'The matter is in his hands alone': president of Sierra Leone urged to ban FGM as court rules it tantamount to torture

[niyad]

(and the FUCKING, PATRIARCHAL, MISOGYNISTIC, HATE-FILLED WAR ON WOMEN continues apace)


‘The matter is in his hands alone’: president of Sierra Leone urged to ban FGM as court rules it tantamount to torture

The Ecowas court of justice has ordered the West African country to criminalise female genital mutilation after hearing the case of a woman brutally forced to undergo the practice

Sarah Johnson
Mon 28 Jul 2025 00.00 EDT

As Kadijatu Balaima Allieu walked to a neighbour’s house in her village in Sierra Leone, she had no idea that what was about to happen would alter the course of her life for ever. It was a beautiful September morning in 2016 and Allieu, 28 at the time, had gone to resolve a dispute she had with another woman, who belonged to the Bondo society, an influential and secretive group of women. Shortly after she arrived, she was forced into a room and the door locked. Her hands were tied. She was beaten, blindfolded and gagged. Then a woman sat on her chest while others forced her legs apart. She was forcibly subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM), the partial or total removal by cutting of the female genitalia.“There was nothing left of me [to fight],” says Allieu. “Out of 100% energy, I was left with something like 1%. So they carried on with their operation.”

Nine years later, Allieu’s experience has led to a ruling against Sierra Leone by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) court of justice, which described FGM as “one of the worst forms of violence against women” which “meets the threshold for torture”. The case, filed by Forum Against Harmful Practices (FAHP), We Are Purposeful, and Allieu, held the government liable for human rights violations due to its failure to criminalise FGM. The court ordered Sierra Leone “to enact and implement legislation criminalising female genital mutilation and to take appropriate measures toprohibit its occurrence and protect victims”.

Though the UN passed a resolution to ban FGM in 2012, it is still practised in about 30 countries. In Sierra Leone, a national survey in 2019 found that 83% of women had undergone FGM, with 71% of them subjected to the practice before the age of 15. There is no law explicitly criminalising the procedure, part of a traditional initiation ritual that marks a girl’s entry into womanhood, carried out by senior members of Bondo societies. Every year, women and children are left with health complications, and some die, as a result of such rituals.


When members of the Bondo society had finished mutilating Allieu, she was dragged to another room and left in a pool of blood for three days, until police found her and took her to hospital.She had three operations to fix some of the damage that had been inflicted. After the third operation, Allieu remembers the doctor telling her “he had never seen this level of wickedness”.

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Allieu, who is bringing a separate case in Sierra Leone against the woman who mutilated her, is due to be awarded $30,000 (£22,000) in compensation as part of the Ecowas ruling. She says she can’t find work because of the public stigma surrounding her case, but wants to use the money to further her education and become an activist. “I really want the government to look into this, especially the sitting president with his power as head of state,” she says. “I want him to honour the ruling of the Ecowas court and [make it so] the Child Rights Act can help eradicate FGM.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jul/28/the-matter-is-in-his-hands-alone-president-of-sierra-leone-urged-to-ban-fgm-as-court-rules-it-tantamount-to-torture