GMC oppose calls to relocate African Commission

GMC leader Mai Ahmad Fatty

The opposition party, the Gambia Moral Congress, has put up a strong disagreement to the call by the Civil Society Forum of African NGOs “to relocate the Banjul-based African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) from The Gambia to another AU member state.” 

GMC believes that removal of the African Commission from The Gambia does not provide effective and durable approach to the “endemic problem” of mal-governance in Africa, the party’s leader Mai Ahmad Fatty, said.

“It provides no guarantee or safeguard against the possibility of grievous rights violations by a future government in the next country to host the Commission, if The Gambia were to lose it,” argues Mr. Fatty.

Campaign to strip Gambia of ‘human rights title’ intensifies

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 25^th anniversary and 52^nd 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.”