With brutal timing, on International Women’s Day, the UN released data that showed that 30 million girls have been subject to female genital mutilation (FGM) between 2016 and 2023. That means globally now more than 230 million girls and women alive today have undergone this abhorrent practice.
As gut-wrenching as this news was, it was not the only shocking revelation on that day. Pro-FGM MPs and their supporters in Gambia also tabled their legislation to repeal the ban on FGM that day. FGM whenever it happens is an incredibly cruel and painful act, as I know personally, but in Gambia it is carried out on babies. To see men seeking to overturn legislation which seeks to protect children is just beyond words.
The anti-FGM legislation in Gambia was passed in 2015 as a result of the work led by Jaha Dukureh, an amazing Gambian activist who herself had FGM before her first birthday. I worked with Jaha as she fought to ban FGM in Gambia and I saw the change the law was making, how it gave women the power to protect their daughters.
Nearly 80 per cent of women and girls in Gambia have been subjected to FGM, but those shocking numbers were falling in the young population, making Gambia one of the places we were seeing change. It was this change which the Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron had spoken about.
Cameron is familiar with the issue of FGM. When he was prime minister in 2014, he hosted the first Girl Summit, aimed at mobilising efforts to end female genital mutilation.
And when Lord Cameron spoke on March 4, there were things to be hopeful about: countless girls have been protected in the UK from FGM thanks to the work his government started in 2014.
Much of the money the UK has invested in FGM had done little for women and girls
But what was missing from his speech — which I listened to in a grand room at the Foreign Office — was that much of the money the UK has invested in FGM had done little for women and girls. And that it had failed to support grassroots activism which is at the heart of any social change, especially the social change needed to end FGM.
I have written about this before, so I won’t talk about it here, but what I will say is that both Cameron and Andrew Mitchell, his development minister, are men who not only get that we need to end FGM but also passionately care. I hope they now use that passion to stand with not just with the women of Gambia but all women across Africa and change the way their department funds and works with those of us seeking to protect women and girls.
We could have saved those 30 million (yes, you read that number right) girls who have been added to the dry, devastating global statistics of FGM.
Grassroots activism needed much, much more help. I was part of the programme in 2013 that gave Jaha Dukureh the funds and support to lead a successful campaign to ban FGM in Gambia. My foundation is one of those helping mobilise women’s organisations in Gambia to push back against the men who want to lift the ban on FGM. Men who are well funded and organised.
Imam Fatty is leading the fight to repeal the anti-FGM legislation and has built an army of supporters over the past 10 years. Meanwhile, women’s organisations have been left out in the cold, so when he and his allies launched their hateful campaign on International Women’s Day, they were sending a message not just to the women of Gambia, but also to those of us who failed to support those women.
This is a message which, if we don’t heed it, will have a devastating impact across the region. Think of countries like Mali and Sierra Leone — where a few weeks ago several young women died as a result of FGM. Keeping the ban in Gambia is key to saving lives.
I hope if he really wants to have a true legacy of change in the world, David Cameron not only engages in the fight to end FGM again but this time really listens to African women on the frontline. Not the pen-pushers at the Foreign Office, who have let so many down in the way they have invested money that could have saved women and girls.
