Solicitor General Misses NHRC’s 2025 Human Rights Report Validation Workshop

NHRC 2025 Human Rights Report Validation Group Photo © Askanwi

By Yusef Taylor, @FlexDan_YT

The Gambia’s National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) hosted its annual validation workshop on the 2025 State of Human Rights Report today, 9th March 2026. Attended by various stakeholders from civil society organisations, law enforcement officers, and others, Solicitor General Mr Hussein Thomasi’s statement was not delivered because he failed to attend.

Speaking to the NHRC Chairperson, Mr Emmanuel Daniel Joof, he told Askanwi that “really, we would have expected the MoJ to be here, being the chief government legal advisor on everything; really, we would have expected them to come. We don’t know why they are not here, but I just heard that the solicitor general is not feeling very well.”

“Notwithstanding, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) should have had at least two representatives. Maybe they are on their way. I don’t know,” said the NHRC Chair. Before our reporter left the event, a representative from the MoJ arrived to participate in the validation workshop.

The report looks at the human rights violations that occurred from 1st January 2025 to 31st December 2025, “detailing how the Commission went about observing human rights, what they came across when they investigated human rights, how the Commission monitored human rights, the challenges, what they found out and what were the recommendations,” said Mr Joof.

Most importantly, “This document cannot be complete if we do not have all the other stakeholders taking part in our validation. We’ve done our report; we’ve done our research, but we need [all stakeholders to participate] because all these institutions are mentioned in this document, and it is important that they are present and that we take part together so that this report that we have is factual, is current, is accurate and is credible,” said Mr Joof.

Shifting our attention to law enforcement, our reporter observed that two senior police officers were present; however, only one officer was present from the Army who appeared to be a junior officer. In response to our query, Chairperson Joof stated that he was happy with the Police who sent the Senior Commissioner from their Human Rights Standards Unit and another senior officer representing the Minister of Interior. “I’m happy that the Police are here because a lot of the complaints that we have received have been centred around the heavy-handedness of the Police,” added Mr Joof.

With regard to the officer from the Army, Chairperson Joof explained that “he may look young, but I think he’s now been promoted to a senior position, and I’ve seen him during the quarterly multi-stakeholders report on the TRRC, of recent he’s been the one they have been sending. So I hope he has the memory, and he can be in the position to answer or fill in the gaps for the Army,” said Mr Joof.

He emphasised that the Commission “always tries to make sure that we have senior officers because if you just send us junior officers, they do not have the authority to talk about certain things, and they may not even know the nitty-gritty of these issues.”

“I even asked the rank of that officer; I think he was at the level of Lieutenant at least,” said Mr Joof. He noted that he would raise the issue with the Chief of Defence Staff to ensure the Army understands the importance of the workshop. Chairperson Joof highlighted that if Senior Officers fail to attend to engage and set the records straight, they wouldn’t be able to raise concerns around the accuracy of the report after declining the opportunity to engage.

Our next publication reveals some of the observations and exchanges from the validation report. Don’t miss our exclusive interview with Chairperson Joof on @AskanwiGambia YouTube and Facebook pages.