It was outlawed in the mainly Muslim nation in 2015 when Yahya Jammeh was president. He said it was not required in Islam. But influential Muslim clerics have been pushing for the ban to be repealed, while women’s rights activists have vowed to campaign for it to remain in place. The Gambian lawmaker who is championing the bill, Almammeh Gibba, said it sought to “uphold religious purity and safeguard cultural norms and values”, the privately owned Point newspaper reported. He said the practice could not be described as mutilation if done properly. The head of The Gambia’s Female Lawyers Association, Anna Njie, said that repealing the ban would be a backward step. “We have no authority to tell the National Assembly what to do, but we have rights reserved in the constitution to take legal action when certain fundamental rights are violated,” she was quoted by the local Standard newspaper as saying.
SOURCE: BBC