Latest Press Releases - The Gambia Campaign
Gambia Women are Free to Choose Expresses Concern with Amnesty International’s Misguided Call on Gambian Parliamentarians
17 March, 2024
On behalf of the vast majority of grassroots women who support gender inclusive female and male circumcision practices as important cultural expressions of gender complementarity as well as Muslim religious obligations incumbent on both sexes, we are concerned about misleading statements made by human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International. First, the terminology that is used in the Women’s Act 2010 is “Female Circumcision” and not Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), as we also mistakenly assumed. Gambian women do not practice or support the “mutilation” of females or males.
Second, for an international human rights organization to issue such a press statement pressuring the democratically elected National Assembly Members in The Gambia to maintain a ban that is unpopular, unconstitutional and against the best interest of women and girls in the country is an egregious violation of the democratic rights of the women of The Gambia. Further, such a public appeal is a concerning interference with the sovereignty of The Gambia and the fundamental obligation of the State to its citizenry. The actions of Amnesty International as well as other international organizations, NGOs and even western diplomatic and UN representatives in The Gambia are not in the interest of Gambian women, but of perpetuating a western financed anti-FGM industry and the lucrative salaries of so-called human rights activists relative to ordinary Gambians.
Third, the human rights conventions that are mentioned in the Amnesty International press statement, The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and The Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) do not make any reference to female circumcision or even FGM. Only The Maputo Protocol, to our knowledge, prohibits FGM albeit without defining what exactly this practice constitutes. Once again, GWAFC and the vast majority of Gambian women do not practice or condone the “mutilation” of girls.
What the CRC and CEDAW do share in common with the Maputo Protocol and the Constitution of The Gambia are provisions that guarantee gender equality and equal protection under the Law. The practice of female and male circumcision in The Gambia is gender inclusive and both honor and celebrate the dignity of the sexes and transitions from childhood to adulthood. Both male and female practices are complementary and interdependent cultural expressions of gender and are in line with local interpretations of Islamic duty and purity.
Please be reminded that the vast majority of women throughout The Gambia have agency. We will mobilize and respond in our numbers to demonstrate against any interference from external FGM organizations or actions from donor countries that infringe on our democratic and constitutional rights as Gambian citizens. And, we will hold our democratically elected National Assembly Members to account through the ballot box when the time comes.
Gambian Women are Free to Choose is a community based organization that was formed to protect the fundamental human rights of women and girls in The Gambia to gender equality, religious freedom and cultural expression that are guaranteed under The 1997 Constitution of The Gambia. This is our second press statement in support of the brave National Assembly Members who put forward a Bill to repeal the unconstitutional Female Circumcision Prohibition in the Women’s Act 2010 (see GWAFC press release 18 September 2023 at awafc.org). Whichever way our elected leaders vote on 18 March, 2024 we will continue to fight for equality and protect our rights! For more information on GWAFC (or Sierra Leone Women are Free to Choose) please visit our website at www.awafc.org or contact us on WhatsApp +1.202.904.0023.
Gambian Women are Free to Choose applaud the NAMs Speaking Out Against the Female Circumcision Prohibition Provision in the Women's Act 2010
18Th September, 2023
On behalf of Traditional Female Circumcision Practitioners as well as the vast majority of women who uphold female circumcision across The Gambia, Gambian Women are Free to Choose (GWAFC) announces our unwavering support for the brave National Assembly Members (NAMs) who boldly spoke out on September 12, 2023 against the anti-FGM provision in the Women‟s Act 2010 and vowed that “this House will bury the FGM Law”. We feel encouraged that Gambian lawmakers are representing the voices of the majority of over 1.3 million women who make up the population in this country and voters in the lawmakers‟ constituencies.
As stated by Hon. Sulayman Saho, the legislator for Central Badibu, the criminalisation of FGM was imposed on the women of The Gambia in 2015 following a sudden yet characteristically erratic pronouncement by the then President Yaya Jammeh. The Women‟s Act 2010 was updated to include an FGM ban without any substantive debate or sensitization of the majority of grassroots women affected by this law. Our view is that this anti-FGM provision is unconstitutional and violates the rights of circumcised women to free exercise of religion, culture, as well as our basic human rights to self-determination, dignity, gender equality, sexual and reproductive freedom and parental autonomy.
