Sierra Leone can never ban Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) because it is part of the country's culture, an official said.

Social Welfare, Gender and Children's Affairs minister Moijua Kaikai said claims that the government was planning a ban on the prickly age-old practice were untrue.

"Bondo (as FGM is better known) practice will never die, it is part of our culture but it should be practised responsibly," Mr Kaikai said at the end of a conference of Soweis, the local name for elderly women who head various secret societies, which carry out the initiations.

Bondo is considered a major part of Sierra Leone's culture and was promoted as the bridge between adolescence and maturity. Yet even babies were initiated.

Activists say the practice, regardless of age, was barbaric and want it banned.

Medical doctors have associated FGM with serious infections, bleeding, infertility, maternal complications and even death in some cases.

The practice is mainly carried out in 29 countries in Africa and Asia, according to Unicef.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 140 million women and girls worldwide have been subjected to the practice, mostly in West Africa.

HIGHEST PREVALENCE

The UN General Assembly in 2012 banned FGM.

According to Unicef, of the 29 countries practising FGM, 24 were said to have passed laws protecting girls against it, and Sierra Leone was not one of them. Yet the country has one of the highest prevalence of the female cut.

Over 80 per cent of Sierra Leonean women and girls have been cut, the agency says.

Gambia became one of about 20 African countries to have outlawed FGM when President Yahya Jammeh last month unilaterally declared the practice illegal.

Nigeria, the Central African Republic, Egypt and South Africa are among the countries that had already banned FGM.

All over the world, children continue to face the challenge of protection, health, education, child labour and teenage pregnancy, including early marriages, which are often linked to early initiation into the Bondo society, said Zihariliwa Nawalge, chief of Child Protection at Unicef, one of the sponsors of the anti-FGM campaign in Sierra Leone.

Due to the influential nature of the traditional leaders, the Freetown government was reluctant to ban the practice for fear of political backlash.

However, in 2012, the government and civil society activists reached an agreement that prohibits girls under 18 from being initiated. The agreement also prescribes that even after attaining 18 years, consent must be sought before a girl is initiated.

But all those were rarely adhered to, campaigners say.

The Soweis were among the most vulnerable during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone.

There were reports of chains of infection resulting from genital cuttings.

The claims led to a temporal ban, which was said to have been highly effective.

This week, the largest gathering of the Soweis was convened in Freetown, the first after the end of the Ebola epidemic, to discuss the way forward.

Activists were keen to remind the secret societies of the existence of the agreement.

The Bondo women insist on remaining part of the process of “reshaping the future” of girls, hence they cannot envisage a world without the practice.

But there were commercial implication also. The women were concerned about having to wait for girls to come of age before they were initiated.

Previously, the initiation was carried out several times in a year. But due to the age restriction, it was being done at most twice a year now.

And that, said Ms Koloneh Sesay, the national President of the Soweis, meant reduction in their income.

Ms Sesay said they wanted some sort of compensation.

-Africa Review