A Laval family who's been fighting deportation from Canada to their native Guinea for the past several months has finally been granted permanent residency.

Kankou Keita Mansaré and her five children will be allowed to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds.

That decision came from the federal immigration department on Friday.

They had been seeking refugee status in Canada, because, Mansare says, her daughters would have faced forced marriages and genital mutilation in their West African homeland.

The family had been ordered deported last spring, but the deportation was delayed several times for various reasons, until the federal government intervened the last time to grant them a stay.

Photo: Hugo-Sébastien Aubert, La Presse