On October 14, 2025, a day after the International Day of the Girl Child, Sierra Leone’s Solicitor General, Robert Kowa, announced that President Julius Maada Bio had assented to the Child Rights Act 2024, making it the law of the land.
This should have been a momentous step forward in safeguarding the nation’s children, introducing protections against abuse, exploitation, and ensuring rights to education, health, and identity. Yet, this legislation represents a profound betrayal. It deliberately omits an explicit prohibition on female genital mutilation (FGM), thereby mocking the very principles of child protection it claims to uphold.
As Alimatu Dimonekene MBE have rightly stated, ‘To every Member of Parliament who supported this version of the bill you have failed our children and disgraced the humanity you swore to defend. Removing the FGM clause because some believe mutilating girls is “culture” is indefensible.’
The Child Rights Act 2024 was supposed to build on earlier efforts to align Sierra Leone’s laws with international standards, such as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. However, its failure to address FGM exposes a glaring inconsistency.
The Government celebrated the ban on child marriage. What it fails to understand is that FGM and child marriage are deeply interwoven. Both are rooted in patriarchal control over girls’ bodies, sexuality, and futures. In Sierra Leone, where 83% of women aged 15-49 have undergone FGM and 71% were cut before age 15, banning one without the other is a half-measure that leaves girls vulnerable to lifelong physical and psychological harm.
Complications from FGM include severe pain, hemorrhage, infections, sepsis, death, traumatic sexual experiences, obstructed labor, and obstetric fistula, leading to incontinence and social stigma.
This omission is particularly egregious in light of the July 8, 2025, ruling by the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice in the case of FAHP & Ors v. Republic of Sierra Leone. The court declared that Sierra Leone’s failure to criminalize FGM violates multiple international obligations, including Articles 2(1)(b), 4, and 5 of the Maputo Protocol, which mandates states to “prohibit, through legislative measures backed by sanctions, all forms of female genital mutilation… in order to eradicate them.” It also breaches Article 21 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, requiring measures to eliminate harmful practices prejudicial to children’s health. The court found FGM to constitute inhuman and degrading treatment, violating rights to dignity, security of person, and effective remedies under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Ordering Sierra Leone to enact immediate legislative measures to prohibit and sanction FGM, investigate perpetrators, and adopt educational and socioeconomic policies to eradicate it, the ruling awarded $30,000 in compensation to survivor Kadijatu Balaima Allieu, who was forcibly subjected to the practice in 2016. The court rejected Sierra Leone’s claims that general laws, like the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) Act 2022, suffice, noting they do not specifically criminalize FGM.
President Bio’s decision to sign the Act without revisions flouts this binding ruling from the very regional body he chairs. By ignoring the court’s directive, he undermines ECOWAS’s authority and his own credibility. As Yasmin Jusu-Sheriff put it bluntly in an interview to the Guardian, “The matter is in his hands, and his hands alone. He holds the sword of Damocles over himself. This is the thing that will determine whether he will go down as the greatest, most human rights-loving president of all time, or not.”
The GEWE Act, intended to advance gender equality, becomes a mockery without addressing FGM, as it fails to fulfill the state’s due diligence to protect against private acts of violence. The disappointment echoes across civil society. Vickie Remoe called the signing “shameful,” lamenting that girls as young as 6 or 7 will continue suffering in “back bushes” because President Bio “refused to take a stand.” Alimatu Dimonekene MBE described it as “a sad day,” accusing parliamentarians of failing children by removing the FGM clause under the guise of “culture,” even mocking advocates in debates.
Organizations like the Advocacy Movement Network and the Institute for Legal Research and Advocacy for Justice (ILRAJ) had urged reinstatement of FGM provisions during parliamentary deliberations. Internationally, UN experts have called for ending impunity for FGM, while activists highlight recent deaths, such as two girls in 2024 from FGM-related complications.
This is not just a missed opportunity; it’s a regression that contravenes Sierra Leone’s commitments under the UN’s 2012 resolution banning FGM globally. Culture can never justify torture or the systemic violation of girls’ bodily integrity and human rights. With the Act now signed into law, President Bio and parliament must urgently prioritize amendments to incorporate an explicit FGM ban in alignment with the ECOWAS ruling, while civil society ramps up advocacy, education, and legal challenges to protect vulnerable girls from further harm. Sierra Leone’s girls deserve nothing less than unwavering protection and justice.