It was five in the afternoon and Buba Badjie, a boat captain, had just brought his catch to the shore. He had spent twelve hours at sea off Bakau, a major fish landing site in The Gambia.
With the approach of the Gambia’s 2016 presidential elections, which will see President Yahya Jammeh seek re-election for a fifth, five-year tenure, more than a dozen opposition activists have been arrested, detained and prosecuted in the past eight months.
Women’s rights activists in the Gambia are insisting that more than 30 years of campaigning to raise awareness should be sufficient to move the government to outlaw female genital mutilation (FMG).
The countdown to the Gambia’s 2016 general elections has begun with a rare move to bring together female politicians from across the divided political spectrum to ensure increased female representation.
Mr. and Mrs. Gridley* are among a handful of tourists laying pool side and working on their tropical tan at the Kairaba Beach Hotel, a five-star hotel on the idyllic coast of Kololi in the Gambia.
In February 2013, 20-year-old Mohamed*, like hundreds of thousands of other Eritreans, fled the brutal dictatorship in that East African nation in search of a better life in neighbouring Sudan.
When Gambians go to the polls for the country’s local government elections on Thursday Apr. 4, they will have fewer candidates to choose from as six of the country’s seven opposition parties are boycotting the elections. But one opposition party says it will be fighting political repression here by participating in the elections.
The court of justice for the West African economic community is expected to hear a civil society case calling for the abolition of the death penalty in the Gambia this December, four months after the execution of nine prisoners shocked the world.