Demba Diawara
| Demba Diawara | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | c.1931 |
| Nationality | Senegal |
| Education | no formal education |
| Known for | leadership of villages to renounce Female Genital Cutting |
Demba Diawara (born c. 1931) is an imam and village leader of Keur Simbara in Senegal. He is known for his leadership in encouraging village communities to abandon the tradition of female genital cutting. He knew of the first declarations at the Senegalse village of Malicounda Bambara to abandon FGC in 1997 and he led his village and many more to the first multilateral announcement at Diabougou in 1998.
Diawara was born in about 1931. He is an imam and a chief of the small, but now well known, village of Keur Simbara in western Senegal.
Diawara had been initially concerned in 1997 when he heard that the nearby village of Malicounda Bambara was declaring that it intended to stop the Bambara tradition of female genital cutting. A second village, Nguerigne Bambara, followed on November 6, 1997. He went to Malicounda Bambara to express his alarm but he was sent away and told to speak first to the women of his own village. Diawara took this advice and he saw the benefits of change. The women told him things that he had never known. He knew that his niece was mentally ill and his sister-in-law was not able to have children, circumstances that he attributed to FGC. He never knew how much it hurt and he had never seen what an uncut woman looked like. Diawara wanted his village to follow their lead but he foresaw two problems. He realised that other villages would still consider his village's girls unclean because they were not cut and these girls may have to remain unmarried. He realised that he needed to look at the whole of the village's extended social network if they were to create permanent change. The second problem was that this subject needed to be raised delicately. Some activists used explicit images and they condemned the traditions and those villagers who had, in good faith, observed them for generations.
Diawara, his nephew and the woman who did the cutting in his village walked to spread the message. They used Diawara's social network. Diawara visited distant relatives from his paternal line and from his maternal line. He said
...
Wikipedia