USAID and American Bar Association Gender Justice Award Recepient – LamToro News
Awa Krubally is a ladies’s rights activist and a Board Member of Advocacy for Human Rights and Justice in Freetown, Sierra Leone. She can be a Member of the Women in Liberation and Leadership (WILL) the place she serves as a Gender Justice Coordinator.
Awa obtained her Master of Business Administration in International Trade (MBA) and is at present pursuing a second Master’s (MSc) in Sustainability and Diplomacy on the Grenoble Ecole de Management in France. She has in depth expertise within the space of Gender Justice and advocacy for the rights of girls, women and marginalised communities each in Europe and Africa. In recognition of her work with ladies and youngsters in communities, she was acknowledged by the African Center for Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) as a human rights defender in Africa.
In 2023, she obtained an award for Gender Justice from the USAID and American Bar Association as a Woman of Courage.
In the identical 12 months 2023, she was awarded as a Human Rights Activist for The Gambia by the African Commission for Human and People’s Rights in Arusha Tanzania.
In 2022, Awa Krubally participated in a nationwide tour in The Gambia to unfold the CEDAW report that happened in Geneva in 2022. She is a psychological well being specialist and has supplied psychological well being remedy to most individuals which incorporates her participation in giving secure areas to victims of former president Yahya Jammeh’s regime particularly to the weak ladies and women who didn’t have the priviledge to talk in the course of the TRRC.
She took half within the delivering of the Government White Paper submit TRRC throughout the nation with National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of The Gambia.
Awa is a survivor of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). She shared her story with LamToro News Managing Editor Assan Sallah throughout a go to to Germany lately. She additionally disclosed the rationale why she turned an activist.
The younger gender activist is changing into a rising star, a job mannequin and an exemplary determine each domestically and internationally. She is a lady of dignity and her stage of professionalism is sort of spectacular. Her achievements through the years as a younger activist converse lots about her imaginative and prescient and mission in direction of preventing for gender justice. She has participated in a whole lot of nationwide and worldwide occasions, conferences and venture. She labored as a Refugee Consultant on the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees in Rabat, Morocco from 2019-2020; from 2021-2022, she was later appointed as Operations and Gender Unit Assistant from January 2022 – July 2022 on the UNFPA in Bakau, Gambia.
Awa Krubally was later appointed as Gender Justice Coordinator of the NGO Women in Liberation and Leadership (WILL) situated in Brusubi, The Gambia underneath the management of her mentor Dr. Fatou Baldeh (MBE) from July 2022 – January 2023. She additionally served as Project Manager on the Agence de Gestion Enterprise Traduction in Dakar, Senegal from February 2023 – January 2024. She then picked up one other job on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Bakau, The Gambia as Building Manager since January 2024.
Below is a verbatim narration of her expertise as a survivor of FGM.
“I used to be 5 years-old once we went to a member of the family’s home in The Gambia. Some folks had been dancing, some folks had been singing, however I didn’t know what was taking place. Nobody informed us ‘this is what is going to happen to you’. We had been put in a line, one particular person after the opposite. There had been a minimum of twenty of us. It was simply outdoors, they put up some wrappers to cowl and it was achieved on the ground. I bear in mind seeing whoever went first got here out screaming. You can think about how traumatic that was.
I used to be pinned down and I used to be reduce. We had been all reduce in the identical setting, with out treatment, in all probability utilizing the identical tools as nicely. We had been all saved on this home after the chopping, in a darkish room for perhaps about two weeks till we healed. In that room we had been taught songs about being a lady, about being a woman, about the way you behave.
Every morning they put heat water with salt and herbs in a pan, and we had been pressured to take a seat on it. That is one thing that was traumatising for a really very long time. Not even the chopping, however each morning having to soak since you had been reduce. It’s uncooked and sore. That’s what they consider would help you to not have an an infection. For a few years that was what caught in my head, sitting on that each morning, and screaming at night time. We needed to undergo that till we had been healed. Just think about that ache.
When we had been prepared, they’d a giant ceremony for us. Our households introduced us items, and we had a celebration on the finish and that was it. Then we by no means spoke about what occurred to us there. You’d by no means hear anyone speak about it once more, except different women undergo FGM after which you might be introduced in as a mentor.
It nonetheless occurs in that method immediately in The Gambia. There are studies that folks generally go to healthcare professionals, however usually, it’s not medicalised.
This impressed me to be an activist in opposition to FGM and dealing with WILL gave me the pathway to determine a profession to struggle in opposition to FGM in all of the communities in The Gambia.”
