‘Business rights are under-reported and rarely talked about’

Emmanuel Daniel Joof, was speaking on Wednesday during a press briefing, aimed at enlightening the media on the importance of the 4th Forum of the Network of African National Human Rights Institution (NANHRI) held last week.

"I think it is important to note for journalists mainly when we talk about human rights. It has always been the traditional human rights issues, civil and political rights, but of course this is dealing with social, economic, the rights to clean environment," Joof stated.

He added; "These are the kinds of rights that usually we don't talk about, especially at the level of our country, Gambia. But of course, it is very important. You have heard what was said. It is extremely important that business and human rights, issues relating to business and human rights, are dealt with."

"Coming closer to home now, as you know, we have fish meal factories here, we have our oceans, which is overfished, we had incident in 2018, the Faraba Bantang Commission, because of sand mining. So these are issues that impact on our daily lives- businesses, but these are issues we usually do not talk about."

The forum in business-related human rights was held on the same day of the press briefing, and the NHRC Chair has further enumerated that the forum seeks to ensure that business rights are talked about and dealt with, just as other rights, in particular civil and political rights, has always been the center of attention."

The aim of the forum, he added, is to ensure that are member countries adopt an action plan on business and human rights. "But we need to have the process, the dialogue needs to start so that we can have these groups of experts to look at these issues.

The briefing was held with two other counterparts, Mudford Zachariah Mwandenga and Mr Gilbert Sebihogo, Zambian Human Rights Commission Chairperson, who also doubles as a Commissioner at the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR) and NANHRI Executive Director respectively.