The Edward Francis Small Centre for Rights and Justice has issued a comprehensive Position Paper titled “Review and Restructuring of the National Dialogue”, calling for the immediate suspension of the National Dialogue in its current form and the legislative establishment of an independent National Dialogue Commission (NDC) to restore credibility, national ownership, and effectiveness to the process.
We have submitted the position paper to the Chief of Staff and the Director of Press and Public Relations at State House.
EFSCRJ welcomes, in principle, the idea of a National Dialogue as a necessary response to The Gambia’s persistent governance, development, and social cohesion challenges. After more than six decades of independence marked by inequality, injustice, corruption, and weak institutions, a national conversation is urgent and necessary, which should have been undertaken since 2017 as an integral part of the transitional justice agenda.
However, EFSCRJ finds that the National Dialogue, as currently constituted, lacks independence, credibility, and effectiveness. Although extensive recommendations have been produced since 2024 on constitutional reform, electoral reform, gender equality, economic governance, anti-corruption, media freedom, and migration, there has been little to no implementation. Two years on, there is no new constitution, electoral reforms remain regressive, women are grossly under-represented in decision-making, public debt and financial mismanagement persist, and corruption remains largely unchecked.
These failures stem from a Dialogue that is politically managed from the Office of the President, exposing it to partisan capture, selective agenda-setting, and avoidance of hard questions. A process meant to scrutinize the foundations of the state cannot credibly be controlled by the very power structures under review.
Learning from past commissions whose recommendations were never adopted by the National Assembly hence poorly implemented, EFSCRJ calls for the immediate suspension of the National Dialogue in its current form and proposes the establishment of an independent, non-partisan National Dialogue Commission (NDC) through an Act of the National Assembly. This body must be legally empowered, inclusive, time-bound, and mandated to ensure implementation of its outcomes, guided by a consultatively developed National Dialogue Policy and Plan of Action.
Only a legally grounded, independent, and citizen-owned National Dialogue can rebuild trust, heal divisions, and deliver peace, justice, accountability, and shared prosperity. Anything less will merely entrench cynicism and perpetuate the governance failures the Dialogue claims to address.
Read our Position Paper and join the conversation.
2026 – Year of Empowered Citizens.