In The Gambia, the religious, cultural, health, hygienic and aesthetic reasons for the practice of female circumcision are parallel with those of male circumcision. One of the most common forms of Islamic female circumcision, called „sunna‟, is anatomically similar to male circumcision involving removal of the clitoral foreskin only. Other common forms of female circumcision in the country involve excision of the external clitoral foreskin and glans and/or labia minora. The bulk of the clitoris remains intact and sexually functional within the female body and cannot be removed without ending the life of the girl or woman. The actual scientific and medical evidence by independent, objective, and well-respected teams of international scholars and medical professionals supports the fact that female circumcision, like male circumcision, is not life threatening and does not have long term negative sexual or reproductive health consequences for most affected women.
As the Public Policy Advisory on Female Genital Surgery in Africa indicates, the so-called harmful health effects of all forms of female circumcision, and especially the minimal procedures performed in The Gambia, are grossly exaggerated and lack any medical or scientific credibility. The laundry list of supposed sexual and reproductive issues associated with female circumcision is equally common among uncircumcised women. The purportedly objective health information promulgated by international organizations such as WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF and a multitude of NGOs are mainly activist propaganda specifically designed to induce horror and generate external funding that ultimately enrich individual local and international activists and perpetuate the global FGM industry.
The social and psychological damage of FGM criminalization and of anti-FGM campaigns in The Gambia is even more far-reaching than the unacceptable persecution and “surveillance” of traditional practitioners. Female circumcision is being driven underground and now girls are being circumcised at far younger ages in secrecy and increasingly by untrained practitioners. The very girls the FGM ban and campaigns claim to protect are now at greater risk of harm.
The same female circumcision procedures performed in The Gambia are now imitated and popularized as so-called female genital cosmetic surgeries in western countries and freely enjoyed by mostly white, educated, affluent women and girls in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, as well as countries in Europe and around the world. Moreover, far more drastic sexual interventions and genital operations are currently normalized for so-called transgender children in these same western countries.
Given such dramatic changes in the world over the last decades in the normalization, medicalisation, commercialisation and globalisation of genital surgeries in tandem with radical shifts in gender ideologies in the West, we categorically reject the racist and sexist term female genital mutilation. We reject any national law or social policy that utilizes this FGM terminology or discriminates against us because of our chosen gender identity. We reject any national law or social policy that denies our agency as women and parental autonomy as mothers. We reject any national law or social policy that erases our female-centered ancestral history, culture, and religious beliefs. We reject any national law or social policy that delegitimizes our right to live in peace and dignity as proudly circumcised African and Muslim women.
It is time to publicly challenge the blatant western feminist neocolonialism of anti-FGM campaign propaganda and end the persecution, oppression, intimidation and humiliation of practitioners as well as the discriminatory treatment and infantilization of ordinary women who support female circumcision in The Gambia. We call on all National Assembly Members to stand firm and listen to the will of the majority of people - women as well as men - in The Gambia and repeal the outdated, neocolonial anti-FGM provision in the Women‟s Act 2010.
Gambian Women are Free to Choose (GWAFC) is a registered community based organization in The Gambia that was created to protect the legal rights of circumcised women and traditional practitioners as well as promote the modernisation of female initiation and circumcision practices throughout the country.
Lates Press Releases and Open Letters - SIERRA LEONE: Kambia Campaign
Sierra Leone Women are Free to Choose and National Sowie Councils Respond to Fabricated News of "FGM Deaths" in Sierra Leone
Press Release 3: 20 February, 2024
Re: Immediate Release of Detainees - CNN Fabricated Headline “FGM Deaths in Sierra Leone” Article (06FEB’24
This press release is to express our grave concern regarding the continued, unlawful police detention of innocent villagers in relation to fabricated allegations of so-called FGM related deaths published by CNN, The Guardian-UK, and other global news outlets. These otherwise trusted news sources collaborate with the UNFPA’s Global Media Campaign to end FGM by 2030 (globalmediacampaign.org) that fund anti-FGM activist Rugiatu Turay’s AIM organization. This fact was intentionally omitted in CNN’s news report. According to our sources, after receiving a grant from UNFPA, Rugiatu’s organization then hosted the CNN journalists (as well as others, such as The Guardian and AYV) and together they coordinated the staging of “FGM deaths” in Kambia and Port Loko, the homebase of Rugiatu’s anti-FGM campaigns.
