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From late 2025 till January of this year, community organizations and local media have documented a disturbing rise in the initiation of children, particularly in rural areas. The festive season was filled with images on social media of young girls undergoing these “rites of passage,” some even allegedly sponsored by wealthy local politicians.
These ceremonies appeared to be conducted openly, with little or no fear of arrest. One of these mass initiations included up to fifty underage girls who were forcibly initiated in the Gbo-Kakajama area near Kenema. According to local reporting, the youngest child to endure this was three years old.
These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a wider pattern: when the law fails to draw a clear line, violence fills the gap.
Why are we seeing this surge in girls going to the Bondo bush over the holidays? It is because last year, in July 2025, our country came to a crucial turning point and chose the path of inaction. Parliament deliberated over the amendment of the Child Rights Act. It was a moment that could have defined our commitment to the protection of the most vulnerable among us: our children, and in particular, our girls. It was a moment where we, as a country, through our parliament, could have made a critical and historic decision to implement laws that would finally protect girls from the violence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Instead, we chose to continue to allow it.
The decision we made by deliberately refusing to criminalize the forced initiation of girls, reflects who we are as a nation and what values truly govern our laws and our collective conscience. Sadly, it mirrors our inaction in response to the July 8, 2025, ECOWAS court ruling for Sierra Leone to ban FGM. That ruling was backed by national, regional, and global consensus that FGM constitutes a grave human rights violation with severe effects on health, and even the death of its victims.
THE FACTS ON THE GROUND
- A binding ECOWAS ruling has not been enforced.
On July 8, 2025, the ECOWAS Court ruled that the forced cutting of Kadijatu Balaima Allieu was torture and a violation of her human rights. The Court ordered Sierra Leone to criminalize FGM, investigate and prosecute those responsible, and pay $30,000 in compensation. None of these orders have been fully implemented, and FGM is still not banned in national law. - Justice remains incomplete.
Although the survivor won at ECOWAS, the domestic criminal case against the perpetrators is still pending, reinforcing the belief that FGM carries no real consequences. - Enforcement failure is embarrassing.
In January 2026, ECOWAS confirmed it would come to Freetown in February to assess non-compliance, and speak to Sierra Leonean authorities. - Silence in the law has fueled impunity.
The amended Child Rights Act was passed without criminalizing FGM, despite strong public pressure and the ECOWAS ruling. Since late 2025, this silence has been followed by increased initiation of younger children and more open defiance by FGM practitioners.
Given our President’s leadership role in ECOWAS, one would think upholding the ruling would be, if not a matter of courtesy, at least one of duty. Yet to everyone’s surprise, the ruling has not even been acknowledged. What this tells us is that, despite regional court rulings, despite decades of advocacy, and despite overwhelming evidence of harm, the suffering of girls is still treated as an acceptable trade-off. Once again, cultural sensitivity is used to justify this wrong, when the reality is rooted in political convenience and moral cowardice.
We have a tendency to think of inaction as neutral, as the absence of a definitive stance. It is not. The government of Sierra Leone is not simply choosing to be still; it is giving bad actors momentum to move in its place. The President is not simply abstaining from action. Through his refusal to do the needful, he is actively granting permission: permission for the initiation of girls to happen with impunity, permission for FGM practitioners to operate openly, and permission for violence against women and girls to intensify.
Think about that innocent three-year-old in the Bondo initiation pictures, covered in powder, with her intricately-tied headscarf. She does not know what the Child Rights Act is. She can’t even pronounce ECOWAS. She is oblivious to the fact that she could have been protected by more courageous leadership and decisive action. Yet she has borne the cost of our leaders’ cowardice. Her body was violated before she could even understand what was being done to her. Her future was compromised before she could truly speak. She was subjected to an experience no human being should ever endure, let alone a toddler.
If we continue down this road of deliberate inaction while paying mere lip service to progress on the safety and freedom of women and girls, history will judge us with clarity. The cost of doing nothing will be measured not in political comfort, but in the trauma and stolen childhoods of our daughters.
