The Executive Director of Building Blocks for Peace Foundation (BBFORPEACE), Mr. Rafiu Lawal has called for legislative and judicial reviews of repressive laws across West Africa as part of initiatives to address the shrinking civic space in the region.
He made the call during a Two-Day Training of Trainers themed ‘Community Organising, Mobilising and Non-Violent Civil Resistance in West Africa’ held in Abuja in collaboration with Karibu Foundation, the Action Group on Free Civic Space and GPPAC West Africa.
Lawal noted that existing laws that do not preserve the dignity of humans and conform with the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights should be scrapped as they empower States to shrink the civic and digital spaces and particularly violate the rights of young people.
The Training of Trainers, which brought together 24 youth organisations and activists from across five West African countries such as Ghana, Côte D’Ivoire, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo, was organised to x-ray the state, trends and future of civic space in West Africa and develop non-violent responses to halt the plethora of attacks and violations of young people rights and well being.
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Lawal said both democratic and undemocratic governments across West Africa, in the name of curbing insecurity, have expanded law enforcement powers and these expansions have provoked an overflow of intended and unintended consequences leading to a surge in arrests and detention of activists and journalists, use of deadly force to disperse civil demonstrations, censorship of free speech, internet restrictions, proscription of religious and ethnic agitators, designation of dissenters as terrorist groups.
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