These statements were made during a 2-day capacity building roundtable on decriminalising petty offences in The Gambia at the IHRDA headquarters at Brusubi. This was part of a regional project on decriminalising petty offences across the African continent.
In an address to participants and the media, Mr. Gaye Sowe, the executive director of the IHRDA, expressed optimism that the workshop would trigger change and that Gambia would repeal and amend economically and socially unfavourable and discriminatory laws on petty offences.
However, he said: “If nothing changes, we would definitely consider our second option, which would possibly be taking these possible cases either before the African Commission or the African Court; like we already have before the African Court in Arusha.”
“You see our number plates with human rights, human rights, but many don’t know what IHRDA does. We do capacity building and we do litigation quite a lot. Other than that, we also share a lot of information on the African human rights system.”
“I think at the moment, we are the only organisation in the world that has cases before all the African human rights bodies, whether we’re talking about the ECOWAS, the African Commission, the African Court. We have cases before all of them.”
“We have close to 10 or more cases against Congo Brazzaville, Congo DRC, Ethiopia, Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and a host of others. We also have some cases before the ECOWAS Court against Nigeria, against Mali, against Benin and a host of other countries.”
In the meantime, the IHRDA is already litigating over two cases against The Gambia. One of those cases is the Kerr Mod Ali case and there is currently another case on the right to Freedom of Assembly, Association, and Public Oder Act before African Commission.
