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| 52nd Ordinary Session: 9th - 22nd October 2012. Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire/PHOTO:ACHPR |
Human
rights NGOs gathering in the Cote d’Ivoire
city of Yamoussoukro, to participate in the 25th anniversary and 52nd Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), have
intensified calls for Gambia to be stripped of its title: “Human Rights Capital
of Africa”.
The Gambia is regarded as such because it hosts the
ACHPR, however, in an October 6, 2012 resolution on Gambia, rights defenders
said: “The
Gambia Government is best known for its contempt of the principles of human
rights; and its continued acts of rights abuse calls for it to be stripped of
the privilege of hosting a Pan African Organ.”
The
ACHPR has a mandate to promote, protect and advance the fundamental principles
of rule of law and democracy utilising a human rights based approach.
“We
hereby call upon the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, for the
third time in as many years, to use its influence, exercise its mandate and
prevail upon the African Union leadership to relocate the Human Rights
Commission to another AU member state that has a demonstrable track record of
respecting human rights, rule of law and good governance,” they agreed.
In
their view, the “Government of the Gambia does not possess the moral authority
in principle and practice, to continue to be bestowed with the privilege of hosting
a human rights commission, since it has demonstrated time and again that the
protection of and respect for human rights is not a priority.”
Rights
defenders said they are alarmed by “the rapid deterioration of rule of law,
further erosion of human rights, continued disappearances and a deteriorating
press freedom” in The Gambia.
The
Gambia government hosts the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and
is bound by an agreement it signed with the African Union.
The
NGOs exhort the Government of the Gambia to honour its obligations towards
supporting the mandate of the Commission and upholding the fundamental
principles of the continental charter on human rights, the African Charter on
Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR).
The
Charter, also referred to as the “Banjul Charter”, was drafted by African legal
experts; prominent among them is Gambia’s Justice Hassan Jallow of the
Arusha-based international criminal tribunal.
The
NGOs Forum, as it is popularly called, over the years it has been hosted by in
Gambia by the Banjul-Based Hannah Foster led African Centre for Democracy and
Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS) usually precedes the Ordinary Sessions of the
African Commission.
This
year’s session is the first to be hosted outside Gambia in as many years. In
two of the previous sessions, rights defenders led by a Tunisian delegation
vigorously campaigned to move the sessions elsewhere citing rights violations
in Gambia as a major reason.
Written by Modou S. Joof
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