FLAG bags She Awards Gambia’s Women-led Organisation of the Year

She Awards Gambia is a women-led non-profit organisation championing one of The Gambia’s biggest women’s awards events.

Four of the country’s major women-led non-profit organisations were nominated for the Award. The organisations are: Women in Liberation and Leadership (WILL), Girls’ Pride, Female Lawyers Association of The Gambia (FLAG) and the Africa Network Against Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearance (ANEKED).

These organisations are some of the leading women-focused organisations in the country, whose impact have been widely felt across The Gambia, and were considered based on this year’s theme: ‘Celebrating Frontliners’ Against SGBV.’

Women in Liberation & Leadership (WILL) is a gender justice organisation, which seeks to empower Gambian women and girls by addressing violence directed towards them and ensuring protection for their sexual and reproductive health.

The body, which partners with government, professionals, civil society, NGOs and businesses, works with female survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) at a crucial time in The Gambia’s history, as the country continues its transitional justice process.

In the same vein, led by women African human rights activists, ANEKED, an independent, non-political and non-religious civil society organisation founded in 2019 in the two West African countries Ghana and The Gambia, campaigns against forced disappearances and summary executions and also advocates for justice for victims and their families.

The body mainly places emphasis on women survivors who, despite leading the struggle for truth and justice, are often overlooked and invisible.

In 2022, the organisation became a section-based movement, with a section in Switzerland and a section in Gambia, as they continue to strive across different countries.

Furthermore, Girls' Pride is an organisation that provides re-usable sanitary pads, period pants, party-liners, and baby diapers. It also provides a comic storybook, board game, sexual and reproductive health education and counseling services.

Finally, the winner of the Award, FLAG, made up of female members of the legal profession who, in various ways, aim to contribute to the development and realisation of the rights of women and children in The Gambia, is a non-political, non-governmental and non-profit-making association.

The association aims to procure changes to the laws of The Gambia for the protection and wellbeing of women and children, with the objective of eliminating violence directed towards women, promote freedom of expression, sexual and reproductive health rights and support their effective participation in the development process of the country.

The award ceremony was held at the Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara International Conference Centre in Bijilo on Saturday as precursor of the commemoration of International Women's Day.