Malian Women Battle Against Resurgent FGM Support

In August, Mali witnessed the emergence of a coordinated social media campaign defending Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), reigniting fervent societal debates not only on women's bodily integrity but also on the sensitive subjects of tradition and national sovereignty. This campaign directly countered a national non-governmental organization's "no more" FGM advocacy by disseminating anonymous online posts featuring images of men, smiling or giving thumbs-up gestures, surrounded by Mali's national colors. The accompanying message, "In Mali, yes to excision! Let's protect girls and build their future," starkly inverted the common argument for protecting girls, recasting the deeply harmful practice as a safeguard.

The practice of cutting out parts of young girls' genitals, often performed without anesthesia and carrying high risks of deadly complications, remains alarmingly commonplace in Mali. A comprehensive study from 2023 estimated that FGM is responsible for approximately 44,000 excess deaths annually across 15 African countries, with Mali being one of them. This makes FGM a leading cause of death for girls and young women in regions where it is prevalent. Survivors face dire and multifaceted consequences, both immediate and long-term. Immediately following the cutting, girls endure severe pain, profuse bleeding, infections, and profound emotional shock. Throughout their lives, these consequences manifest as chronic pain, urinary and menstrual complications, significantly increased risks during childbirth, and enduring psychological trauma.

Mali's legal and historical landscape reveals a prolonged struggle against FGM. Following the country's independence in 1960, pioneering midwife and lawmaker Aoua Kéita, alongside other activists, tirelessly pushed for reforms to advance women's rights within the 1962 Marriage Code. While they successfully secured bans on forced marriage and established a minimum age for matrimony, their efforts to prohibit excision and polygamy were ultimately unsuccessful. Subsequent attempts to legislate against gender-based violence also faced significant hurdles; powerful conservative forces derailed draft laws in 2009 aimed at advancing women's household rights, and again in 2019 concerning violence against women. Crucially, Mali's 2024 Penal Code, while condemning violence broadly, conspicuously omits specific mention of FGM, leaving a critical legal gap that continues to impact Malian women and girls.

The latest Demographic and Health Survey for Mali highlights the alarming prevalence of FGM, revealing that 89% of women aged 15 to 49 have undergone the practice, making it one of the highest rates globally. Among girls aged 0 to 14, the typical age range for cutting, the prevalence stands at 70%, a modest decrease from 74% in 2018. While this suggests a slow recession, the decline is fragile and potentially reversible. A significant portion of the Malian population, both women and men, still endorses FGM, often under the misguided belief that it is a religious obligation or a cherished tradition. Both of these claims are widely disputed, yet the lack of societal consensus endangers thousands of infant girls each year.

Proponents of FGM often minimize its profound physical harms. Instead, they frame it as a necessary mechanism for controlling women's sexuality, a deeply ingrained feature of patriarchal control. Within many southern and central regions of Mali, societal norms have historically glorified suffering as a mark of honor for women, effectively normalizing their pain. For these supporters, the potential social stigma of perceived "bad morality" attached to an uncut woman is presented as a greater harm from which she requires protection. The "yes" campaigners also strategically attempt to discredit opposition to FGM as a "foreign agenda," deliberately erasing Mali's rich history of local resistance, from Aoua Kéita's era to today's human rights defenders. This narrative aligns with broader "sovereignty" arguments that portray women's rights as an external imposition and traditional gender norms as a source of societal strength.

However, this logic merely substitutes one form of domination for another. It empowers men, families, and communities to control women's bodies and inflict mutilation upon girls too young to provide consent, all under the guise of resisting imperialism. In essence, it denies half the population fundamental sovereignty over their own bodies in the name of national sovereignty. The exact origins of the 'yes' campaign remain elusive, though journalists and Malian feminist organizations have largely traced its digital footprint to accounts disseminating artificial intelligence-generated posters, seemingly designed to simulate a widespread grassroots movement and obscure its true scope. While most men whose images were appropriated for the campaign have defended it, some have cited unauthorized use of their likeness or recanted their support following public outcry. By mimicking the communication strategies of the "no" advocacy, FGM supporters sought to normalize their stance, creating a false equivalence between "yes" and "no." This tactic allows inaction to be portrayed as a neutral stance rather than a tacit condonation of violence, with apparent neutrality ultimately favoring the harmful status quo.

Despite these challenges, the pro-excision campaign has met with robust resistance. Women's rights advocates, health professionals, and other influential public voices have strongly challenged the notion that defending FGM equates to upholding Malian values. This mobilization has extended beyond Mali's borders, sparking swift backlashes in Côte d'Ivoire and Togo. Malian and West African diaspora communities have organized anti-FGM protests in major international cities like Paris and Montreal, signaling that the practice can no longer rely on silence. On August 26, Mali's National Human Rights Commission publicly urged authorities to criminalize FGM, a measure already adopted by several other countries where the practice is deeply entrenched, including Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea, Niger, Egypt, and Sudan. While such laws have not eradicated FGM entirely, they have significantly increased the risks for perpetrators and provided women's rights organizations with a crucial legal foundation to challenge the practice.

Yet, legislation alone is not the definitive solution. For instance, in 2024, traditional and religious leaders in The Gambia attempted to repeal the 2015 Women's (Amendment) Act, which criminalized FGM; this case is currently awaiting a Supreme Court decision. Beyond legislative and judicial actions, profound shifts in community norms are essential to truly safeguard women's bodily integrity. Religious leaders hold a critical responsibility to unequivocally clarify that FGM is neither a requirement nor consensually accepted within Islam. They should actively collaborate with women's rights organizations, who have long been dedicated to eradicating the practice, and with health professionals who can effectively articulate its devastating consequences. International partners can play a supportive role, but must do so discreetly, avoiding becoming the public face of the effort. This cautious approach is vital to prevent inadvertently fueling the pro-FGM campaign's narrative that reforms are merely foreign impositions.