By Mustapha Jarju
Senior Legal Officer at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Basirou Bah, revealed that the Gambia government has so far failed to implement 91 recommendations of the Truth, Reparation and Reconciliation Commission (TRRC).
Speaking in a press conference on Tuesday, Bah said: “There are 91 of the TRRC recommendations, which are not implemented and there is nothing done about it.If you are good at calculation and you make findings,you will actually realize that very few of the TRRC recommendations are fully implemented.”
He pointed out that the government’s shortfall in the implementation of the TRRC recommendations was not only uncovered by the NHRC but other stakeholders monitoring the implementation process as well.
Bah meanwhile recognized some of the gains made in the implementation process, explaining that the female prison officers, who refused to submit themselves to the “sexual violence” by the former prison boss David Kujabi and other government officials in 2007, were later elevated to various ranks through TRRC recommendations.
State Counsel Saffie Nyang spoke on behalf of the Justice Ministry and according to her, some of the recommendations cannot be implemented within a year. She cited the reparation bill, which requires that the implementation process go through multiple stages.
“These are processes that laws go through. We have to understand that these are the realities that come with democratic societies. We cannot skip the processes, doing things faster and taking them through the law is different. The government will rather do the implementation of the TRRC recommendations in theright way than doing it haphazardly,” she stressed.
Nyang said the transitional justice process “is very technical”, adding that the government would not want the reoccurrence of the past.
The press conference was graced by representatives from the Ministry of Justice, the Victims’ Centre and NHRC.