Published by Le Monde Afrique, January 31, 2025
Author: Célia Cuordifede
In 2024, dozens of villages officially abandoned female genital cutting (FGC), a practice banned since 1999. This achievement is the result of relentless awareness campaigns led by social mobilizers.
In the modest assembly gathered at the town hall of Dakatéli, a Southeastern Senegalese village near the Guinean border, discomfort and disapproval are palpable. “If tomorrow FGC were to be practiced again in the village, we would go straight to the police,” declares Tamba Diallo, the leader of this community of 5,000 residents, after a brief but telling silence.
At first glance, his statement might seem unremarkable. After all, a 1999 law criminalized all forms of female genital cutting, imposing penalties ranging from six months to five years in prison. Yet, despite this legal prohibition, an estimated 25% of women in Senegal have undergone FGC, according to a 2022 UNICEF report. In the remote southeastern region of Kédougou, where Dakatéli is located, this figure soars to an alarming 91%.
A Deeply Entrenched Practice
The World Health Organization classifies FGC into three main types. The first involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris. The second extends this practice to include the labia minora and, in some cases, the labia majora. The most extreme form, infibulation, not only involves these cuttings but also narrows the vaginal opening by repositioning and sealing the remaining tissue of the lips, leaving only a small passage for urination and menstruation.
Bineta Kanté Diallo, a woman in her fifties draped in a light blue headscarf, speaks with the authority of firsthand experience. “In Dakatéli, every woman has undergone this practice,” she states. Until its prohibition, she was the village’s designated cutter, an inheritance passed down from her grandmother. For a decade, she carried out this ancestral duty without hesitation. “It was a responsibility entrusted to me, a legacy,” she explains, without a trace of remorse. “Had I refused, I would have faced repercussions.”
Walking through the sandy paths of Dakatéli, Bineta leads the way to a secluded corner behind her home. Emerging from her hut, she gestures toward a bamboo fence, scarcely taller than herself. “This is where it happened,” she says. Armed with nothing more than the blade of an old knife and a few cloths to absorb the blood, she performed the procedure. According to local custom, the practice was carried out either after a baptism—when girls were between infancy and the age of three—or just before their transition into adulthood, around 14 or 15 years old.
In these remote territories on the fringes of Senegal, nestled against the dense Guinean mountains, four ethnic communities coexist: the Bassaris and Bédiks, predominantly Christian, and the Fulani and Coniaguis, mostly Muslim. Despite their religious differences, they all have practiced or continue to practice FGC, influenced by erroneous religious teachings—neither the Bible nor the Quran mandates the practice—or by rigid social norms aimed at preserving female chastity before marriage.
"The Same Blade for Several Women"
“This practice has irreversible consequences,” warns Youssouf Sène, the head nurse in the nearby village of Kévoye. Over his fourteen years of service, he has treated countless complications, ranging from chronic infections to fatal hemorrhages.
“FGC is often performed with unclean instruments, without sterilization or disinfectant, using the same blade on multiple women,” he explains. “The risk of HIV transmission is exponentially higher for those who have undergone the procedure. Childbirth is also far more complicated and painful, as essential external genital tissues have been removed.”
For the first time in 2023, no girl in Dakatéli was subjected to FGC, Bineta Kanté Diallo proudly asserts. That year, local authorities, along with 51 villages in the Salémata district, signed a formal declaration renouncing the practice—the Ethiolo Declaration, named after the village that hosted the event. In 2024, an additional 21 communities followed suit.
To date, 16,000 people have been sensitized, according to Hervé Bangar, a social mobilizer and regional project coordinator in Kédougou. His dedication is deeply personal—he lost two older sisters to FGC-related infections.
A former teacher from the Bassari ethnic group, Hervé embarked on this mission in 2019, working with the NGO Tostan, which promotes human rights in rural areas. Since then, he has crisscrossed the region on his motorbike, navigating the undulating red-earth trails that cut through the low hills.
Initially, his outreach faced skepticism. A prior attempt by Kédougou’s health center in 2019 had failed to gain traction. However, over time, Dakatéli’s community leaders—including religious authorities and even the village cutters—accepted his efforts. Tostan’s approach involves three years of awareness-raising before a village signs an official commitment of abandonment.
“The goal is for communities to renounce FGC by conviction, rather than coercion,” Hervé emphasizes.
"The Abandonment Is Real"
Over the past six years, Tostan has trained twenty social mobilizers, mostly young women from the region. Known as “facilitators,” their role is to promote improved health practices and ensure that FGC is left behind.
One of them, 26-year-old Edith Kema Boubane, has grown increasingly passionate about the cause. “FGC causes immense suffering for women,” she states. Over time, her advocacy has strengthened to the point where she now considers herself, in her own words, a feminist. “The more we raise awareness, the fewer girls will be harmed,” she continues, holding her five-year-old daughter, Georgette, tightly in her arms. “Thanks to our determination, my child has been spared.”
Did these communities realize they were breaking the law? Sitting beneath the shade of a mango tree in his garden, Augustin Tablet Bindia, deputy chief of Epingué and a former cutter, swears he remained unaware for years, largely due to the region’s isolation.
From Kédougou, the regional capital, reaching his village requires over two hours of travel—first along the newly paved road to Salémata, completed in 2023, then along rugged dirt paths, impassable during the rainy season from June to September. “Information took a long time to reach us,” he insists, noting that his village lacks electricity, save for a few huts powered by solar panels. The nearest police station is over an hour and a half away, and administrative offices are even farther. “There have been cases where courts released cutters, ruling that they genuinely did not know the practice was illegal,” Hervé Bangar reports.
Today, many former cutters educated by Tostan are responsible for ensuring their villages uphold their commitment to abandoning FGC. Bineta Kanté Diallo is one such guardian of change. Under the watchful eyes of her grandchildren, she gestures toward a young mango tree in her backyard. “It replaced an old tree that once sheltered the ceremonies,” she explains. “We cut it down and burned it as a symbol of ending the practice.” She knows, with certainty, that in doing so, she has “undoubtedly saved lives.”
Though it will take years to fully assess the health improvements—many FGC complications arise during childbirth—nurse Youssouf Sène already observes a decline in cases of hemorrhage linked to excisions. “The abandonment of the practice is real in this region,” he confirms.
Village by village, the movement continues. “It’s not enough to educate a single cutter, or a single village, or even ten villages,” Hervé Bangar insists. “We must go further, even beyond the Guinean border, where FGC remains deeply entrenched.” In Guinea, nearly 95% of women aged 15 to 49 have undergone FGC, according to a March 2024 UNICEF report, making it the second most affected country in the world after Somalia.
Tostan is an international NGO that implements a three-year holistic education program in national languages in five West-African countries.
