Guinea : Diaryatou Bah, a resilient feminist activist

Courageous, strong and resilient, Diaryatou Bah is a Guinean feminist activist and writer who fights against female excision. Victim of this practice at the age of 8 and of a forced marriage at 14, she has turned her story into a weapon to defend women’s rights and to rebuild herself. She is the author of the book “On m’a volé mon enfance” (“They stole my childhood”) published in 2006.

Through her NGO “Espoirs et Combats de femmes” (Women’s hopes and struggles) which she founded in 2006, Diaryatou Bah leads a fierce fight against excision, a practice she herself underwent when she was still a child.

Born in Guinea in 1985 in a polygamous family of 4 wives and 32 children, she spent her childhood with her grandmother because her mother could not take care of her. She spent a happy life with her grandmother until the day when, at the age of 8, she was cut in very precarious sanitary conditions. A horrible memory that she remembers with pain to this day. But her suffering did not stop there.

Back with her parents, she was married at the age of 14 to a 44-year-old man posing as an employee in a large global institution. The latter took her to Holland and then to Paris where she lived a nightmare. Speaking neither Dutch nor French, and having no education, she totally depended on him and suffered physical and sexual violence and had 3 miscarriages.

In 2003, at the age of 17, she was left alone in their flat in Les Lilas, in the suburbs of Paris. She managed to escape and found help from women’s associations and later divorced. 

Rebuilding herself through activism 

Far from her ex-husband, she began to rebuild herself. At the age of 18, she learnt French, and became aware of the importance for women to be educated and especially to know their rights. In April 2006, at the age of 21, she published “Ils ont volé mon enfance” (« They stole my childhood »), a book in which she tells her story and which has been translated into several languages. In July of the same year, she founded the association “Espoirs et combats de femmes” (Women’s hopes and struggles) to advocate against excision. 

The association provides information, particularly on excision, listens to women who have undergone it, organizes discussion groups and information meetings and refers women to doctors and psychologists according to their needs. “Excision is an attack on the integrity of women, a violation of human rights. It is a cruel practice, a torture that leaves psychological marks on the women who have undergone it. This practice must disappear,” she stresses.

Her NGO also partners with other groups fighting against excision, such as GAMS, to organize events on 6 February each year, which is the international day against Female Genital Mutilation. For two years, she was also President of the organization “Excision, let’s talk about it! ». She also participated in numerous conferences on excision and organized events to raise awareness on this issue and marches in memory of women who died under the blows of their companion. Faced with the figures of excision which have increased with the lockdown, she is now more than determined to continue to raise public awareness on the issue and to call on governments to strengthen laws against excision and to ensure that they are respected.

Because of her fight against excision, in 2018 she received the « Elles de France » Courage Prize from the President of the Ile de France region, Valérie Pécresse. In early 2021, she received the support of Marlène Schiappa, the French Secretary of State for Equality between Women and Men. 

Diaryatou Bah is now the mother of two children.