Israeli army deliberately targeted World Central Kitchen convoy with three consecutive attacks, Al Jazeera concludes.
An investigation by Al Jazeera’s Sanad agency has found that the Israeli army intentionally targeted an aid convoy belonging to the World Central Kitchen (WCK) in three consecutive air raids on Rashid Street, south of Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip.
On Monday at 10:43pm (19:43 GMT), journalists reported an Israeli shelling targeting a vehicle on Rashid Street, which resulted in casualties. This matches the account of a displaced individual interviewed by Al Jazeera, who confirmed multiple bombings between 11:00 and 11:30pm (20:00 – 20:30 GMT).
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that the attack had been executed by Israeli forces, saying they had “unintentionally [hit] innocent people in the Gaza Strip … it happens in war.”
The Sanad investigation has found that the attacks were, in fact, intentional. Basing the research on open-source information, witness testimonies, and images from the site, a chronological and geographical timeline of the events was constructed.
WCK said in a statement on Tuesday that its workers had been leaving the Deir el-Balah warehouse after delivering 100 tonnes of food aid and that “despite coordinating movements with the [Israeli army], the convoy was hit”.
The shelling targeted three vehicles belonging to WCK, one at a time – two armoured and one unarmoured – killing seven relief workers of various nationalities, including a Palestinian driver, Saif Abu Taha, from Rafah.
Hasan al-Shorbagi, a displaced individual from Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip [Sanad/Al Jazeera]
Hasan al-Shorbagi, a displaced Palestinian who lives with his family near the bombing site, about 4.7km (2.9 miles) from the warehouse, told Al Jazeera the first car was hit by a projectile, completely burning it. This is consistent with the image of the burned armoured car.
According to al-Shorbagi’s testimony, the injured were transferred from the first targeted car to another armoured vehicle to expedite their transport.
A statement from WCK confirmed that the convoy left its warehouse in Deir el-Balah – shown on Google Maps at coordinates 31°24’54.7″N 34°22’05.1″E – and headed towards Rashid Street.
The second targeted vehicle at coordinates 31°24’41.97″ N 34°19’22.95″ E [Sanad/Al Jazeera]
This distance along the route from the warehouse to Rashid Street was about three kilometres (1.9 miles) and the first car was targeted about 1.7km (one mile) down the road.
The Sanad investigation found that the second vehicle was targeted approximately 800 metres (2,525 feet) away from where the first was hit.
The third car was targeted about 1.6km (nearly a mile) away from the second car, based on its location after being bombed.
Images taken from the bombing sites show that the vehicles were clearly marked on their roofs and windshields as belonging to WCK, indicating that they were in compliance and there had been prior coordination between WCK and the Israeli army about the movements.
A charred vehicle is shown at coordinates 31°25’00.43″ N 34°19’44.78″ E [Sanad/Al Jazeera]
Analysis of images of the second and third targeted vehicles showed signs of a projectile entering from the top and exiting through the bottom, suggesting that the cars were targeted from the air.
The Israeli army acknowledged its responsibility for the tragic incident involving the killing of relief workers in Gaza Monday night in an Israeli air raid. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the Israeli army “unintentionally” struck innocent people in Gaza.
The incident drew global condemnation. WCK said its team was travelling in a “deconflicted” area at the time. It called on Israel to stop “this indiscriminate killing” in Gaza and announced it was suspending operations in the region.
Every year on March 30, Palestinians hold protests and vigils and plant olive trees to reaffirm their connection to the land.
Every year on March 30, Palestinians observe Land Day, or Yom al-Ard, recalling the events of March 30, 1976, when six unarmed Palestinians were killed and more than 100 injured by Israeli forces during protests against Israel’s confiscation of Palestinian land.
How much land did Israel confiscate?
Israel ordered the confiscation of 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) of land belonging to Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Galilee. These plans were part of Israeli state policy to Judaise Galilee following the creation of the state of Israel.
The confiscated land is roughly the size of 3,000 football pitches or the area from the tip of Manhattan to Central Park in New York, US.
What do Palestinians do on Land Day?
Palestinians, both inside Israel and across the occupied territory, mark this day by holding protests and vigils and planting olive trees to reaffirm their connection to the land. The protests are often met with brutal use of force by Israel.
Um Ahmad al-Banna was wounded in the protests of March of Return and joined Land Day commemorations in Gaza in 2022 [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
Is Israel still seizing land?
Yes, Israel has continued to seize large swaths of Palestinian land, designating them as military zones, state land and other labels.