The CNN journalists have removed the fake news story from their pages and distanced themselves from this macabre hoax masterminded by Rugiatu Turay and freelance journalist Umaru Fofana who was part of the CNN team, as well as the Information Minister Hon. Chernor Bah who is an anti-FGM activist and co-founder of the media exhibition, Bondo-without-cutting, that was promoted in the CNN piece.
The outrageous media fabrications of FGM deaths allegedly linked to Bondo were designed to go viral and coincide with the UNFPA’s International Zero-Tolerance for FGM Day meeting in Freetown on 6 February, 2024 where anti-FGM activists, the Minister of Gender, and others gather in an annual performance for increased funding. This year’s foiled plan, coordinated with funds from UNFPA’s Global Media Campaign, was to use the hoped for global outcry over CNN’s alleged “child FGM deaths in Sierra Leone” story to provide political cover for an immediate presidential ban on “underage FGM”. And, of course, millions of dollars of donor funding would follow.
We are distressed by the poor, unsanitary, conditions of innocent villagers who are being held unlawfully in “open-air detention”, with no criminal charges or bail, for nearly two months. There are nine detainees in Kambia including a town chief, a disabled amputee, several of our fellow sowies, and other female elders as well as a nine month old child. One adult male is being held in Port Loko without charge or bail. Our representatives have contacted the Legal Aid office in Kambia District to request that its legal officers make an appeal for the immediate release of the detainees or their charge to court and we are requesting the same of the lone male detainee in Port Loko.
We have written a formal letter of complaint to the Chief Minister, Hon. David Sengeh, and requested an investigation of the CNN story as well as of Hon. Chernor Bah and other Cabinet Ministers’ involvement in this foiled FGM global media campaign ruse.
We have also asked for an investigation into another thwarted attempt by Hon. Chernor Bah and Rugiatu to surreptitiously impose an FGM ban in Sierra Leone against the will of the people of this country. In April 2023, less than one year ago, they filed a frivolous FGM human rights abuse complaint (based on another manufactured kidnapping/forced FGM incident) at the ECOWAS Court just prior to the official close of Parliament. With no operating Government to respond to the complaint at that time, Chernor Bah, Rugiatu and their lawyers hoped to orchestrate a default judgment against the Government of Sierra Leone.
Nearly all of Sierra Leone’s ethnic groups practice gender inclusive initiation and circumcision as integral markers of religious expression, cultural identity and personhood. Our position is clear: Any proposed legislation against circumcision at any age must include both males and females and go through our country’s democratic process with Parliamentary oversight and open debate among our political representatives in the presence of our traditional authorities seated in Parliament.
In a world where the aesthetics of Bondo excision have become popular and normalized in western female genital cosmetic surgeries, where gendered genital alterations are now a given in sex reassignment, intersex and gender “affirmation’ surgeries – even for non-consenting, underage children – it is high time for the UN, EU, WHO, African Union and western controlled global media to rethink the singling out, vilifying and infantilizing of African women as well as the open cultural appropriation of our bodily practices. For a list of references on the need for global approaches to ALL forms of genial alterations - irrespective of sex, gender, culture, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and socioeconomic class - please refer to the links on our website www.awafc.org.
“Really, CNN?”: The FGM “deaths” were intentionally staged for International ZeroTolerance for FGM Day
7 February, 2024
The CNN article dated 5 February, 2024 failed to make mention of a press conference organized by the National Sowie Councils and Sierra Leone Women are Free to Choose on 18 August, 2023 with over 150 sowies (traditional Bondo practitioners) in attendance and over a dozen Sierra Leone journalists. This press conference detailed the role of FGM activist Rugiatu (Nenneh) Turay as well as Umaru Fofana, a BBC stringer, the Guardian UK, and others in the staging and fabrication of a “forced” FGM/kidnapping incident in 2016.
Our organizations called attention to this ruse at the time and the purported victim mysteriously absconded for eight years. She then resurfaced in April 2023 at the politically expedient moment of the dissolution of Government, two months prior to general elections. This “victim” was then included, along with organizations headed by Rugiatu Turay and Hon. Chernor Bah (see below) as complainants in a frivolous lawsuit against the Government of Sierra Leone at the Ecowas court, based on the 2016 hoax case. Around this same politically convenient time, BBC Africa Eye released a "documentary" featuring more of Rugiatu Turay’s aspersions in yet another case from Makeni that she falsely attributed to FGM.
