BANJUL, Gambia — Members of Gambia’s National Assembly on Monday rejected a bill that would have repealed a ban on female genital cutting, marking a victory for women’s rights advocates in this West African nation after almost a year of heated debate.
The members of Gambia’s National Assembly rejected each clause of the bill so that there would be nothing left of it for the final vote, which had been scheduled for July 24. That marked an about-face from their decision in March, when the vast majority of members voted to move the bill forward, sparking widespread concern that Gambia could be the first country in the world to roll back such a protection.
Proponents of repealing the ban — including several powerful religious leaders in Gambia, which is majority-Muslim — said that families should be free to choose and claimed that the practice was taught by the prophet Muhammad. (Other Muslim leaders have condemned the practice, and it is not practiced in numerous Muslim-majority countries).
Since female genital cutting, which is widely known by opponents as female genital mutilation, or FGM, was made illegal in Gambia in 2015, only three people have been prosecuted under the law. The United Nations estimates that 75 percent of women in Gambia ages 15 to 49 have been subject to the practice. When those women were convicted in August, it sparked a massive backlash that included the introduction of the bill to repeal the ban.
Abdoulie Fatty, one of the imams behind the bill, sat stone-faced, watching the proceedings in parliament on Monday. He said that he and other religious leaders planned to target those who voted against the bill in upcoming elections, saying that he would declare them “not real Muslims.” He vowed that cutting — which he calls “female circumcision” — would continue in Gambia.
“We are imams,” he said. “They listen to us.”
