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.