After our press conference exposed the baseless Ecowas complaint, the plaintiffs began to distance themselves from the filing. To our amazement, BBC’s Umaru Fofana, Rugiatu Turay and others joined forces again, this time to mislead CNN reporters with even more outlandish deception - staging a human corpse allegedly tied to FGM conveniently for CNN reporters to “witness”. This was perfectly timed to seize global headlines for the UN’s International Zero-Tolerance for FGM Day on 6 February, 2024.
We now understand that Rugiatu Turay’s “case” against the sowie, mother and grandmother of the alleged “victim” has been moved from Kambia Disrict to Port Loko District, the home of Rugiatu Turay and her anti-FGM campaign base. We are watching closely.
Rugiatu Turay and other anti-FGM activists and journalists will continue to get away with their harassment and intimidation of sowies and villagers - in part because the Bio administration is allowing it, knowingly or unknowingly. The Minister of Information, Hon. Chernor Bah, is himself a key FGM fundraiser through We are Purposeful (an organization created by the U.S. based Equality Now) which Hon. Bah headed prior to his appointment. As indicated, Purposeful is a co-plaintiff in the Ecowas lawsuit. The motive of BBC’s Umaru Fofanah, Hon. Chernor Bah, and Rugiatu Turay is simple: to coerce (or provide cover) for the Government of Sierra Leone to implement an FGM ban or FGM National Policy. Their disingenuous support for an FGM ban is not because any of them care about FGM or believe that a law will have any impact but because of the millions of dollars of earmarked donor funds, from which they will surely stand to financially benefit.
The CNN article was correct in quoting our representative from the South: Bondo does not practice FGM. The concept of FGM is increasingly contested by scholars and health practitioners around the world as greatly exaggerated, outdated, racist and sexist. Supporters of Bondo excision, like advocates for male circumcision, experience an improvement in appearance and hygiene. Further, the Bondo excision is anatomically and aesthetically parallel with western forms of labiaplasty and clitoroplasty – cosmetic surgeries that are in high demand among well-educated and affluent white (and increasingly non-white) women and their adolescent daughters in the U.K., Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia and other western (and non-western) countries.
Finally, circumcision rituals in Sierra Leone are gender inclusive – all males and all females are required to undergo initiation and circumcision as a marker of their entry into full adulthood for most ethnic groups. Bondo exists alongside Poro as complementary and interdependent traditional political institutions in Sierra Leone. When the UN and other stakeholders are ready to come to their table with ALL “non-medical” genital alterations, we can begin to take them more seriously.
Open Letter: Hon. David Moinineh Sengeh,
Chief Minister, The Republic of Sierra Leone
7 February, 2024 |
Dear Chief Minister,
As this is my first time reaching out to you, I would like to first congratulate you belatedly on your appointment last June, 2023. It is refreshing to see a Ministerial Cabinet full of youthful energy, new ideas and strategies for governance in Sierra Leone. Despite my recent criticism (outlined below), I am a deep fan of this administration, the President, and especially, forgive my Kono bias, the First Lady.
As this is my first time reaching out to you, I would like to first congratulate you belatedly on your appointment last June, 2023. It is refreshing to see a Ministerial Cabinet full of youthful energy, new ideas and strategies for governance in Sierra Leone. Despite my recent criticism (outlined below), I am a deep fan of this administration, the President, and especially, forgive my Kono bias, the First Lady.
As I am sure you are aware, I am writing on behalf of the National Sowie Council/s regarding several matters of urgent concern - not just to sowies but to the vast majority of women in this country who are members of Bondo and Sande society. To get straight to the point, I am particularly concerned about egregious allegations made against Bondo and an alleged sowie from Kambia District. These potentially defamatory charges against the women of Bondo were published in global media outlets, such as The Guardian UK and CNN just prior to the UN’s International Zero Tolerance Day for FGM on February 6, 2024 (see our press releases regarding these publications).
