Democracy, Human Rights and Governance in The Gambia

Book excerpt: The first chapter explores the origin of the philosophy of law and society in relation to contemporary international human rights law. Democracy as a governance system is discussed in the second chapter. First; the chapter conceptualises governance, good governance and democracy. Drawing on this, the second part of the second chapter argues that democracy is an open-source concept that should be fitted to the social and indigenous political cultures. The later part of second chapter puts the Gambian democracy in context by identifying democratic practices in state institutions based on universal democratic norms. chapters 3 and 4 examine the Gambian judiciary and legislature respectively. chapter 3 discusses the judiciary as the watchdog of the constitution, using every-day law cases to demonstrate judicial independence in The Gambia. chapter 4 on the other hand examines the oversight functions of the legislature by evaluating the roles of PAC/PEC and the Ombudsman as instruments of democratic accountability in The Gambia.