By By: Staff Writer
MONROVIA — President Joseph Boakai’s submission of the “Act to Ban Cultural Practices of Female Genital Mutilation and Child Marriage in Liberia” was hailed this week as a breakthrough by women’s rights groups. Yet even as the bill headed to the legislature, the government signaled it may be preparing to walk back the very prohibition it claims to support.
Minister of Internal Affairs Francis Sakila Nyumalin announced plans to lift the three-year moratorium on FGM on August 15, 2026. Speaking in Fissebu, Zorzor District, he said the Council of Traditional Leaders would “convene as a national body,” make public new regulations, and then lift the ban. The disclosure came in the presence of traditional practitioners, including women zoes, and followed the reinstatement of two chiefs previously suspended for violating the moratorium.
The contradiction exposes a deeper rift between policy and practice. Boakai submitted the bill after returning from the Fourth World Conference on Women in New York and tied it to an $8.3 billion agenda on gender equality. “What was once a three-year moratorium will now become national law,” he said. But inside the House, the bill already faces resistance. Rep. Gizzie Kollince of Lofa County District #4 opposed it, asking, “Why can’t they call homosexuals, transgender people, and tattoos harmful—instead of our culture?” Rep. Moima Briggs-Mensah countered that “cultural preservation must never come at the expense of human life or dignity.”
Experts say Liberia’s pattern of announcing bans without enforcement is why previous moratoriums under Presidents Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and George Weah failed. The missing element, they argue, has been buy-in from traditional leaders who oversee the practice. Minister Nyumalin’s statement underscores that gap: “Under the leadership of President Joseph Boakai, there is no way we will ever dream about doing away with our culture and traditions of this country.” Many traditional leaders view the ban as foreign imposition linked to LGBTQ and abortion rights — claims the U.S. and Europe deny. Some have suggested “FGM without mutilation” as a compromise.
The bill now faces a test in the legislature before it can go to the Senate and back to the president for signature. Speaker Richard Koon told women’s advocates, “I am a father of five girls… we will be able to pass this Act before we close this term.” But with a minister announcing a lift date and chiefs reinstated for prior violations, advocates question whether the submission is lawmaking or optics. For girls between 15 and 49 who remain at risk, the critical juncture is not the bill’s introduction, but whether the Boakai administration will enforce it — or concede to the council it now plans to empower.
Credit: Daily Observer
