Our country strives “to achieve a society where all human rights are respected”. This is essentially what Aïssata Tall Sall said yesterday during Senegal’s appearance before the UN Human Rights Council as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The Minister of Justice detailed the mechanisms put in place by the government to respect human rights.

Senegal is increasingly criticized by various human rights organizations, who denounce democratic backsliding, acts of torture or even violations of the right to freedom of expression or to demonstrate. But before the Working Group of the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Minister of Justice maintained the opposite. According to Aïssata Tall Sall, “Senegal is working and will always work to face and overcome the challenges and constraints in its irreversible option of achieving a society where all human rights are respected.”  And this, she indicates, “in an inclusive manner by discussing and dialoguing with all stakeholders (civil society, human rights institutions, United Nations system)”.

During the presentation of the country’s report as part of the Universal Periodic Review yesterday in Geneva, Ms. Sall stressed that « Senegal has, in recent years, worked on the more efficient implementation of human rights with the strict compliance to the rules of non-discrimination, the strengthening of the right to respect for human dignity, the absolute ban on torture and the fight against gender-based violence. According to the Minister of Justice, “procedural guarantees in criminal matters, and the rules governing police custody as well as living conditions in prisons have been significantly improved.” And explained: “To this end, to combat prison overcrowding and long detentions, Senegal adopted a series of laws in 2020. These laws strengthened the alternatives to deprivation of liberty instituted in recent years, by introducing the wearing of electronic bracelets in our criminal legislation”.

According to Aïssata Tall Sall, “this major reform allowed the decongestion of prisons and the control of the prison population with more than three hundred (300) people benefiting from it, in less than a year of effective use”. On the same note, she maintained that “the commission responsible for ruling on requests for compensation presented by people who have been wrongly subject to a decision to pre-trial detention is now functional”. But the most decisive, according to the head of the Senegalese delegation, is the ongoing Project to revise the Code of Criminal Procedure “to limit in particular the duration of preventive detention in criminal matters”. And to emphasize: “The government of Senegal is aware that the promotion and protection of human rights necessarily involves strengthening the national institutions that support them.” This is why, she informs, “in the area of preventing torture and improving the conditions of detention of people deprived of their liberty, we have almost doubled the budget of the National Observer of places of detention. deprivation of liberty (Onlp), which is the national mechanism for the prevention of torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. 

In addition, Aïssata Tall Sall specified that “to better ensure its independence, the ONLP was detached from the Ministry of Justice by a decree of March 23, 2023”. Still in this dynamic, she informed that “relative to the National Unit to Combat Trafficking in Persons (Cnlctp), a draft decree whose objective is to improve criminal legislation in the fight against trafficking in persons, the illicit trafficking of migrants and the exploitation of the begging of others, has been initiated.” This reform project, she specified, “also aims to strengthen the status of the national coordination mechanism through in particular the creation of an Assistance Fund dedicated to victims and witnesses”.

What about the freedom to demonstrate and assembly? According to Aïssata Tall Sall, “the effective enjoyment of freedoms of assembly and demonstration constitutes a major priority for the Senegalese authorities”. As an illustration, it notes that “the government established by the Law of May 23, 2022, the Administrative Referral”. Detailing: “The Administrative Referral allows the Judge seized of a request justified by urgency, to order within 48 hours, all measures necessary to safeguard a fundamental freedom when it has been violated. The Judge acts in this way especially when this violation constitutes a serious and manifestly unequal attack on the exercise of this fundamental freedom.”

Furthermore, the Minister of Justice declared that “the government of Senegal has initiated a process of reform of the Senegalese Human Rights Committee (Csdh), fundamentally aiming to enable our National Human Rights Institution (Indh), to be more consistent with the Paris principles on Indh”. “The bill has just been adopted on December 6, 2023 by the Council of Ministers. The vote by the National Assembly is planned shortly,” she assured. It should be noted that the Working Group on “the UPR will adopt the recommendations made to Senegal on Friday January 26, 2024 between 3:30 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.”. Thus, the delegation of Senegal, led by the Minister of Justice, “will then be able to indicate its position on the recommendations received during the examination”.

As a reminder, in November 2018, during its appearance at the UPR, Senegal, out of 256 recommendations, rejected 28 including that linked to the legalization of homosexuality.

By Dieynaba KANE / dkane@lequotidien.sn

  • Translation by Ndey T. SOSSEH