FGM Ritual Kills Baby in The Gambia > Study finds 44,000 women and girls die globally each year from female genital mutilation

 

The Gambia: One-month-old baby dies after undergoing female genital mutilation

Gambia baby death heightens alarm over female genital mutilation

AFP, August 12, 2025:

Rights activists in The Gambia are calling for justice after a one-month-old baby’s death was linked to female genital mutilation, a widely practised but illegal procedure up for review before the country’s Supreme Court.

The Gambia has one of the highest rates of FGM in the world, with 73 percent of women and girls aged 15 to 49 having undergone the procedure, according to 2024 figures from UNICEF.

The baby girl was pronounced dead upon arrival at a hospital in the capital Banjul after being “allegedly subjected to circumcision” and developing severe bleeding, The Gambia Police Force said in a statement Sunday.

The death has sparked outrage among women’s rights defenders working to combat the deeply rooted cultural and religious practice that they say is a harmful violation against women and girls.

“FGM is not a cultural tradition to be defended — it is a form of gender-based violence that can kill,” Santana Simiyu, a human rights lawyer with rights group Equality Now, said in a statement sent to AFP Tuesday.

Two women allegedly involved in the case are in custody, police said, as an investigation is carried out in the western town of Wellingara, where the incident occurred.

Researchers at Britain’s University of Birmingham estimated in a study published in 2023 that approximately 44,320 girls and young women die each year due to FGM in the countries where it is practised.

Former Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh, now in exile, outlawed FGM in 2015, branding it outdated and not a requirement of Islam.

Parliament later that year adopted the first law specifically banning the practice, which is now punishable by up to three years in prison but is rarely enforced.

In July 2024, lawmakers revisited the matter, upholding the 2015 law despite pressure from religious traditionalists.

But the ban was immediately challenged before the Gambian Supreme Court, where the petition remains pending….

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 Aug 13, 2025 8:00 am By Robert Spencer

14 Comments

Note how carefully AFP dances around the fact that FGM is Islamic, as it is always Job One for the establishment media, in all stories involving Muslims, to make Islam look as good as possible. First, we hear that “FGM is not a cultural tradition to be defended — it is a form of gender-based violence that can kill,” which establishes at the outset that some people think it is a cultural tradition worth defending, while telling us that those people are wrong. The idea that it is a religious tradition doesn’t even come in for a mention until farther down in the article, when we are told that “former Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh, now in exile, outlawed FGM in 2015, branding it outdated and not a requirement of Islam.” Great, but “in July 2024, lawmakers revisited the matter, upholding the 2015 law despite pressure from religious traditionalists.”

So AFP tells us, without telling us, that some traditionalist Muslims consider female genital mutilation to be part of the Islamic faith. This is the main reason why it is still prevalent in many areas today, but the establishment media does its best to obfuscate any connection between FGM and Islam.

“It is a religious thing. Do you want to change religion?” said one Egyptian in response to a campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation. “You only listen to what the West is saying.”

The establishment media ignores the fact that FGM is mandated in Islamic law: “Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female) (by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the bazr ‘clitoris’ [this is called khufaadh ‘female circumcision’]).” — Umdat al-Salik e4.3, translated by Mark Durie, The Third Choice, p. 64

Why is it obligatory? Because Muhammad is held to have said so: “Abu al- Malih ibn Usama’s father relates that the Prophet said: ‘Circumcision is a law for men and a preservation of honour for women.’” — Ahmad Ibn Hanbal 5:75

“Narrated Umm Atiyyah al-Ansariyyah: A woman used to perform circumcision in Medina. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said to her: ‘Do not cut severely as that is better for a woman and more desirable for a husband.’” — Abu Dawud 41:5251

That hadith is classified as weak, but this one is classified as sahih (reliable): “Aishah narrated: ‘When the circumcised meets the circumcised, then indeed Ghusl is required. Myself and Allah’s Messenger did that, so we performed Ghusl.’” — Jami` at-Tirmidhi 108

If Muhammad had the genitals of his favorite wife, Aisha, mutilated, that is a strong endorsement of the practice from the man who is an “excellent example” (Qur’an 33:21) for Muslims.

Why does it matter whether or not FGM is Islamic? Because the practice will never be eradicated if its root causes are not confronted. As long as those Muslims continue to believe that Allah and Muhammad want it done, for some that will override all other considerations, in the United States and everywhere else.

Islamic Insanity > Genocide, starvation, rape, child sex slaves, racism, murder, massacres, Sudan

 

Sudan: Genocide, Starvation, Crimes against Humanity

Feb 20, 2025 3:00 pm By Uzay Bulut

The world’s most ruinous war is approaching its third year in Sudan while the world largely stands by in indifference.

