08/03/2025
This International Womenโs Day, Iโm celebrating leaders like Fatou Baldeh in our Girls Alliance Network. Read more about her work to end female ge***al mutilation in Gambia:
Fatou Baldeh, the past year was critical in the fight to end female ge***al mutilation. A survivor and the founder of the organization Women in Liberation & Leadership (WILL), Baldeh, 41, is a leading activist fighting against the practice in Gambia.
Although FGM has been banned in her country since 2015, it still happens: about 75% of women and girls ages 15 to 49 have been cut, according to the United Nations Population Fund. FGM can lead to long-lasting health effects and is internationally recognized as a human-rights violation.
Advocates say the law banning the practice is poorly enforced. โWe continue to have those issues where we will have a case, we go to the police and report, and the police would be like, โThis is our culture, this is our tradition.โ So they do not see it as a crime,โ Baldeh says.