In October 2025, Omega Research Foundation was pleased to take part in the United Against Torture Consortium (UATC) regional partners’ meeting in Banjul, The Gambia. The meeting was an invaluable opportunity for Omega to meet with many civil society organisations (CSOs) from across Africa and to discuss the work they are doing and hear about the challenges they face.
We met CSOs that Omega has been able to financially support through UATC funding. These include the Women’s Association for Women and Victims’ Empowerment (WAVE-Gambia) who have used the funding to train over 150 newly graduated police officers in the Gambia and Mukuru Community Justice Centre who are working on issues of police accountability and extrajudicial killings. We also met organisations who worked on vital torture-free trade projects, financially supported by Omega through the UATC, including the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), the African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum (APCOF), and the African Centre for Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Victims (ACTV).
While in Banjul, WAVE-Gambia invited Omega to participate in strategic and technical briefing sessions focussing on the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) and the steps The Gambia needs to take to ratify it. We discussed current domestic legal frameworks against torture, National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) establishment, and consensus building. The meeting showed the steps that The Gambia has taken in recent years to tackle torture and other ill-treatment, and the work that still needs to be done.
Along with other members of the UATC, we also met with the European Commission in The Gambia and the Committee for the Prevention of Torture in Africa to discuss the different programmes of work of the UATC and the different organisations involved in the consortium.