The President of the Republic, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, this morning received the 2024 and 2025 annual reports of the National Observer of Places of Deprivation of Liberty, the National Mechanism for the Prevention of Torture.
The Head of State immediately set out the meaning of such an exercise. Beyond the requirements of transparency and accountability, it is for the State a moment of truth about the way it treats those whom it deprives of liberty. The National Observer is neither a censor of law enforcement officers nor an advocate for persons deprived of liberty. It is the gaze that the Republic casts upon itself, in those closed places where, more than anywhere else, the sincerity of its attachment to human dignity is measured.
In two years, the Institution has carried out one hundred and twenty-four visits to places of deprivation of liberty and formulated more than one hundred recommendations. Results that the President welcomed as the fruit of an approach based on cooperation and dialogue, conducted with discernment, openness of mind and a sense of dialogue. He gave the assurance that these recommendations will be the subject of careful examination by the ministries concerned, under the coordination of the Prime Minister, with a view to their concrete implementation.
This requirement has already produced legislative advances. The updating of the legal framework of the Observatory, recommended during the Justice Assizes, has become a reality with the adoption of Law No. 2026-02 of 26 February 2026. A text that enshrines important innovations, including the raising of the institutional anchoring of the mechanism to the Primature, a guarantee of the transversality of its mission.
President Faye announced several strong orientations. On the food and health care of persons held in police custody, he invited the ministers concerned to take stock of the situation with a view to the effective application of the texts in force, and urged the Minister of Justice to finalize their revision. On prison overcrowding, a major concern of the Government, he called for in-depth reflection on the development of alternative sentences to incarceration and better regulation of pre-trial detention.
On the issue of searches that undermine human dignity, the Head of State indicated that the technological means available today, such as detection portals, make it possible to provide a response that respects individuals, and that the announced equipment of penitentiary establishments should inspire those responsible for places of police custody.
Particular attention was also paid to the officers. The President of the Republic assured that the appropriate measures will be taken to finalize the draft law on the status of the staff of the Penitentiary Administration, a reform that will pave the way for the eventual elaboration of a penitentiary code. It is a matter, he stressed, of social justice towards officers who carry out, in the shadow of the walls, one of the harshest missions of the Republic.
The Head of State finally extended his sincere condolences to the Institution following the passing of Divisional Commissioner of Exceptional Class Mamadou Yandé Boye, delegated observer, who devoted his last strength to the preparation of the reports presented on this day, after forty-seven years in the service of the State.
