News

On 9 May 2018, the Gambian Supreme Court declared that the criminal defamation law and the law on false news on the internet are unconstitutional. The law on sedition was also challenged and was found unconstitutional only to the extent that a publication relates to government and other public officials. The law on sedition in relation to the president remains.

One of the Supreme Court’s decisions arose form a challenge brought in 2014 by the Gambian Press Union, supported by MLDI, which argued that the Gambian sedition and false news laws are unconstitutional.

As a result...

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The Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) delivered a landmark judgment in which it found that the rights of four Gambian journalists had been violated by the actions of the Gambian authorities, and through the enforcement of laws criminalising speech.

MLDI has filed a third-party intervention before the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Gleb Vyacheslavovich Paykachev v. Russia . In this case, the public and the media were excluded from attending defamation proceedings that had been brought by a police officer against a news website.