Gambia

The Gambia has became the first member state of the African Union to sign the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People Rights relating to the right of women in Africa. The Permanent Representative of the Gambia to the African Union, Dr. Oma A. Touray, signed the Protocol on behalf of his Government.

In a joint protest, the Media Foundation for West Africa and ARTICLE 19 reiterated their concerns over the Enforcement of the Act establishing the National Media Commission of The Gambia. A letter by the groups calls on media and human rights organisations to support the Gambia Press Union in their boycott of the Media Commission until the present Act is repealed. Radical revisions need to be made in order for the legislation to meet international press freedom standards and to ensure media f...read more

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and the Media Foundation of West Africa (MFWA) have issued a joint statement in which they say they are "gravely concerned about the continued illegal and arbitrary closure" of Citizen FM radio station in Banjul, The Gambia. For more than two years, the government of President Yahya Jammeh has stopped Citizen FM from broadcasting on a false claim that the station's owner, Baboucar M. Gaye, has not paid his taxes and licence fees. MISA and MFWA ...read more

Earlier this month, Gambian police assaulted Buya Jammeh, a reporter for the English-language biweekly The Independent, near the newspaper's offices in the capital, Banjul. According to sources familiar with the incident, on August 9, two police officers stationed a short distance from the newspaper stopped Jammeh on his way to a radio station where he works part-time.

The situation of human rights in The Gambia remains a "damning indictment" of the government, which is claiming a complete return to democracy and the rule of law, according to Amnesty International. Amnesty International held that the country's human rights record under President Jammeh's leadership had never remarkably recovered since upheavals in 1994.

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