SAFE Project
Avocats Sans Frontiéres France Establishes Police and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) Situation room
Following earlier advocacy visits and sensitization of Security personnel’s in Kaduna, Lagos and Enugu. Carmelite Prisoners’ Interest Organization in collaboration with ASF France and Nigerian Bar Association in a meeting which held in the Federal Capital Territory on the 3rd of March 2021, resolved to establish Police and Civil Society Organization Situation Room. The situation room will be established by SAFE -with funding support from European Union and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), with the aim of addressing human right violations.
Establishing the Situation Room is an offshoot of recommendations generated from State-level stakeholders roundtable meetings organized on the SAFE project on Human Rights. In one of his contributions, the representative of The Inspector General of Police reinstated the commitment of the Nigeria Police Force to the advancement of Human Rights and the strengthening of the Rule of Law in the country. While the Officer-in-Charge of the Police Complaints Response Unit (P-CRU), ACP Martins Ishaku Basiran, during his presentation on the Police Internal Mechanism for Accountability for Human Rights Violations by Police Officers stated that “a total of 2,156 complaints were reported in 2019, of which 1,617 (75%) complaints were resolved, 108 (5%) complaints were found to be false and 431 (20%) complaints are still under investigation. The above data explains the urgent need to establish P-CRU Desk offices across various States of the country to ensure that complaints are addressed and reduced to the barest minimum”.
Organizations in attendance during the inaugural ceremony were ASF France, The Nigeria Police Force (NPF), The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), Legal Aid Council of Nigeria (LACON), Federal Ministry of Justice (FMOJ), CAPIO, The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), and key CSOs working on justice sector reform in Nigeria like; Amnesty International, CLEEN Foundation, Access to Justice, and representative CSOs from Lagos, Enugu and Kaduna States.