Most recently, on March 22, 2024, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared Israel was seizing 800 hectares (1,977 acres) in the occupied West Bank, in a move that would facilitate building more illegal settlements.
“While there are those in Israel and in the world who seek to undermine our right to Judea and Samaria and the country in general, we promote settlement through hard work and in a strategic manner all over the country,” Smotrich said, using Biblical names for the area that are commonly heard in Israel.
On March 6, Israel’s settlement-planning authority announced it had approved the construction of some 3,500 new housing units in Maale Adumim, Kedar and Efrat within the occupied West Bank.
From November 1, 2022 to October 31, 2023, Israel has approved at least 24,000 illegal housing units to be built on Palestinian land.
Earlier this month, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said settlements had expanded by a record amount and risked eliminating any possibility of a Palestinian state.
Rajesh Jatavad*, a delivery rider for Zomato, a food delivery app in southern India, is worried about his full name being displayed for customers on the platform – because his last name reveals that he belongs to a marginalised caste.
More privileged communities among India’s caste system historically considered castes like Jatavad’s “untouchables”.
Jatavad’s worry is based on lived experience. “It is easy for others to identify my caste from my surname. Some of the customers, after reading my surname from the app, they won’t allow me near them, or even [allow me to] hand over the food packet. They will tell me to place it down and then leave,” Rajesh told Al Jazeera.
Then, in mid-March, his employer announced a decision that threatens to make Jatavad’s already perilous daily struggle against caste biases even tougher.
On March 19, Deepinder Goyal, CEO of Zomato, declared on social media platform X that the company was launching a “Pure Veg Mode along with a Pure Veg Fleet on Zomato, for customers who have a 100% vegetarian dietary preference.”
“India has the largest percentage of vegetarians in the world, and one of the most important feedback we’ve gotten from them is that they are very particular about how their food is cooked, and how their food is handled,” he wrote.
The Pure Veg Mode allows customers to pick from curated list of restaurants that serve only vegetarian food and excludes eateries that serve any meat or fish. The Pure Veg Fleet, Goyal announced, would consist of riders who will only carry food from Pure Veg Mode restaurants.
And in the future, Goyal wrote, the company plans to introduce other specialised fleets – a comment that left Jatavad anxious and that betrays, said sociologists, an ignorance of a complex reality that undergirds India’s enormous app-based food delivery industry, valued at $7.4bn in 2023.
More than half – 54.5 percent – of delivery workers belong to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, according to a March 11 study by the University of Pennsylvania.
These communities are designated “scheduled” by the government because they have suffered centuries of discrimination and socioeconomic disadvantages. In India’s caste-stratified society, they are also often associated with being “impure” by privileged castes.
Zomato’s latest policies could end up reinforcing those stereotypes and deepening the discrimination workers like Jatavad face, said sociologists and workers’ rights advocates. There are 700,000 to one million food delivery workers on platforms like Zomato in India.
Delivery riders – many working for Zomato – wait in line to collect their orders outside a mall in Mumbai, India, on August 10, 2023 [Francis Mascarenhas/Reuters]
‘If that happens, I’m in trouble’
Jatavad learned about the specialised fleets from a screenshot shared by his colleagues. Instantly, his mind went racing.
“’What is the company aiming for?” he said. “Will they create fleets based on religion and caste next? If that happens, I’m in trouble.”
In his posts on X, Goyal explained his rationale for the separate fleets. “Because despite everyone’s best efforts, sometimes the food spills into the delivery boxes. In those cases, the smell of the previous order travels to the next order and may lead to the next order smelling of the previous order,” Goyal reasoned. “For this reason, we had to separate the fleet for veg orders.”
Following pushback over the risks colour-coded uniforms could pose to riders, if neighbourhoods that view meat as impure decide to attack or abuse delivery workers, Goyal backtracked partly.
“All our riders – both our regular fleet, and our fleet for vegetarians, will wear the colour red,” he wrote in a follow-up post. “This will ensure that our red uniform delivery partners are not incorrectly associated with non-veg food and blocked by any during any special days … our riders’ physical safety is of paramount importance to us,” his post read.
But while riders carrying vegetarian and non-vegetarian food will not be distinguishable by their uniform, they will still belong to different fleets – and customers will be able to pick the “Pure Veg” fleet on the Zomato app.
Workers are worried.
