By Binta Jaiteh
Institute of Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) has held a two-day sensitization to decriminalizing and impressed policing of petty offenses and the impact on poor and marginalize people in the Gambia.
Speaking at workshop, Edmund Amarkwei Foley director of programs said: “the principal objective of the workshop was to equip participants with adequate information about the situation of petty offenses in the Gambia and opportunities for taking action towards decriminalization and better policing of petty offenses.”
Also among other is, to enhance knowledge of the police and other security sector actors in contemporary human rights standards and policing of petty offenses and sensitization of key stakeholders on the necessity for decriminalization/declassification of petty offenses.
“We have seen a trend where our poor are the marginalized people affected by the offenses and we tend to refer them as petty offenses. In that the scale on which they are committed even the substance of the offence itself is not actually people can face criminal sanction such as incarceration meanwhile with the current support of our funders with open society around West Africa. That is why we bring stakeholders from different institutions to talk about the petty offenses,” he dilated on it.
Gaye Sowe, disclosed that in recent week they filed two cases one on child marriage against Cameroon and the other on behalf of children on witchcraft against Nigeria while another case is pending before the committee. He noted that do capacity building and litigation on the African right system we are the only organization in the world that has cases before all West African human right bodies whether you talk about the ECOWAS.
“We are not here to take the Gambia government to court but law reform is definitely one of our priorities and we all know the Gambia has a constitution, women’s act and the children’s act,” he said.