Decriminalizing Protection: The Drivers of the Push to Repeal Anti-FGMC Legislation in The Gambia and Their Implications for Human Rights Law

Abstract

In 2024, the Gambian National Assembly became the first legislature in the world to vote to repeal a national prohibition on female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), a bill ultimately unsuccessful but now before the Supreme Court. This paper examines the three structural drivers of this unprecedented decriminalisation push: the social legitimacy deficit of the Women's (Amendment) Act 2015, enacted without meaningful community consultation under the authoritarian government of Yahya Jammeh; the active contestation of the medical evidence on which the law's public health justification rests, compounded by the emergence of medicalisation as a credible policy alternative; and the deployment of a postcolonial critique of Western double standards that gives decriminalisation advocates an internationally legible human rights counter-argument. Drawing on analysis of DHS 2019–20 individual-level data, doctrinal legal analysis of domestic and international instruments, and engagement with postcolonial scholarship including Mutua, Shahvisi, and Shweder, the paper argues that the decriminalisation push is not reducible to cultural conservatism but reflects genuine structural failures in the prohibitionist framework. It concludes with recommendations for a graduated, consultative legal reform that maintains child protection while engaging adult autonomy, and proposes medicalisation as a sunset strategy for long-term abandonment.

Keywords: Female genital mutilation/cutting; decriminalisation; social legitimacy; postcolonial human rights; The Gambia; medicalisation; cultural imperialism

DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/156-03

Publication date: October 28th 2026