“Today, they will say veg and non-veg; tomorrow, they will bring in religion and caste,” Shaik Salauddin, national general secretary and co-founder of the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT), a trade union federation of ride-sharing and other gig transport workers, told Al Jazeera. “They will say, upper-caste customers have demanded upper-caste delivery boys. This will create a further division among workers.”
Shaikh questioned why Zomato was wading into sensitive food and culture-related issues in a country as diverse as India. “This company is dividing people,” he said. “If they’re here to do business, let them do business.”
‘Purity and pollution’
Asked by Al Jazeera about the concerns of delivery workers, Zomato said that customers would not be able to choose delivery partners based on the rider’s own dietary preference.
It added that the “delivery partners onboarded on Zomato are not and will never be discriminated against on the basis of any criteria (including dietary/ political/religion preferences).”
But that’s easier said than done, according to Mini Mohan, a sociologist based in the southern Indian state of Kerala, who argued that by segregating vegetarian and non-vegetarian options, Zomato was exploiting religious and caste-based divisions.
“The caste system in India links food with purity and pollution,” she said. “Vegetarian food is considered ‘pure’, while meat and occupations associated with lower castes are seen as ‘impure’. This shapes dietary practices, with higher castes even avoiding food handled by lower castes.”
Zomato considered special green uniforms for its ‘Pure Veg Fleet’ delivery riders rather than the red uniform pictured here, but has backed away from that plan, Kolkata, India, July 13, 2021 [Rupak De Chowduri/Reuters]
Zomato’s approach “not only discriminates against certain groups but also risks widening social rifts. When food choices dictate treatment, it creates conflicts and undermines social harmony,” she added.
And the intersection of deep-seated biases and food delivery isn’t new for India – or for Zomato.
In 2019, Zomato faced controversy when a customer cancelled an order due to the delivery person’s religion. Zomato’s response, highlighting that food has no religion, was widely praised on social media. Five years later, the company now find itself on the other side of the fence.
‘Rise in Brahmin restaurants’
The concept of pure and impure food in Hinduism dates back to the Dharmasutras, Vedic texts written by different authors between BCE 700 and BCE 100, TS Syam Kumar, a Sanskrit scholar and teacher and debater told Al Jazeera.
“Dharmasutras are ancient Indian texts that functioned as guides for dharma – a concept encompassing duty, righteousness and ethical conduct. They are considered the earliest source of Hindu law,” he said.
Quoting chapters from Dharmasutras, the scholar said that the scriptures declared that food that has been touched by an impure person becomes impure, but is not rendered unfit to be eaten. On the other hand, food brought by a Shudra – the lowest rung of the traditional caste hierarchy – is unfit to be eaten.
The caste system often associates traditionally disadvantaged castes with meat consumption and considers them “polluted”, justifying their social exclusion. That’s true even in Kerala, a state often seen as a progressive bastion in India.
Kerala, too, he said, “is witnessing a rise in Brahmin restaurants”.
“People prioritise to buy certain brands of ingredients with upper-caste names,” Kumar said.
Meanwhile, Shashi Bellamkonda, a marketing professor and former hotelier said Zomato’s controversial approach is the outcome of a failure of communication and of not understanding the customer.
“Instead of introducing a separate ‘Pure Veg Mode’ and ‘Pure Veg Fleet’, the company could have focused on improving its existing processes to ensure that vegetarian orders are handled with the same care and attention as non-vegetarian orders,” he said. “And communicated that to customers.”
Rights group says President Nayib Bukele has reduced gang violence by replacing it with state violence.
As El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele embarks on his second term in office, an international rights group has warned that his war on gangs has created a spiralling human rights crisis.
As of February 2024, Bukele’s draconian two-year campaign, which has seen the authorities detain about 78,000 people, has caused 235 deaths in state custody, said Amnesty International on Wednesday. Citing a local rights group, it also reported 327 cases of enforced disappearances.
“Reducing gang violence by replacing it with state violence cannot be a success,” said Amnesty’s Americas director Ana Piquer in a statement. The Salvadoran government had adopted “disproportionate measures”, she said, denying, minimising and concealing human rights violations.
Bukele launched his war on gangs in March 2022, slashing homicides to the lowest rate in three decades after imposing a state of emergency that suspended the need for arrest warrants and the right to a fair trial, among other civil liberties. Prison overcrowding currently stands at 148 percent, according to Amnesty.
After Bukele consolidated power in a landslide win in February’s election, the rights group warned the situation looks set to worsen. “If this course is not corrected, the instrumentalization of the criminal process and the establishment of a policy of torture in the prison system could persist,” it said.