The above claims concern the alleged death of an alleged 13 year old girl in Kambia allegedly due to what opponents refer to as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). The only “evidence” of alleged FGM murders in these news stories was a verbal interview with a sole activist: Rugiatu Nenneh Turay. The CNN news story showed a photograph of what was alleged to be the full wrapped corpse of the “victim”. The words of a notorious FGM campaigner and a picture of a completely covered “body” was sufficient for otherwise responsible global news outlets to openly and recklessly allege that Bondo murders innocent young girls in Sierra Leone.
We are especially concerned with the role of Umaru Fofana, who you know is a stringer for the BBC, and have written to the BBC accordingly. In 2016/17 both Rugiatu and Umaru were involved in an earlier attempt to manufacture and publicize a “kidnapping” and “forced FGM” case in Kenema against Elsie Kondomoloh, the Vice President of the National Sowie Council. This bogus case was then used as the basis of an incredulous legal complaint filed at Ecowas against the Government of Sierra Leone.
This of course leads to our greatest issue, the role of your Minister of Information, Hon. Chernor Bah who, as you are well aware, was the head of We are Purposeful - one of the Plaintiffs in the Ecowas case. Hon. Bah has been an unrestrained, confrontational anti-FGM campaigner and a lead fundraiser for Purposeful (as well as its U.S. creator, Equality Now). Hon. Bah and Rugiatu are both credited with the creation and promotion of the colonialist caricature of our society, so-called Bondo-without-cutting. We find it impossible to accept that Hon. Bah did not abuse his position as Minister of Information to arrange the CNN interview of Rugiatu and coordinate her FGM “corpse” hoax for the CNN cameraman.
Last August 18, 2023 we held a press conference in Freetown specifying our concerns with the appointment of Hon. Bah. We have advised that given his conflicting role and key position as the spokesperson for the Government of Sierra Leone, he ought to resign.
We also made clear once again that Bondo and the sowies in this country are not answerable to the UN, WHO, African Union, Equality Now, Purposeful, CNN, the Guardian-UK or any other entity that is against our cultural practice of female circumcision. We expect this Government - that many of us voted for - to advocate for our rights to gender equal circumcision, a hallmark of our ancestral traditions. We expect our Government to uphold our human rights to dignity, self-determination and bodily autonomy as well as the same parental prerogatives enjoyed by adult men and women in western countries and around the world.
We welcome dialogue and robust debate with anti-FGM campaigners, their right to organize and to free speech that are guaranteed to us all under this country’s Constitution. As a scholar, I am personally committed to the principle of constructive disagreement. However, my colleagues and I also expect the rights of sowies to be protected by our national institutions and for anti-FGM activists – outside and inside the country - to behave according to expected norms of a free, democratic and plural society. Our organizations expect that anti-FGM campaigners will not harass, intimidate and manufacture FGM crimes to achieve donor funding and international publicity.
I will continue to do my part on behalf of the sowies, Bondo/Sande women and traditional female leaders I represent to advocate vigorously for their protection, advancement and complete, “radical inclusion”, if I may, in all aspects of national and political life.
I hope to meet you soon, I am sure our paths will cross. We have many friends and associates in common. It would be an honor to pay a courtesy call to your office and address any concerns or questions you may have about my role and the work I do on behalf of grassroots women in Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone Women are Free to Choose Respond to The Guardian Article “3 Girls Die After FGM Rituals in Sierra Leone” 3 February, 2024
6 February, 2024
As a rule, the National Sowie Council does not respond to alleged police investigations involving supposed deaths linked to Bondo in Sierra Leone. Notwithstanding, given an unfortunate pattern of misinformation, kidnapping hoaxes, and fabrications of post mortems orchestrated by certain anti-FGM campaigners, we would like to use this opportunity to inform Sierra Leoneans, our policymakers, the Bio administration, and the international community of the following:
Since 2016, the Guardian UK has colluded with high profile anti-FGM campaigners in Sierra Leone, such as Nenneh Turay of Amazonian Initiative and Hon. Chernor Bah, the current Minister of Information, to fabricate stories of FGM kidnappings and Bondo deaths. (Note: Hon. Chernor Bah, as the former head of We Are Purposeful, filed a frivolous FGM human rights abuse case against the Government of Sierra Leone at ECOWAS in April 2023 - see press release August 18, 2023). In addition to instigating the harassment, defamation and false imprisonment of sowies in the past, the Guardian UK and their local anti-FGM campaigners exploit the annual occasion of the UN’s Zero-Tolerance Day for FGM on February 6 to invent new claims of so-called FGM deaths in Sierra Leone.
