’ Court convicted three women for performing FGM on eight adolescent girls. This landmark judgment was the first conviction under the law since it was enacted eight years earlier.

In response to the ruling, religious leaders and select Members of Parliament initiated public discussions in September 2023,  seeking to repeal the Women’s  Act to introduce ‘consent’ to FGM for women who wish to go through FGM as part of their culture or religion.  

The motion was defeated following valiant advocacy efforts by state and non-state actors who engaged the public in The Gambia, the broader international community as well as intergovernmental organizations to ensure the pro-rights message was heard loud and clear. We too joined these actors including  the Association of Non-Governmental Organizations in The Gambia (TANGO), the Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children (GAMCOTRAP), and the Network Against Gender-Based Violence (NGBV) and over 170 other civil society organizations from across The Gambia and around the world in urging the Government of The Gambia to uphold the law prohibiting FGM.

This mission therefore was to consolidate the win in the National Assembly by convening the broad CSO coalition and allied stakeholders to look back at why and how the law was challenged and to strategize on how to build capacity of the public and empower them to champion its protection.We were joined in our reflections by the Minister for Gender  Honorable Fatou Kinte.

Even more critically, this mission sought to  mobilize a formidable legal force to respond to the new threat to the law.  The push back on the anti-FGM law has now shifted from Parliament to the court  with a constitutional petition having been filed in Gambia’s Supreme Court claiming that women and girls have a right to FGM as part of their culture and religious rights and challenging the constitutionality of the Women’s (Amendment) Act, 2015.

The key lessons learnt  from the mission:

• The power of the collective. It was inspiring to see all actors with different areas of expertise come together in support of the law and to see this convening bear fruit.

• The power of the media.The Gambian story particularly the journey towards the Women’s Amendment Act, 2015, the promise it holds of protection and the threat to it was told across the globe. The response from state, non-state and intergovernmental actors leveraged the much needed pressure on the duty bearers concerned to ensure they continued to uphold the rights of women and girls. This story was told through the media and victory in upholding the law can partly be attributed to them.

• The power of the law. While the law is not an end in and of itself, it certainly sets the foundation and standard to which all of us are held to account. It is therefore necessary if not crucial if rights are to be upheld. Whereas the implementation record of the Women’s Ammendment Act 2015 is not  as impressive , it is clear that its presence has stemmed the tide of FGM and its implementation has sounded the necessary warning to those who continue to perpetuate  this harmful practice. More efforts are required to ensure full and effective implementation of the anti-FGM law moving forward. 

The team left the  Gambia full of promise that FGM will eventually come to an end in The Gambia, in Africa and indeed in the world.