On Tuesday, Minister of Justice and Security Gustavo Villatoro pledged there would be no let-up in the government’s campaign against the gangs, and promised to “eradicate this endemic evil”.
“This war against these terrorists will continue,” he said on state television.
Piquer said that Bukele had created a “false illusion” that he had found “the magic formula to solve the very complex problems of violence and criminality in a seemingly simple way”. She described the international community’s response as “timid”.
“The international community must respond in a robust, articulate and forceful manner, condemning any model of public security that is based on human rights violations,” she said.
Canada has organised helicopter flights for ‘vulnerable’ citizens to leave Haiti for the neighbouring Dominican Republic.
Canada has launched a programme to get its citizens out of Haiti, as the Caribbean nation grapples with a surge in gang violence, political instability and a widening humanitarian crisis.
Speaking to reporters in Ottawa, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly said on Monday that her government would assist “the most vulnerable Canadians” in leaving Haiti for the neighbouring Dominican Republic.
This includes Canadian citizens with medical conditions or those who have children, Joly said.
“At present, the Dominican Republic has strict [eligibility] requirements for all those entering the country. Only Canadian citizens who have a valid Canadian passport will be eligible for this assisted departure,” she told reporters.
Joly said 18 Canadian citizens had left Haiti via the programme on Monday.
Canada is home to nearly 180,000 people of Haitian descent, and Haitian Canadians had called on the government to do more to help their relatives stuck in Haiti amid a weeks-long surge in deadly violence.
In early March, armed gangs launched attacks on police stations, prisons and other state institutions across the capital of Port-au-Prince and demanded the resignation of the unelected Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
More than 360,000 Haitians have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the violence, according to United Nations estimates. Others have been trapped in their homes in Port-au-Prince, unable to access food, water and other supplies.
Humanitarian agencies have warned that the country is facing a growing food crisis. Armed groups have looted containers of aid, and the country’s main airport in Port-au-Prince remains closed due to the violence.
“Previously, 80 percent of Port-au-Prince was dominated by gangs; now, they control nearly 90 percent of neighborhoods,” Laurent Uwumuremyi, the Haiti director at Mercy Corps, said in a statement on Friday.
“Basic tasks, such as shopping for groceries at street markets, pharmacies, or seeing a doctor, are now becoming impossible,” he continued.
“If the situation continues to deteriorate without any efforts to address the unfolding humanitarian crisis, Port-au-Prince will soon find itself completely overwhelmed by this extreme violence.”
Asked on Monday about the logistics of Canada’s evacuation programme, Joly, the foreign minister, said evacuees needed to reach a gathering point in a safe area. From there, they would be transported to the Dominican Republic by helicopter.
“I can’t give details on the nature of the operations because I don’t want those operations to be targeted by the gangs,” she said.
Joly added that the government was looking into other pathways to help other Canadians and their relatives leave Haiti, as well as Canadian permanent residents and their family members.
The United States also launched helicopter evacuations from Haiti last week.
“We are in the process of organising government-chartered helicopter flights from Port-au-Prince to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic,” US State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters on March 20.
“And from Santo Domingo, American citizens will be responsible for their own onward travel to the United States.”
A State Department spokesperson said on Saturday that more than 230 US citizens had left Haiti since March 17, according to US media reports.
This includes departures from Port-au-Prince as well as the northern coastal city of Cap-Haitien, the official said.
The US is home to the largest Haitian diaspora community in the world, with more than 1.1 million people in the country identifying as Haitian in 2022, according to census figures.
The IOM believes the people were migrants who died in the process of being smuggled through the desert in Libya.
The bodies of at least 65 people have been discovered in a mass grave in southwest Libya, the United Nations’ migration agency has said.
In a statement on Friday, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) noted that the circumstances of the people’s deaths and nationalities was unknown “but it is believed that they died in the process of being smuggled through the desert”.
The agency stressed that while Libyan authorities had launched an investigation into the deaths, it is important for them to “ensure a dignified recovery, identification and transfer of the remains of the deceased migrants”, and notify and assist their families.
“Each report of a missing migrant or a loss of life represents a grieving family searching for answers about their loved ones or acknowledging the tragedy of the loss,” a spokesperson of the agency said in the statement.
In an unverified message on Facebook on Monday, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Ministry of Interior in Tripoli, posted drone footage of a desert area, showing white markings and yellow tape around the remains of bodies with numbers on them, the Reuters news agency reported.
