The Gambia signed the Convention against Torture on 23 October 1985 and did not ratify it for thirty-three years, acceding on 28 September 2018. Its initial report to the Committee against Torture fell due on 28 October 2019. It has never been filed, and the Committee has never examined The Gambia. There are no concluding observations to cite.
Why this page exists
The Gambia is one of the countries people in the register hold protection against. This page exists partly to record an absence. Where other pages on this site quote a finding of a United Nations body, here there is none to quote, and that is itself the finding.
The Gambia is also listed in the Third-Country Removals project, on The Countries page, flagged as a destination country where torture is documented.
What The Gambia has accepted
The depositary record shows signature on 23 October 1985 and accession on 28 September 2018. The Convention entered into force for The Gambia on 28 October 2018. It has made no declaration under article 22, so an individual cannot complain about The Gambia to the Committee against Torture.
Why there is nothing from the Committee
The initial report was due on 28 October 2019, one year after entry into force. The reporting record shows the report outstanding and no symbol issued for it. There is no list of issues and no concluding observations. Searches of the United Nations document system for CAT/C/GMB/CO/1, CO/2, COAR/1 and QPR/1 return nothing.
One caution for anyone researching this. The Gambia was examined in March 2025 by the Committee on Enforced Disappearances. That is a different treaty body under a different convention, and its report is not a Committee against Torture document. It should not be cited as one.
Gambians sent to third countries
Gambians have been sent by the United States to Ghana. Human Rights Watch records nationals of the Gambia on the flights of 5 September and 7 November 2025, and ICE data record one Gambian on a flight of 11 September 2025. Source: HRW, To Scare People, 8 October 2026, pp. 64 to 65
Ghana sent at least two of them on to the Gambia although they held United States protection against return there. Third Country Deportation Watch reports that a Gambian man who held protection under the Convention against Torture and was on the first flight “was returned to Gambia after being held for five days in Ghana’s airport without access to a phone, shower, or clean clothes”, and that a man from the flight of November 2025 was “subsequently repatriated to the Gambia, though an immigration judge had granted him withholding of removal.” Human Rights First describes a Gambian man with protection under the Convention in the same terms, and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants records that by 15 September 2025 “all of the individuals had been sent to their home countries” from the first flight. Sources: Third Country Deportation Watch, Ghana · Human Rights First, 9 October 2026, p. 35 · USCRI tracker, Ghana entry
Third Country Deportation Watch’s Uganda page records 27 Gambian nationals among the 2,823 asylum seekers whose cases were pretermitted between December 2025 and August 2026 for removal to Uganda. Source: Third Country Deportation Watch, Uganda
What the register records
D.A. v. Noem, District Court for the District of Columbia, 15 September 2025. Five citizens of Nigeria and The Gambia, each of whom had been granted withholding of removal or deferral of removal after an immigration judge found they were more likely than not to face persecution, torture or death at home, were woken in the middle of the night on 5 September 2025 at an immigration detention facility, shackled, and put aboard a United States military cargo plane bound for Ghana. They were not allowed to notify family or counsel.
The entry is in the register of court decisions, and the country they were forcibly sent to is covered on the Ghana page.
Sources
Treaty status and entry into force: United Nations Treaty Collection, depositary record for the Convention against Torture, chapter IV-9, read 14 September 2026.
Reporting status: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, treaty body reporting record for The Gambia, read 14 September 2026. Sources: UN Treaty Collection, Convention against Torture · OHCHR treaty body reporting record, The Gambia
Gambians sent to third countries: Human Rights Watch, To Scare People, 8 October 2026, pages 64 to 65; Human Rights First, In the Middle of the Night, They Come and Get You, 9 October 2026, page 35; Third Country Deportation Watch, Ghana and Uganda, and the USCRI tracker, read 5 November 2026. Sources: HRW, To Scare People (PDF) · Human Rights First, 9 October 2026 · Third Country Deportation Watch, Ghana · Third Country Deportation Watch, Uganda · USCRI tracker