Much
of the news emanating from The Gambia over the past several days has been grim.
Scenes of protesters being assaulted with teargas and journalists being
detained on dubious charges have conjured memories of the country’s
authoritarian past. That two local radio stations were also suspended,
reportedly due to their critical accounts of anti-government protests, is
particularly concerning.
Thankfully,
the worst headlines turned out to be false – namely the reports that three
protesters were killed over the weekend. Nevertheless, 137 people were indeed
arrested with eighteen police officers and seven civilians being injured in the
chaos.
These
latest events, to be sure, are the foreseeable growing pains of a nascent
democracy, one that has only recently emerged from the clutches of one of the
most brutal dictatorships ever known to have existed. At the same time,
however, the Gambian government surely understands that any semblance of, or
reversion to, the tactics employed by the previous regime will not be
tolerated. The doomsayers who now claim that the country is ‘falling back on
its old ways’ are overreaching. There remains more reasons to be optimistic
about the country than not. And these are not merely my own observations, but
have been cited by numerous reports published by the world’s most respected
nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and academic institutions.
For
example, in the latest Freedom in the World report, issued annually by Freedom
House, it was noted that The Gambia made “rapid democratic gains for a second
straight year.” In a section detailing global democratic trends, the report
singled out The Gambia, citing its “dramatic political opening [that has
occurred] under President Adama Barrow.”
Another
example is The Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which noted that The Gambia
registered the largest overall improvement in Africa over the past several
years. According to this same report, The Gambia made the “biggest leap in
Africa” in a number of important categories, including “independence of the
judiciary,” “transparency in government,” and “absence of corruption.”
Similarly,
in the most recent edition of the Economist Intelligence Unit, The Gambia was
one of only two African countries to actually improve in the key area of
protection of civil liberties, whereas the regional trend was negative, with
the aggregate score for civil liberties slightly falling.
And
lastly, according to the 2019 Varieties of Democracy index, The Gambia was one
of only two countries in the world to improve more than ten percentage points
from 2017 to 2018; here, in fact, The Gambia actually registered the highest
percentage increase in the world.
Thus,
in many ways, The Gambia has bucked the broader trend of democratic
backsliding, showing real improvement and resiliency despite the challenging
circumstances. Importantly, the country has also firmly re-established its
place at the international table — with far too many instances to list
exhaustively here. For example, The
Gambia signed and ratified the Convention against Torture in 2018; it has
reversed its withdrawal from the Rome Statute and the International Criminal
Court; it re-entered the British Commonwealth; and its membership to the
African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and Millennium Challenge Corporation
(MCC) — both marquee US-Africa policy initiatives — were reinstated in 2017 due
to significant progress on humans rights. Perhaps most significantly, The
Gambia has emerged as a new leader on global human rights protection, as
evidenced by the successful, truly historic case it brought before the International
Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding atrocities being committed in Myanmar.
To
be sure, The Gambia will face immense challenges in the future, not unlike the
events of this past weekend. That the country’s former dictator threatens a
return to the country is certainly not helping matters. Nevertheless, that such
remarkable progress has been made in just three years should embolden both
Gambian citizens and those who have cheered and drawn inspiration from the
sidelines. Equally so, this evident progress should serve as a reminder to the
newly arrived gloom-and-doomers that maybe, just maybe, The Gambia will
continue to outpace us all.
Jeffrey
Smith is the Founding Director of Vanguard Africa and the Vanguard Africa
Foundation
