Anti-excision activist Jaha Dukureh!

Ms. Dukureh was born in The Gambia in 1989; she obtained American citizenship in 2015. She is married and has children from her second marriage. She was a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM) from childhood and forced into forced marriage at the age of 15..

Ms. Dukureh is the founder and CEO of “ Safe Hands for Girls », an NGO that comes to the aid of African women and girls who are victims of FGM and strives to treat the serious physical and psychological consequences that these mutilations leave on them, throughout their lives. Alongside women's organizations and civil society, she helped the Gambian government ban FGM, following a youth mobilization and campaign across the country.

“I started talking about it… I started with a blog, in which I shared my own experience. Soon after, I started a support group for other women at my home in Atlanta. In 2014, I registered my organization and started my petition on change.org, asking President Obama to investigate the prevalence of female genital mutilation in the United States. Subsequently in 2016, the United States Institute of Peace hosted the first-ever Summit to End Female Genital Mutilation.”

According to Plan International, no less than 200 million women are circumcised worldwide. And they will be 86 million more by 2030 if we don't put an end to them. In addition to the health risks that this operation, not always carried out under sterile conditions, entails, it causes complications throughout the woman's life - during menstruation, sexual intercourse and childbirth in particular. "This is why the United Nations Organization has declared FGM contrary to human rights," stresses Jaha Dukureh.

Jaha Dukureh also led the first youth movement against mutilation in The Gambia, which led Gambian President Yahya Jammeh to decree a ban on the practice in November 2015. Last year, FGM was also banned in Nigeria, which joined 18 other African countries that have banned the practice, including the Central African Republic, Egypt and South Africa.

Now 32, Jaha has a new goal: to run for the Gambia's highest office, despite being a relative unknown in the political arena.