In 2014, the National Assembly of The Gambia amended the Tourism Offences Act (TOA) 2003 by toughening penalties for offenders in the tourism industry as well as establishing a special tribunal to deal with perpetrators in an expeditious manner.

The TOA was specifically legislated to protect children from sexual exploitation in tourism. Section 6 makes it an offence for a tourist to sexually abuse a child and provides a maximum punishment of 14 years imprisonment for the offence.

Section 5 makes it an offence for a person to make a sexual advance towards a child and exposing one’s genitals to a child for sexual purposes. It is also a special offence if a person in a position of power, trust or authority over a child touches, or requests that child to touch, either the person requesting or someone else, in a sexual manner.

The Act makes it an offence for anyone who helps or assists in the commission or attempted commission of child sexual abuse or exploitation. In fact, such a person will be punished in the same manner as the person who actually commits the offence.

Similarly, it is also a special offence for any person to allow any premises he/she owns, occupies, manages or controls to be used for any sexual activity prohibited by the Act.

Therefore, the 2014 amendments increased the monetary penalties for a person convicted of some offences from D5,000 and D10, 000 to D50, 000.

But, the more progressive amendment was the establishment of a special tribunal, to be presided over by a principal magistrate to deal with tourism-related offences in an efficient and expeditious manner. It has jurisdiction to try any offence under the Act that are committed within the Tourism Development Area which involves a tourist.

One of the benefits of the special tribunal is to hear and determine offences committed by a tourist on a short stay without subjecting him or her to the court system which are clogged with numerous cases and characterized by numerous adjournments.

Five years down the line, there is no such special tribunal up and running. Don’t you think if it was already established and up and running, some of the offences emanating from the TDA and ongoing in the Courts would have been decided by now?

By Simon Sabally