SERREKUNDA, Gambia (AP) \u2014 Three women were charged in Gambia over the death of a one-month-old girl who had undergone female genital mutilation, the police said, in the first such case since the country stopped short of reversing a ban on the practice last year.<\/p>\n
The West African nation banned female genital cutting in 2015, but the country was rocked by a renewed debate about the practice last year following the first prosecutions of female cutters. It was the first time the practice \u2014 also known as female circumcision and outlawed in many nations \u2014 was publicly discussed. <\/p>\n
Eventually, the Gambian parliament upheld the ban<\/a>, but many say the practice continues in secrecy.<\/a><\/p>\n Three women were charged Tuesday under the ban, the Women\u2019s (Amendment) Act, 2015, the Gambian police said in a statement published Wednesday on social media. One woman is facing life imprisonment, and the other two were charged as accomplices.<\/p>\n \u201cPreliminary findings indicate the child was allegedly subjected to circumcision and later developed severe bleeding,\u201d the police said in a separate statement published Sunday, following the infant\u2019s death. \u201cShe was rushed to Bundung Maternal and Child Health Hospital, where she was pronounced dead on arrival.\u201d<\/p>\n The United Nations estimates that about 75% of women in Gambia have been subjected as young girls to the procedure known by its initials FGM, which includes partial or full removal of a girl\u2019s external genitalia. The World Health Organization says it\u2019s a form of torture.<\/p>\n More than 200 million women and girls across the world are survivors of FGM, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa<\/a>, according to U.N. estimates. In the past eight years alone, some 30 million women globally<\/a> have been cut, most of them in Africa but also in Asia and the Middle East, UNICEF said last year.<\/p>\n The procedure, typically performed by older women or traditional community practitioners, is often done with tools such as razor blades and can cause serious bleeding, death and complications later in life<\/a>, including in childbirth.<\/p>\n