3 women in Gambia are charged in the death of one-month-old in female genital mutilation case

SERREKUNDA, Gambia -- Three women were charged in Gambia over the death of a one-month-old girl who had undergone female genital mutilation, the police said, in the first such case since the country stopped short of reversing a ban on the practice last year.

The West African nation banned female genital cutting in 2015, but the country was rocked by a renewed debate about the practice last year following the first prosecutions of female cutters. It was the first time the practice — also known as female circumcision and outlawed in many nations — was publicly discussed.

Eventually, the Gambian parliament upheld the ban, but many say the practice continues in secrecy.

Three women were charged Tuesday under the ban, the Women’s (Amendment) Act, 2015, the Gambian police said in a statement published Wednesday on social media. One woman is facing life imprisonment, and the other two were charged as accomplices.

“Preliminary findings indicate the child was allegedly subjected to circumcision and later developed severe bleeding,” the police said in a separate statement published Sunday, following the infant's death. “She was rushed to Bundung Maternal and Child Health Hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.”

The United Nations estimates that about 75% of women in Gambia have been subjected as young girls to the procedure known by its initials FGM, which includes partial or full removal of a girl’s external genitalia. The World Health Organization says it’s a form of torture.

More than 200 million women and girls across the world are survivors of FGM, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, according to U.N. estimates. In the past eight years alone, some 30 million women globally have been cut, most of them in Africa but also in Asia and the Middle East, UNICEF said last year.

The procedure, typically performed by older women or traditional community practitioners, is often done with tools such as razor blades and can cause serious bleeding, death and complications later in life, including in childbirth.

Supporters of the procedure argue that cutting is rooted in Gambia’s culture and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Religious conservatives behind the campaign to reverse the ban described cutting as “one of the virtues of Islam.” Those against FGM said its supporters are seeking to curtail women’s rights in the name of tradition.

The chair of the National Human Rights Commission, Emmanuel Daniel Joof, called the incident “a national wake-up call and added: “Our task now is clear: enforce it (the law) fully and fairly, without fear or favor.”

Civil society groups expressed “sorrow and outrage” over the death of the one-month-old girl.

“Justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done, to send a strong message that the rights and lives of girls in The Gambia are not negotiable,” the Banjul-based Edward Francis Small Centre for Rights and Justice said in a statement.

However, the collective Concerned Citizens called on Gambia government to stop targeting female circumcisers.

“The people of The Gambia have consistently expressed, through various lawful means, their opposition to the ban and have instructed their elected Members of Parliament to repeal the said prohibition,” they said in a statement.