The Gambian Parliamentary FoRB Caucus in Action: Constituency Engagement at OLD YUNDUM

The African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA), an African not-for-profit organisation based in Ghana and dedicated to building the capacity of African Parliaments, with support from its partners – the Freedom of Religion or Belief Leadership Network (FoRBLN), Church of England, and in collaboration with the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion or Belief (IPPFoRB) and African Parliamentarians Network for Human Rights (AfriPAHR), under the auspices of the FoRBLN initiative, organised a constituency engagement in Old Yundum constituency in The Gambia on April 28, 2023.
The activity, which forms part of the FoRBLN’s on-going initiative in The Gambia was aimed at raising awareness about FoRB issues, educating and stimulating dialogue on intractable fundamental human rights, particularly issues of discrimination of minorities based on religion, ethnicity, culture etc. violent and tendentious speech or language and religious intolerance. It was also to make recommendations on how these intractable issues could be addressed both at the local and national levels.
Three Members of Parliament from The Gambia Parliamentary caucus on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) – Hon Abudoulie Ceesay, Hon Amadou Camara and Hon Fatou Cham – undertook the constituency engagement. They met and interacted with key stakeholders in the community including faith leaders (Muslims and Christians), teachers, opinion leaders and youth. In all, seventeen (17) males and thirteen (13) females participated in the meeting.

***Group Picture of all participants at Wellingara Lower Basic School Premises***

Following the introduction of participants and the observance of the requisite community protocols, the three members of Parliament took turns to highlight the importance FoRB in their everyday lives noting that engendering peace and promoting peaceful co-existence amongst people with different beliefs and customs is a necessary prerequisite for inclusive development and therefore it is imperative to respect the fundamental human rights of citizens including the right to freedom of religion or belief in The Gambia. FoRB, they noted, promotes freedom of expression, belief, thought, freedom association, non-discrimination, especially against minority groups and eschews hate speech and tendentious language likely to spread hatred and animosity.
Early on Mr. Issifu Lampo, Coordinator of Freedom of Religion of Belief Leadership Network (FoRBLN) responsible for The Gambia and Sierra Leone, and Senior Governance Advisor from the African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA), provided a brief background about FoRBLN programme. He indicated that the project is being funded by the UK government’s Aid Connect fund to support a dedicated FoRB consortium and networks. And that The Gambia and Sierra Leone were selected for the implementation of the programme because of their exemplary inter-religious tolerance and communal peaceful co-existence. He however noted that despite this sterling record, there are still intractable FoRB issues in The Gambia. He entreated participants in the meeting to highlight and propose solutions to these challenges.
Participants advocated for the strengthening of Christian-Muslim relationship, and encourage support for one another. They also entreated community members to speak out against abuses of a particular group of people-based on their religious affiliation or association. Participants were unanimous in the view that hate speech and intolerance are mostly manifested in the political arena and asked politicians to pipe down especially during electioneering campaigns.

**Three MPs FoRB Caucus, The Gambia, from right, Hon Abdoulie Ceesay, Hon Fatou Cham and Hon Amadou Camara. Seated in the middle of the MPs is Mr. Issifu Lampo, ACEPA.**

Intractable challenges identified are: hate speech and violent language, especially by politicians; wearing of veils to school is still being discouraged by some school authorities; and discrimination in the designation of cemeteries, currently in The Gambia only Muslim cemeteries are designated.

In order to address the above challenges identified, the following recommendations were made:

Members of Parliament should collaborate with faith leaders to raise these issues (hate speech, intolerance and sectarian voting pattern where Muslims are unlikely to vote for a Christian candidate) and invite national conversation on how to address hate speech and toxic politics that tends to undermine fundamental human rights of citizens.
Undertake advocacy campaign in schools to enlighten school pupils about the virtues of peaceful co-existence, tolerance, non-discrimination and respect for people irrespective of their ethnicity or religious affiliation.