wocomoHUMANITY | Jaha's Promise: Fighting against Female Genital Mutilation and Forced Marriage (Documentary, 2017) @wocomoHUMANITY | Uploaded January 2023 | Updated October 2024, 6 hours ago.
Educated, eloquent, western. Nobody would guess that when Jaha Dukureh was a baby, she was
“cut” - subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). When she was 15 she was taken to New York to
marry a 45 year-old man she’d never met before, arranged by her own father, a powerful imam in
Gambia. After 10 years in the US, Jaha returns to her native country in West Africa demanding that
her own family and society end the practices that almost ruined her life. With around 80% of all women in the Gambia being cut, this is not only her own issue. These are personal, political, religious and cultural confrontations.
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As a young girl Jaha escaped her marriage in New York and found a high school to accept her where she graduated in record time. This independent acting made her an outcast to her family and to the local migrant community. Her need for acceptance propelled her into another marriage, also arranged by her father. Jaha had first a son, and then a daughter whose birth convinced Jaha to start a campaign against FGM that was the beginning of her journey back to Africa.
There, Jaha is at once an outsider and someone who, because of her father’s religious and political profile, has a deep understanding of her country’s power structure. During her visit back to the Gambia in 2014 to launch a campaign against FGM her father patronizes and dismisses her. The meeting with the midwife who ‘cut’ her deeply depresses Jaha and she finds out that her mother-in-law was plotting to kidnap her four year-old daughter Khadija and have her ‘cut’. But Jaha's FGM congress gets an enthusiastic gathering and while returning to the Gambia several times now she is growing into the self-assured leader of the campaign.
When Jaha hears that her father’s youngest wife has given birth to a baby girl who, as custom dictates, will be ‘cut’ within days, it provokes a crisis for her. The baby girl is named Khadija, like her own daughter. The stakes are almost overwhelming for her: she must save the girl or see her cause defeated and humiliated in her own home.
Original title: Jaha's Promise
A Guardian News & Media Production
© 2017, Licensed by First Hand Films
Educated, eloquent, western. Nobody would guess that when Jaha Dukureh was a baby, she was
“cut” - subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM). When she was 15 she was taken to New York to
marry a 45 year-old man she’d never met before, arranged by her own father, a powerful imam in
Gambia. After 10 years in the US, Jaha returns to her native country in West Africa demanding that
her own family and society end the practices that almost ruined her life. With around 80% of all women in the Gambia being cut, this is not only her own issue. These are personal, political, religious and cultural confrontations.
Subscribe to our channel: goo.gl/CMNyXt
Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/wocomo
As a young girl Jaha escaped her marriage in New York and found a high school to accept her where she graduated in record time. This independent acting made her an outcast to her family and to the local migrant community. Her need for acceptance propelled her into another marriage, also arranged by her father. Jaha had first a son, and then a daughter whose birth convinced Jaha to start a campaign against FGM that was the beginning of her journey back to Africa.
There, Jaha is at once an outsider and someone who, because of her father’s religious and political profile, has a deep understanding of her country’s power structure. During her visit back to the Gambia in 2014 to launch a campaign against FGM her father patronizes and dismisses her. The meeting with the midwife who ‘cut’ her deeply depresses Jaha and she finds out that her mother-in-law was plotting to kidnap her four year-old daughter Khadija and have her ‘cut’. But Jaha's FGM congress gets an enthusiastic gathering and while returning to the Gambia several times now she is growing into the self-assured leader of the campaign.
When Jaha hears that her father’s youngest wife has given birth to a baby girl who, as custom dictates, will be ‘cut’ within days, it provokes a crisis for her. The baby girl is named Khadija, like her own daughter. The stakes are almost overwhelming for her: she must save the girl or see her cause defeated and humiliated in her own home.
Original title: Jaha's Promise
A Guardian News & Media Production
© 2017, Licensed by First Hand Films
