At the UN, in September, Liberian president Joseph Nyuma Boakai Snr announced a permanent ban on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in his country, along with an ambitious gender equality agenda worth $8.3bn. Listening to his speech, I felt a mix of emotions: pride in my neighbours and disappointment in my homeland of Sierra Leone, which is retreating from its responsibilities towards women and girls like myself.
I was cut when I was a child. I remember being blindfolded and pinned down. I remember the pain and the blood. I remember the cousin who did not survive the ordeal. Too many Sierra Leonean girls still have the same experience in 2025. They suffer lifelong health problems, complications in childbirth, infection and trauma. Some even meet the same fate as my cousin.
Around 80% of girls and women aged 15 to 49 in Sierra Leone have undergone FGM, which is at the centre of the influential and secretive Bondo society’s initiation into womanhood. For decades, activists and survivors have spoken out against the practice. Civil society groups have worked in villages and towns, engaging with locals and soweis (the traditional female cutters), whom they offered other ways to earn income. They have provided alternative rites of passage, such as ‘Bloodless Bondo’, a strategy by my organisation, Amazonian Initiative Movement, which aims to keep other parts of the initiation process – home economics, grooming rituals, cooking lessons, and songs and ceremonies – while doing away with the blade.
Anti-FGM advocates have also documented deaths, organised marches, and built safe houses for girls and women being forced to undergo the practice. The evidence and improvements are already here. Yet, our government has refused to legislate.
Earlier this year, our Parliament passed a new Child Rights Act. Many hoped this law would finally criminalise FGM and protect the millions of women and girls still at risk, but our legislators publicly confirmed that the new law will carry no criminal penalty for cutting – almost as if they wanted to emphasise that FGM was not forbidden.
FGM’s omission in the Child Rights Act cannot be read as a technical oversight. It is a decision, one that contradicts both our moral obligations and our legal commitments. In July, the Community Court of Justice at the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) ruled that Sierra Leone must ban FGM, which it recognised as a form of torture. While the court is largely symbolic and holds little power to enforce rulings, Sierra Leone’s president, Julius Maada Bio, had been elected ECOWAS chair the previous month; he should have been the first to insist the ruling be honoured. Instead, his government has not acknowlegded it.
Contrast this paralysis with Liberia’s action.
President Boakai did not stop at a speech at the UN. He promised a law that will make permanent a previous three-year ban on FGM, as well as a budget and programs to implement change by promoting women entrepreneurs and supporting vulnerable households, and a national campaign against gender-based violence. He sent a clear message that the rights and dignity of women and girls belong at the centre of Liberia’s national development. Most importantly, he tied these domestic policies to Liberia’s new role on the UN Security Council, inviting accountability.
Maada Bio also addressed the UN last month. But the Sierra Leonean president focused on UN reform and spotlighting global injustices. The highlight of his time in New York seemed to be his United Nations General Assembly meeting with Bill Gates, where they discussed possible partnerships in areas such as healthcare, infrastructure, agriculture, and artificial intelligence. These discussions matter, but they are no substitute for protecting girls from violence in their own homes and communities. A nation cannot ask to be included in the global technological conversation while allowing half of its population to be mutilated unchecked. It cannot claim to embrace innovation while it rejects ingenious alternatives that would save millions of girls from harm.
The Sierra Leonean government must look at what its mates are doing.
First, it must either amend the Child Rights Act or introduce a complementary law to criminalise FGM with explicit penalties. Second, it must allocate resources to train police to investigate FGM cases, support enforcement, uphold prosecutions, take care of survivors, and educate the masses. Third, it must engage soweis in negotiated transitions to uphold the bloodless rites, so that the end of cutting does not mean the end of culture. Fourth, it must establish independent monitoring, so that laws on paper translate into real protections for girls and women.
None of this requires abandoning our culture.
Instead, it requires an honest discussion about what aspects of the culture are worth saving. The festivities? The sisterhood? The beautiful ushering into womanhood? Yes! The mutilation? The bleeding? The physical and psychological injury? No! The difference between Liberia and Sierra Leone is not tradition. Both nations share similar histories of initiation practices. The difference is political will. One president has chosen to make change permanent; the other has chosen to look away.
History will not remember which philanthropist’s hands our president shook in air-conditioned rooms in Manhattan. It will remember whether he had the courage to protect the nation’s daughters. Liberia has set the standard. ECOWAS has issued the ruling. Sierra Leone has the tools it needs to fight FGM. The next step is simple: pass the law, fund the programs, end the cutting once and for all. The choice is not between culture and rights.
The choice is between cowardice and justice.
Rugiatu Neneh Turay is the Head of the Amazonian Initiative Movement (AIM) and Chairperson of the Forum Against Harmful Practices (FAHP)