We contend that these previous outrageous allegations, and colonialist representations of our matriarchal sodalities, are deliberately designed to elicit global outrage and importantly, funding. More significantly, we view these most recent allegations as part of the Guardian UK’s attempt to reignite its failed anti-FGM campaign in Sierra Leone in anticipation of millions of dollars of external funding earmarked for Sierra Leone to implement a national anti-FGM policy and criminal legislation.
Despite this attempt to demoralize and divide sowies and traditional women leaders in Sierra Leone, we are united in our opposition to any national policy or legislation that circumvents the democratic process of the Republic of Sierra Leone as well as the human rights of Bondo women to gender equality, self-determination and bodily autonomy.
In the upcoming weeks, we welcome a thorough police investigation of the alleged deaths in the Northwest and, if any charges are warranted, we expect a robust prosecution (and we will ensure an equally vigorous defense representation) for anyone or persons charged with criminal offences. Our organizations are categorically opposed to forceful initiations of anyone – males and females – in Sierra Leone.
(Under Reconstruction) PAST NEWS...
"Conservative MP Chris Chope defends blocking the FGM Bill" in his own words. By Will Frampton Sir Christopher Chope has written a note to Tory association members defending his blocking of the FGM bill in Parliament. The Chirst Church MP's actions received an angry response from fellow MPs and from the public on social media...read more 
"Genital Mutilation Convictions Overturned After New Evidence Showing Victims Remain Intact"
By Emily Laurence In November 2015, a jury found the mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and former nurse Kubra Magennis guilty of...read more |
"A Miscarriage of Justice? The first FGM conviction in the UK has been secured. But at what cost?" By Brid Hehir
In a high profile, three-week trial at the Old Bailey, which finished on 1st February, 2019, a mother from Uganda became the first person in the UK to be found guilty of female genital mutilation by cutting her daughter's genitals. This landmark ruling has delighted the authorities and FGM campaigners, who have convinced themselves that FGM is rampant in the UK. read more 
"Tens of Thousands of Married Women in Uganda are Secretly Undergoing 'The Cut' "
By Tonny Onyulo Gladys Chemtai, 27, says she felt relief after undergoing the "cut" recently.That's because the procedure...read more |
"Uganda FGM Ban: Why I Broke the Law to be Circumcised at Age 26" By Catherine Byaruhanga
Sylvia Yeko decided to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) three weeks ago at the age of 26 - even though the practice, which used to be performed on teenage girls, was outlawed in Uganda in 2010. Her circumcision ceremony took place in public - she showed us a video taken on the day. It shows an excited, cheering crowd surrounding Ms Yeko and another woman, whose faces...read more 
"Liberia Bans Female Genital Mutilation--But Only For a Year"
By Emma Batha Liberia has imposed a one-year ban on female genital mutilation - a highly contentious issue in the West African country - but campaigners said on Thursday it may not be enforceable and urged new president George Weah to push for...read more |
In Past News
"Judge Drops Major Charge Against Two Metro Detroit Doctors Accused of Female Genital Mutilation"
By Alysa Zavala-Offman In a court order filed on Sunday, Jan. 14, Judge Bernard A. Friedman dropped a major charge in the case against two metro Detroit doctors accused of performing female genital mutilation on at least four minors...read more |
"Police Promise to Learn Lessons After Collapse of FGM Trial in Bristol"
By Steven Morris Detectives have promised to learn lessons after the groundbreaking trial of a father accused of allowing his six-year-old daughter to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) collapsed. A judge at Bristol crown court ordered that the 29-year-old father be found not guilty of child cruelty...read more |
"Three Sentenced to 15 Months in Landmark Female Genital Mutilation Trial"
By Michael Safi A retired nurse, a mother of two girls and a Dawoodi Bohra community leader have each been sentenced to a maximum 15 months in prison after Australia’s first criminal prosecution for female genital mutilation. A former midwife, Kubra Magennis, and a woman who cannot be named were found guilty in November of carrying out FGM on two girls...read more |