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Lawmakers in the West African country of Gambia have rejected a highly controversial bid to end a ban on female genital mutilation.
Gambia banned the ritual, which is forced on millions of girls across Africa, the Middle East and Asia, in 2015, but it is still widely practised.
Here are some important facts about an ancient practice that is based on different ideas about female sexual purity, hygiene, social acceptance and male sexual pleasure.
Also read: Combatting female genital mutilation through a fairy tale
Brutal display of male power
According to the World Health Organisation, the term female genital mutilation (FGM) covers all procedures that involve the partial or total removal of a woman’s external genitalia, or other forms of injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.
This may involve partial or complete removal of the external and visible part of the clitoris, or the clitoral glans and inner layers of the vagina.
In its most extreme form the ritual may involve infibulation, which involves narrowing the vaginal opening to form a sheath seal, leaving only a small opening for urine and menstrual flow.
Also read: International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation: All you need to know
The way this ritual is observed varies in different countries.
In addition to causing severe pain, it can lead to potentially fatal health complications, ranging from infection and bleeding to infertility and complications in childbirth.
This also affects female sexual pleasure.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres described it in 2023 as “one of the most brutal manifestations of the patriarchy that haunts our world”.
The number of victims is rising
Despite a growing global effort to ban the practice widely regarded as abhorrent, the number of victims of female genital mutilation has risen by 15 per cent since 2016 to an estimated 230 million, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF.
UNICEF attributes this increase to population growth in countries where FGM is practiced.
The ritual is most prevalent in Africa, where more than 144 million women and girls have been amputated, primarily in the Horn of Africa region.
According to UNICEF, 99 percent of women aged 15 to 49 in Somalia have been mutilated, 95 percent in Guinea, 90 percent in Djibouti, and 87 percent in Egypt.
UNICEF estimates that 80 million people in Asia (Indonesia and Maldives) and 6 million in the Middle East (Yemen and Iraq) are affected.
Education is the key
Although the number of victims is still staggering, the practice has declined sharply in some countries.
In the West African country of Burkina Faso, the proportion of FGM among girls aged 15–19 has declined from 83 percent to 32 percent over the past 30 years.
In Liberia, where Africa’s first female leader was elected in 2006, the ratio has fallen from 54 percent to 20 percent.
“It’s clear that this generation of girls is less sensitive to female sexual mutilation than their mothers,” Isabelle Gillet-Fay, president of a French organisation campaigning against the practice, told AFP. She described the decline in some countries as “very encouraging”.
The United Nations has set a goal of eliminating FGM by 2030.
According to UNICEF, achieving this target would require a recovery 27 times faster than would be necessary to compensate for demographic growth in the countries concerned.
In addition to enacting legislation to ban the practice, Gillett-Faye argues that improving access to education for both girls and boys is the key to changing attitudes.
“In every country without exception, schooling levels decline significantly by the time they reach the end of primary school,” he said.
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