Progress on human rights in West Africa
The Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) has for many years been actively working to pass laws for independent human rights commissions in the three countries in the Sahel region; Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali. Now all three countries have these laws.
These laws were adopted after massive pressure from both donors and the DIHR. The first positive development began with the Niger commission. This positive result soon spread to Mali and Burkina Faso who passed laws to establish independent national human rights institutions in March and July respectively.
"This time the changes come from civil society in the three countries, and not from the UN or other donors. The problem was that Malians and Burkinabé could not see the point of spending money and efforts on an independent Human Rights commission. But this changed with the example from Niger,” says Monique Alexis, an adviser at DIHR who has been based in Mali for the last 5 years and who has spent the last 16 years working in all three West African countries.
Political upheaval
In all three countries, political upheaval triggered this process. It began with the coup in Niger in 2010, after which the country adopted a new constitution in 2011 and a law for an independent human rights commission in 2012. Since its establishment in 2013 the commission has cooperated with DIHR.
It was this commission that inspired the neighbouring countries of Mali and Burkina Faso, which in the following years also underwent political upheaval. In Niger, the National Human Rights Commission was the only human rights actor able and allowed to travel to the eastern regions of the country attacked by Boko Haram. Here in 2015 the commission documented abuses against civilians committed by both Boko Haram and the military. The report reached the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The population can now trust that human rights violations - even by the military - will be documented.
In neighboring Mali a coup in 2012 also sparked the process. "Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the UN went to Mali to oversee the conditions, and the people were not satisfied with this. They wanted their own independent monitoring human rights actor," says Monique Alexis.
This means that all three countries will now have an independent human rights system, which can raise cases in the judicial system. In other words, the people can now expect that there will be a national response to human rights violations in the country.
In September 2013, the country held democratic elections and the new president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, supported a reform of the law for a new commission. The process was repeatedly delayed because of changing ministers of justice and opposition among conservative officials. The law was unanimously approved by the parliament on 1 July 2016.
In 2014, after the fall of Blaise Compaoré in Burkina Faso, a group sought the advice of DIHR to write a bill for a new independent Human Rights Commission. DIHR funded workshops for the draft law, and facilitated civil society involvement. The law was the first law that the new Burkinabe parliament adopted on 24 March 2016.
