Law, Culture, and Social Change: The FGM Debate and Gender Justice in The Gambia

Over the last two years, female genital mutilation (FGM) has been one of the most polarising issues in Gambian public life. In 2024, the National Assembly rejected a proposal to repeal the 2015 Women’s (Amendment) Act, the law that criminalised FGM. Almost immediately, a constitutional challenge followed at the Supreme Court. The country is divided on the matter, with one side insisting on culture or religion as justification for removing the ban, and the other insisting that the 2015 ban is fundamental to protecting women’s rights. Moving beyond this debate requires more than legal defence or cultural resistance alone; it demands a moral reconciliation of law, religion and cultural values.

Although female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is recognised internationally as a very harmful practice and was criminalised in the Gambia in 2015, UNFPA data shows that around 75% of women and girls in the country aged 15–49 have undergone FGM, reflecting its deeply entrenched cultural and religious underpinnings. This shows that while laws are put into place to govern behaviour and enforce standards, in The Gambia, religion and culture have similar or even stronger control over people’s behaviour. Essentially, strong laws matter as much as what families, community elders, imams, teachers, and women themselves believe and accept as norms. Any serious approach to FGM must recognise this fact and have the support of all three spheres of influence: law, religion, and culture.

Not just in The Gambia, but across Africa, FGM persists because it is entangled with status, respectability, and rites of passage of womanhood, enforced by both women and men. That is partly why legal prohibitions alone are not enough to dislodge the practice. In addition to legal bans, both religion and culture can be potent disruptors of harmful norms when moral standing is used to highlight harms. When trusted religious and customary leaders challenge social practices, behaviour shifts faster and with less backlash, as ideas are narrated through familiar moral languages. For example, in the neighbouring Senegal, religious leaders have spoken out against child marriage by emphasising Islamic principles of responsibility, consent, and maturity. In communities where legal reforms alone faced resistance, this religious endorsement helped shift norms around child marriage, reducing backlash and increasing community buy-in.

Norms and stigma as barriers to gender justice

In 2018, The Gambia established The Gambian Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) to look into gross human rights violations committed under the previous government over 22 years. The TRRC conducted thematic investigations and hearings, including a specific theme on sexual and gender-based violence, given its prevalence and use by the state over that period. The TRRC’s report revealed how religious and cultural values silence women and sustain fear of social stigma, reprisal, and the pressure to protect family honour. Women who dared to defy the cultural norms and speak out at the TRRC also faced harassment and reputational attacks. The case of TRRC shows that without attention to the religious and cultural contexts and their effect, access to law and justice is hampered. To address this, both the TRRC and civil society actors working in the space had to actively use special measures to mitigate the social consequences of speaking out and to translate legal components into socially and culturally appropriate ways, such as dialogues through women's circles and safe spaces.

It is also crucial to note that the legal system and rights-based approach by civil society organisations and policymakers, while essential, can unintentionally harden the divide between elites and a public suspicious of external change that erodes their values. Although the courts cannot abandon legal reasoning and must decide cases in the language of law, nothing prevents legal actors from doing more to interpret that language so it resonates with the communities the law seeks to protect.

The overall battle for criminalisation of FGM in The Gambia is another example of how legal enforcement can suffer when there is not enough consideration for religious and cultural sensitivity. FGM was criminalised in The Gambia by the Women’s (Amendment) Act of 2015, which prohibits performing, aiding, or promoting the practice, and details the repercussions for breaches. The law was celebrated as a milestone aligning The Gambia with the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Maputo Protocol, yet it is still very fragile, as opponents of the ban have continued to argue the case for FGM as a religious and cultural obligation.

As the Gambian case has shown, this framing of FGM as a battle between law and identity obscures the fact that it violates the bodily integrity of women, leading to their lived experiences disappearing behind abstract arguments. What is needed are allies in the villages, among the imams who can frame protection from harm as a religious duty, or elders who can tell their community that a woman’s standing does not depend on FGM. We have seen this work in Kenya, where Maasai elders have supported Alternative Rites of Passage that preserved cultural celebration while eliminating cutting. When such alliances are formed, the social costs of compliance with the law will drop, and change can finally begin to take shape.

Reconciling law, culture, and the social realities of women in The Gambia

The pending Supreme Court decision in The Gambia will contribute to shaping the terrain on FGM and gender justice more widely. The constitutional challenge to the 2015 FGM ban was filed before the Supreme Court in Almamy Gibba and Others v Attorney General, seeking to invalidate the prohibition on constitutional grounds. If the Court upholds the ban, it will affirm that human rights protection trumps cultural justifications. If it narrows the law by allowing medicalised forms, or strikes it down completely, the consequences will extend beyond women’s rights to The Gambia’s treaty commitments under CEDAW and the Maputo Protocol. This could also embolden other harmful practices defended under the broad shield of culture and religion.

As important as the Supreme Court’s decision is, the ruling cannot, by itself, deliver justice. The best path forward should not be a contest between law and culture, but a reconciling of law, religion, and cultural values. That negotiation begins by centring women’s experiences and translating the FGM law into languages of compassion, welfare, and prohibition of harm. Stakeholders must act as interpreters between the law and communities, and ensure that their approach to the situation is not one-sided. When girls and their families can comply with the law without forfeiting honour or belonging, human rights will gain traction in local communities. The struggle against FGM is therefore not something to be won in a courtroom or parliament. It should be a sustained, collective act of communication and negotiation. If The Gambia can take this approach, then the law will do what it was meant to do and create a space where girls and women can flourish.

The views expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme, the International Inequalities Institute, or the London School of Economics and Political Science.