Scottish children with Gambian parents face the risk of going through Female Genital Mutilation if travelling to the Gambia on something as short as a holiday.
The Gambia is set to be the first country in the world to repeal the ban on FGM if it passes the repeal bill, tabled in parliament on 18 March 2024.
This has sparked a huge uproar from women’s rights activists, however, Islamic clerics are in full support of FGM and have already held protests for the ban to be repealed.
WHAT IS FGM?
Oonagh O’Brien is a Lecturer at the Institute for Global Health and Development at Queen Margret University who has assisted the Scottish Government in the research of FGM.
She said ‘’ It is a procedure carried out to women in their genitalia that is not for medical reasons. Generally, we categorise it into three, or four types.
‘’ So type one is reductive removal of the clitoris, which is an organ in a woman’s body that is for pleasure. It doesn’t have any other function apart from pleasure.
‘’And then type two is where there’s excision of slightly wider parts of the female genitals that were into the labia. Again, this can vary from culture to culture.
‘’And then type three is infibulation where the whole vagina opening is sealed or closed in some way, leaving just a small space for the vaginal for urine and menstrual bleeding.”
FGM was banned in 2015 after rigorous campaigns by The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, known as GAMcoTrap.
This was led by its executive secretary Dr Isatou Touray, who later became Health Minister and Vice President of The Gambia.
Describing how we came to such a predicament, the former Vice president said: ‘’During a recent nationwide inspection exercise, held in early 2024, GamcoTrap inspectors caught two women practising FGM on eight children.
‘’When they were apprehended, three were already cut and the five were saved and to the shock of the inspectors, the women happened to be FGM practitioners whom GamcoTrap trained and educated on the harmful effects and promised to stop the practice.’’
The two women were successfully prosecuted and convicted.
‘’A famous Islamic cleric known as Abdoulie Fatty paid the fine for the women thereby setting them free.
‘’Weeks later a coalition of clerics, led by a National assembly member tabled for the ban to be repealed,‘’ added Dr Isatou Touray.
One of the Gambian activists based in Edinburgh, Scotland, who has been tirelessly raising awareness amongst the Gambian community since this incident is Mariama Jobarteh, founder of Fantanka Diaspora.
She fears that Gambian children in Scotland face the risk of being cut considering how deeply embedded it is in Gambian culture.
In 2019, she and her children were subjected to an inspection check by the UK border force upon arrival at Edinburgh Airport from The Gambia. Her daughter was interviewed separately and questioned about their trip’s motive.
She said: ‘’I commend the Scottish authorities for what they have done because FGM in the Gambia is a right of passage and grandmothers and aunties from the paternal side of the family pressure the parents into cutting their daughters.
‘’And in most cases, they can be cut even without the consent of the parents.’’
UK law states that ‘’Applications for FGM protection orders can be made at the same time as police investigations, other criminal proceedings or proceedings in the family court.
‘’Someone who disobeys a court order can be sent to prison for up to 2 years for contempt of court but breach of a FGM protection order is also a criminal offence with a maximum sentence of 5 years imprisonment.’’
It is reported that at least 36,000 Gambians live in the UK and a slight amount of this figure reside in Scotland. With 76% of Gambian women having already undergone FGM, Scottish health practitioners such as midwives found it very difficult to deal with childbirth for women who had undergone FGM.
Oonagh O’Brien has conducted extensive research with her African students to assist the Scottish government on how to deal with FGM.
Ms O’Brien said: ‘’So the women were not getting the best treatment in childbirth and had quite bad experiences and the health workers were also feeling very unskilled in this area.
‘’We trained several African people from what we called FGM-affected communities to be researchers, and they interviewed their friends, and some of those were men, some of them young women, a couple of religious leaders, and they all knew people who had undergone FGM.
‘’It was a fascinating piece of research.’’
Amongst those researchers was Fatou Baldeh MBE. She is the founder of Women in Liberation and Leadership, founded in Scotland but now based in The Gambia.
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Describing her research, she said: ‘’The pregnant women found it very difficult to explain what FGM was and some of them were infibulated, which means that their vagina gets stitched so small that only urine and mensural fluid can come out.
‘’The health practitioners didn’t know what to do which caused most of them to go through C- sections.
‘’I spoke to a woman who said that nurses were calling other doctors to come and look at her, which she found very uncomfortable.
‘’She felt like a subject and felt it was unacceptable ’’
Currently, in the Gambian parliament, the Health Select Committee is conducting consultations with stakeholders and health professionals.
About 30 parliamentarians are currently in Egypt where FGM is medicalised, to see what safer options can be applied.
The committee is expected to provide findings and recommendations to National Assembly Members for a final vote on July 4th.