Since April 2023, Sudan has been ravaged by a civil war between two Muslim forces, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF, led by Sudan’s de facto ruler, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF, led by Burhan’s deputy-turned-rival Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti”).

Civilians continue to bear the brunt of this war: murdered, sexually assaulted, displaced, and left to starve by both sides. Both the SAF and RSF use starvation as a weapon of war and block humanitarian assistance from reaching civilians. Even healthcare facilities have been looted and destroyed, resulting in civilian populations being deprived of basic medical services.

According to “Operation Broken Silence”, an NGO that monitors the Sudan crisis:

• No one knows the true death toll, but a moderate estimate based on available data suggests more than 145,000 civilians have already perished from violence and hunger.
• Nearly 25 million Sudanese —half of the entire country— are facing high levels of acute food insecurity. 8.7 million Sudanese have descended into near-famine or famine conditions.
• Roughly 15 million people have been forced to flee their homes or have left Sudan as refugees. That’s nearly one in three of all Sudanese.
• Nearly 80% of the country’s healthcare system is inoperable and preventable and treatable diseases are spreading quickly.
• 19 million children no longer have a classroom to attend and roughly 90% of schools are closed. This is the largest childhood education crisis in the world.

Sudan is a country in northeast Africa; it is south of Egypt on the Red Sea’s coast. It has a population of around 50 million. It is an ethnically and culturally diverse country with many non-Arab, African communities. It comprises 19 major ethnic groups and about 597 ethnic sub-groups who speak hundreds of languages and dialects.

Why are SAF and RSF fighting?

Arab supremacy and the unwillingness of power sharing are the main motives of both fighting sides. Sudan’s civil war is rooted in its historical favoritism of an Arab Islamic identity, writes Hamdy A. Hassan, a professor of comparative politics and a specialist on the history of Sudan.

According to “Operation Broken Silence”,

• SAF – Top army brass are mostly Nile Valley Arabs, representing the most elite and privileged ethnic groups in the country. The army is fairly diverse with soldiers from most parts of the country. Arab racism toward African tribes exists in SAF, which explains why army units have executed civilians on an ethnic basis as well.
• RSF- Top RSF commanders and most of their fighters hail from Arab tribes in the western Darfur region. The bulk of the RSF adheres to an extremely racist, Arab-supremacist ideology stating that Darfur’s historic African tribal groups must be cleansed from the region and that all other Sudanese Arabs are inferior.

SAF and RSF were allies, but that changed after they overthrew a civilian reform government in 2021. RSF commander Dagalo sees himself as Sudan’s rightful dictator while SAF generals believe that they are the true government. Both sides have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including summary executions.

For example, the RSF forces have reportedly raped scores of women and girls, using some as sex slaves. Their use of sexual violence constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to international law experts. The RSF has also committed targeted massacres of non-Arab groups, especially the Masalit ethnic group.

In April 2024, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights released the first independent inquiry into breaches of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2023-2024. The report concludes that the RSF forces and allied militias have committed and are committing genocide against the Masalit.

On December 19, 2024, Saad Bahr el-Din, Sultan of the Masalit, told the UN Security Council that the Masalit and other tribes have been systematically targeted at a large scale because of their ethnic identity. Masalit are exposed to crimes that include genocides “that haven’t been witnessed in our modern history,” el-Din said, adding that his city was under siege for two months by the RSF, who bombarded the city around the clock from all sides.

On February 15, 2025, “Genocide Watch” issued a statement entitled “Sudan Genocide Emergency: January 2025.” They noted that the war in Sudan has escalated to stage nine of the genocidal process: extermination:

“Rape, gang rape, and sex trafficking are rampant. Most such crimes are attributed to the RSF. In South Kordofan, girls as young as thirteen are kidnapped for sexual slavery by RSF soldiers, who use racial slurs while assaulting non-Arab victims.

“A UN Fact Finding Mission reported that over 400 women sought medical aid for sexual violence in the year between April 2023 and July 2024. The real numbers of victims are likely much higher, as stigma prevents many women from reporting rapes. Many kidnapped women commit suicide to avoid being raped by RSF soldiers.”

Khartoum destroyed

In an interview with Le Monde published on October 11, 2024, anthropologist Clément Deshayes said that “the conflict in Sudan constitutes the world’s most serious humanitarian crisis.”

