The Gambia Volunteers Trust (GVT) works in the UK and The Gambia to protect girls and women who are at risk of female genital mutilation (FGM); by raising awareness about FGM and sign-posting support services we aim to help people who are affected by FGM and ultimately help bring an end to this practice.
Our wider work in FGM is to advance and protect the physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health rights of young people from female genital mutilation practicing communities. FGM occurs in the context of wider harmful practices and that young people often have many different problems. We take a holistic approach, offering advice and support to help young people in as many ways as we can.
The Gambia Volunteers works with Gambian communities and female organisations to raise awareness and harmful effects of FGM. Our campaigns are targeted at Gambian and those from West African communities living in the UK. We run community awareness and sensitisation programme to Gambian families not to take their daughters back to The Gambia to perform FGM. Our work with the local communities is to stop any form of FGM practices in the UK or by travelling back to Africa to perform the act.
We are pro-active in our approach to engage families facing the threat of FGM; support is always on hand from our dedicated team of volunteers. Every effort is taken to make sure any mother or young girl reporting the fear of FGM is taken seriously. We act on the information immediately.
With effect from 23rd of November 2015, The Gambia has banned female genital mutilation. The president of the republic of The Gambia has declared a country wide ban on Female Genital Mutilation in The Gambia.
He was quoted to have said, “Female circumcision is banned in The Gambia from Kartong to Koina. For 21 years, I have been researching from the Qur’an and consulting religious leaders whether female circumcision is mentioned in the Qur’an but I did not find it there,” he remarked.
This is welcome news for the Gambia Volunteers activist in The Gambia and the UK. We have been campaigning for the banning of FGM in The Gambia and making it a criminal offence. The Gambia Volunteers with other active NGOs for the banning of FGM will continue to raise the awareness and to push ahead for the national assembly to draft laws which will criminalise the act.
With the banning of FGM in place, Gambian girls can now be protected from this form of child abuse and inhumane traditional practices that has no place in today’s 21st Century. The Gambia Volunteer would continue to raise awareness and would welcome the legal frame surrounding the banning of FGM in The Gambia. We will continue to campaign and raise awareness in The Gambia and the UK to totally eradicate FGM
3-YRS JAIL TERM FOR FGM DOERS AS GAMBIA OUTLAWS PRACTICE !!!
Anyone engaged in female circumcision risks being jailed for three years after Gambia parliament passed a bill outlawing the practice. Perpetrators also face a possible D50,000 fine if found guilty of the act by a court of law.
The development comes after Women’s affair’s minister and Vice president Isatou Njie-Saidy passed the motion incorporating the new law into the country’s Women’s Act.This reels in as a huge sigh of relief for anti-FGM campaigners who’d been mounting pressure for a law to be legislated since head of state Jammeh announced abolition of the age-old practice. Up to 70% of Gambian women have undergone the practice according to a recent study.