The CID said the bodies were found in al-Jahriya Valley in Al-Shuwairf town, about 421km (262 miles) south of Tripoli.
The department added that after taking DNA samples, all the bodies were buried in a cemetery on instructions from the attorney general of the appeals chamber in Gharyan town.
More than a decade of violent instability since the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising, has helped turn Libya into a fertile ground for human traffickers, who have long been accused of abusing migrants and refugees.
The country, which is host to an estimated 600,000 migrants and refugees, is also a transit route for people seeking refuge in Europe across the Mediterranean.
Large groups of people are often put into boats that are not big enough to safely move them across the treacherous route.
Some are escaping conflict or persecution, while others dream of better opportunities in Europe. They usually land in Italy before trying to make their way to other countries, particularly in Western Europe.
According to the IOM, at least 3,129 deaths and disappearances of migrants were recorded in 2023 along the Mediterranean route, which it described as “the deadliest migratory route”.
“Without regular pathways that provide opportunities for legal migration, such tragedies will continue to be a feature along this route,” the UN agency said.
Italy and other European Union governments are trying to quell the number of migrants crossing from North Africa, providing money and resources to countries like Libya and Tunisia to help stop the departures from their shores.
The suspects will remain in custody until May 18 and face as long as 10 years in prison if found guilty.
A Russian court has ordered the arrest of a bar administrator and its art director, accusing them of organising an “extremist organisation” under new legislation criminalising the LGBTQ community.
It is the first criminal case launched since Russia banned the so-called “international LGBT movement” in November, amid an accelerating crackdown on LGBTQ people.
“The court chose a preventive measure for the art director and administrator of the ‘Pose’ bar,” the Orenburg tribunal said on Wednesday. The two will remain in custody until May 18 and face up to 10 years in prison, according to the court in southwestern Russia.
The tribunal earlier accused them of “promoting non-traditional sexual relations among the visitors of the bar”.
Police raided the bar earlier this month, and videos of the humiliating detentions of some of the club visitors circulated online.
“The accused, people of non-traditional sexual orientation, acted in premeditation with a group of people … who also support the views and activities of the international public association LGBT,” the court said on Telegram.
According to the Moscow Times, the independent news website Mediazona identified the manager as Diana Kamilyanova and the art director as Alexander Klimov.
‘LGBT as an extremist movement’
Russia has released publicly only a vague description of what it calls the “international LGBT movement”, which critics have said allows the prosecution of anyone protecting LGBTQ rights or simply identifying with the community.
The director of the League of the Safe Internet and figurehead of the ultra-traditional faction pushing for repressive laws, Ekaterina Mizulina, hailed the criminal proceedings.
“This is the first criminal case in Russia after the decision of the Supreme Court to recognise LGBT as an extremist movement,” Mizulina said.
Mizulina said that “local activists” told the police about the club, amid a climate of denunciations of dissident voices.
“What LGBTQ persons and human rights activists have feared since the end of last year has finally come to pass,” Amnesty International said on Tuesday.
Lawmakers in 2013 banned people from promoting “non-traditional” relationships to children and since then have stepped up pressure on the remaining liberal corners of Russian society.
The Kremlin has further ramped up conservative rhetoric since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, casting the conflict as a battle against the West and its liberal values.
In the secluded hills south of Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, Abu al-Kabash used to wake up daily to his prized possession: a grove of pomegranate and fig trees that towered over the six different kinds of aloe plants enveloping his home.
That is all gone.
Since Israel started its war on Gaza following Hamas’s October 7 attacks, assaults on Palestinians by Israeli settlers became so violent that the 76-year-old farmer had to abandon the land passed down to him from his father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
“It was a choice between life or death,” Abu al-Kabash said.
He is far from the only one. More than 1,200 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have been forced from their homes since the conflict started, according to rights groups and the United Nations.
Data gathered by activists and verified with satellite images by Al Jazeera’s verification unit, Sanad, show that between October 2023 and January 2024, settlers in the occupied West Bank have built at least 15 outposts and 18 roads – illegal under both Israeli and international law. In addition, settlers built hundreds of metres of fences and multiple roadblocks, further limiting Palestinians’ movement.
The unprecedented uprooting has led to the disintegration of at least 15 Palestinian communities so far, with Israeli settlers fast expanding their presence. Their goal, experts say, is to reshape the demography of the West Bank while breaking the backbone of the territory earmarked for a future Palestinian state.