“The capital, Khartoum, is completely devastated. The majority of bridges crossing the Nile River have been destroyed or badly damaged. Hospitals, except for one or two under SAF control, have been wiped out, as have most schools; the university of Khartoum is in ruins… Most of the industry was concentrated in Khartoum and Bahri, the scene of fierce battles. Most warehouses and factories are burned down.”

Sudan’s government has never been at ease with the international community nor its own people. According to the official website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,

“Since gaining independence from Britain in 1956, Sudan’s ruling class has justified its power with an ideology that favors the Arabic-speaking and Arabic elite in the capital Khartoum over populations from the nation’s more culturally, religiously, and linguistically diverse regions outside the capital.”

For decades Sudan’s people have been exposed to violence. This includes three civil wars, 35 coups and attempted coups, various crimes against humanity, as well as the theft of the country’s natural resources at the hands of autocratic governments and criminal militia.

The first Sudanese civil war (1955–72) erupted just before Sudan became an independent country. The war was prompted by southerners who had been promised and then denied the right to govern themselves. Southerners—mostly Christian and animist—fought against the north’s rule and the imposition of Arabic language and culture. The fighting resulted in the death of half a million people, mostly civilians, and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

In 1983, then-Sudanese President Jaafar al-Nimieri introduced new legal measures that removed the southern regions’ self-governance power. Nimieri declared Arabic the official language, and imposed Sharia law over the entire country.

Sudan currently faces complete economic and social collapse. The Arab-Islamic supremacy that the Sudanese regime and Arab militias uphold has devastated millions of lives. Instead of respecting the ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity of their populace and providing a fair, democratic sharing of power and resources, these forces have chosen to commit ethnic cleansings and cause famine, deaths and destruction across Sudan.

22 years after the first genocide of the 21st century unfolded in Darfur, the same perpetrators are committing the same atrocities against the same targeted groups, namely the Masalit or non-Arab groups, with impunity.

Yet, the absence of media coverage, protests, condemnations on the fighting sides and real action to help the victims leads one to ask: Why is there so little international attention on Sudan? Is it because the victims are black or because the perpetrators are Muslim and Israel is not involved? Or all these combined?

Femicide > 140 women and girls murdered by family members every day; Barely Surviving Femicide; FGM - Sexual Assault - One Survivor's Story; Kenyans take their daughters to Uganda for FGM; Romainia - Moldova husband murderers

 

Femicide occurs everywhere for many reasons. But the highest rates of violence against women and girls occur in three main societies. Islam, India, and curiously, the Nordic countries. The first two because women and girls a valued far below men and boys in Islam and in Hindu and Sikh cultures. The third is called the Nordic Paradox, where feminism is very strong and partner violence is the highest in Europe. It seems gender equality is necessary for harmony within a home.

Violence Against Women: Deadliest place

for women is at home, UN report says

Europe

A UN report released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women said that "almost 60 percent of all women who were intentionally killed in 2023" died at the hands of partners or family members. The report added that “the home is the most dangerous place for women and girls”.

Issued on: 25/11/2024 - 11:50Modified: 25/11/2024 - 11:51

2 min

By:

NEWS WIRES

Protestors march during the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Paris, France, 

Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024. © Thibault Camus, AP

The deadliest place for women is at home and 140 women and girls on average were killed by an intimate partner or family member per day last year, two U.N. agencies reported Monday.

Globally, an intimate partner or family member was responsible for the deaths of approximately 51,100 women and girls during 2023, an increase from an estimated 48,800 victims in 2022, UN Women and the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said.

The report released on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women said the increase was largely the result of more data being available from countries and not more killings.

But the two agencies stressed that “Women and girls everywhere continue to be affected by this extreme form of gender-based violence and no region is excluded.” And they said, “the home is the most dangerous place for women and girls.”

Of course, it is probable that women spend more of their lives at home than anywhere else. The vast majority of their interpersonal relationships occur in the home. It would be very surprising if the most dangerous place for women were anywhere other than the home.

The highest number of intimate partner and family killings was in Africa – with an estimated 21,700 victims in 2023, the report said. Africa also had the highest number of victims relative to the size of its population — 2.9 victims per 100,000 people.

There were also high rates last year in the Americas with 1.6 female victims per 100,000 and in Oceania with 1.5 per 100,000, it said. Rates were significantly lower in Asia at 0.8 victims per 100,000 and Europe at 0.6 per 100,000.

According to the report, the intentional killing of women in the private sphere in Europe and the Americas is largely by intimate partners.

By contrast, the vast majority of male homicides take place outside homes and families, it said.

“Even though men and boys account for the vast majority of homicide victims, women and girls continue to be disproportionately affected by lethal violence in the private sphere,” the report said.

“An estimated 80% of all homicide victims in 2023 were men while 20% were women, but lethal violence within the family takes a much higher toll on women than men, with almost 60% of all women who were intentionally killed in 2023 being victims of intimate partner/family member homicide,” it said.

The report said that despite efforts to prevent the killing of women and girls by countries, their killings “remain at alarmingly high levels.”

“They are often the culmination of repeated episodes of gender-based violence, which means they are preventable through timely and effective interventions,” the two agencies said.

(AP)

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The moving testimony of one woman

who escaped femicide

Issued on: 25/11/2024 - 15:03Modified: 25/11/2024 - 15:38

Last year in France 134 women were killed by their current or former partners. Tackling the rate of femicide was one of Emmanuel Macron’s pledges when he came to power in 2017. Since then various measures have been put in place to bring that number down but rights groups maintain that too many women are still victims of fatal violence. Here’s the moving testimony of one woman who escaped that fate.

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I have been calling Female Genital Mutilation a form of child sexual abuse for the 11 years I have been doing this blog. It's effects are an immediate assault on a girls vagina, and a permanent effect, actually several heinous, permanent effects on her sex life for the rest of her life.

'We need to reframe the language' on FGM as

sexual assault, survivor Leyla Hussein says

Africa

PERSPECTIVE © FRANCE 24

Issued on: 25/11/2024 - 12:52

08:54 min

From the show

A woman who was subjected as a child to Female Genital Mutilation has spoken to FRANCE 24 about the violence and torture she was forced to undergo. Leyla Hussein is a psychotherapist who now specialises in supporting survivors of sexual abuse. She grew up in Somalia, where she was subjected to FGM at the age of seven. It wasn’t until she was living in London and gave birth to her first child that she realised what had happened to her. She spoke to us in Perspective as part of our coverage of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

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Genital mutilations: Kenyan families send

their girls across border to evade prosecution

On the ground

Issued on: 25/11/2024 - 15:21

Modified: 25/11/2024 - 15:28

Today marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. In Kenya, 15 percent of girls have undergone female genital mutilation. Efforts to combat and criminalise the practice are growing, with stricter laws having been in place since 2011. Former President Uhuru Kenyatta promised the procedure would have disappeared by 2023. But many families have found a way of evading prosecution: they are sending their girls across borders to get the procedure done in neighbouring countries. FRANCE 24’s Olivia Bizot and Bastien Renouil report.

By Ioana Pascaru und Jan Petter, Miguel Hahn and Jan-Christoph Hartung (Photos) in Chișinău and Brașov

12.11.2024, 14.02 Uhr

It’s not perfectly accurate to say that you learn nothing in prison. Elisabeta easily dribbles past her son, juggles the soccer ball on her head a la Ronaldinho and pounds it into the black metal goal. She learned it all during her half decade behind bars.

She was just seven years old when she was promised to Dancu. She was 17 when she married him. And 32 when she beat him to death with a hammer.

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Prior to that, she had repeatedly called the police, reporting the physical beatings he would mete out to her. But nobody ever came. Only before the court in Brașov was she finally able to tell her story. About how he was initially reliable before then succumbing to alcohol. About how he beat her in front of their children until he broke her arm, the traces of which are still visible today. How he would physically abuse their five children. About how she tried to escape. And about how the police sent her back to live with him in the small dwelling on the outskirts of the city.

About how she finally decided to kill him in his sleep before he could do the same to her. Afterwards, her oldest son congratulated her: "It’s finally over, mama.”

The judge sentenced her to seven years behind bars in Târgşor, a women’s prison. After five years and four months, she was let out for good behavior. Since then, she has again been living in Brașov, a city in central Romania. It wasn’t possible to verify all aspects of her story.

For many years, stories of women who kill their partners have repeatedly found their way into the Romanian tabloids and evening news broadcasts. There are also a number of similar cases in the neighboring country of Moldova. Some refer to them as "husband murderers.” That, however, isn’t strictly accurate: In many cases, it was self-defense. For sheer survival.

The women have names like Nicoleta, Svetlana, Natalia and Maria. They have asked that their family names not be used for this story. They killed their partners because of the beatings and threats, and the risk of being murdered themselves. In most cases, they used a knife, though in one case, a soup ladle apparently also played a role. It isn’t difficult to understand why they make for such great yellow press fodder.

There is much more to this story on Der Speigel. Continue reading at:

What is more difficult to find are real explanations.