“When there is a war, that is when settlers take advantage and try to establish as many outposts as they can,” said Mauricio Lapchik, an activist with Peace Now, an Israeli organisation documenting settlement activities. The group recorded a similar uptick in illegal outposts during the years of the second Intifada in the early 2000s.
Illegal outposts
Outposts are typically makeshift encampments ranging from single caravans to a few modular structures built on rural Palestinian land.
They are built by members of Israel’s wider settler movement, which seeks to enforce an Israeli presence on illegally occupied land. The outpost builders are often driven by an ultra-hardline ideology that demands Jews populate all of Palestinian land and force Palestinians out.
All outposts, like settlements, are illegal under international law. Israel, however, considers only the outposts illegal, claiming they were erected without government approval. Yet, outposts are often approved retroactively as settlements.
Satellite images show outposts built in the first four months of the war scattered across the occupied West Bank, suggesting Israeli settlers have become bolder and are pushing their presence beyond areas close to existing settlements.
Drag the slider to see before and after images of outpost construction over the past few months.
Illegal roads
Roads are key to establishing a presence in remote areas, and several have been cut through private Palestinian land since October 7.
The dozens of roads not only take Palestinian land but also become lines Palestinian farmers and herders know are dangerous to cross because settlers will attack them.
The verified satellite images below show dozens of new roads built after October 7 linking outposts to other Israeli-controlled areas, such as farms or settlements.
Rights groups say proposed rollback of 2015 law will overturn women’s rights across the region as a whole.
The Gambia has taken steps towards lifting a ban on female circumcision, a move that could make it the first country in the world to reverse legal protections against the practice for millions of women and girls.
Politicians in the West African nation’s parliament voted 42 to four on Monday to advance the controversial bill, which would repeal a landmark 2015 ban on female genital mutilation (FGM) that made the practice punishable by up to three years in prison
Almameh Gibba, the legislator who introduced the bill, argued that the ban violated citizens’ rights to “practice their culture and religion” in the overwhelmingly Muslim country. “The bill seeks to uphold religious loyalty and safeguard cultural norms and values,” he said.
But activists and rights organisations say the proposed legislation reverses years of progress and risks damaging the country’s human rights record.
A protester opposed to female genital mutilation holds a placard outside the National Assembly in Banjul, The Gambia, on March 18, 2024 [Muhamadou Bittaye/AFP]
Jaha Marie Dukureh, of Safe Hands for Girls, an NGO seeking to end FGM, told Al Jazeera that the practice was “child abuse”. She, herself, underwent the practice and watched her sister bleed to death following the procedure.
“The people who applaud FGM in this country, a lot of them are men. These are men who don’t have the same lived experiences that we do, and women who have been through this practice continue to tell them every single day what their suffering is, what their pain is,” she said.
The debate over repealing the ban, imposed by former Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, who ruled the country with an iron fist for 22 years before being toppled in 2016, has divided the nation.
The debate flared up in August, when three women were fined for carrying out FGM on eight infant girls, becoming the first people convicted under the law.
The bill will now be sent to a parliamentary committee for further scrutiny before a third reading, a process that is expected to take three months. The committee can make amendments to the measure.
Health risks
UNICEF, the UN agency for children, defines FGM as “the partial or total removal of the female external genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons”.
Seventy-six percent of Gambian females aged between 15 and 49 have undergone FGM, according to a 2021 report by UNICEF.
It can lead to serious health problems, including infections, bleeding, infertility and complications in childbirth, and impairs sexual pleasure.
“Girls’ bodies are their own. FGM robs them of autonomy over their bodies and causes irreversible harm,” said the UN’s The Gambia office on X ahead of the debate.
#FGM is a harmful practice that violates women and girls’ #HumanRights.
We remain committed to supporting🇬🇲 efforts in upholding & protecting the rights and dignity of all citizens, including #Women and #Girls.
The number of women and girls who have undergone FGM worldwide has increased to 230 million from 200 million eight years ago, UNICEF reported this month.
It said the largest share of those women and girls were found in African countries, with more than 144 million cases, followed by more than 80 million in Asia and the number surpassing six million in the Middle East.
Rights groups believe that The Gambia’s move will set a dangerous precedent for women’s rights.
“There’s the inherent risk that this is just the first step and it could lead to the rollback of other rights such as the law on child marriage … and not just in The Gambia but in the region as a whole,” said Divya Srinivasan, from women’s rights NGO Equality Now.
Criminalisation was a crucial step in the fight against female circumcision, Equality Now said, but noted that more than half of the 92 countries where FGM is practised have laws banning it.
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