A/HRC/28/68/Add.4 Family visits 87. New visiting rooms are being constructed at Mile 2 Central Prison. However, detainees in the security wing, including those on death row24 and those perceived to be enemies of the President, are subjected to harsher treatment and are denied access to family visits.25 D. Obligation to protect persons in situations of vulnerability Individuals detained in mental health-care facilities 88. Due to the suspension of visits to places of deprivation of liberty, the Special Rapporteur was unable to visit psychiatric centres. During the mission, the Director General of Prisons advised the Special Rapporteur that four individuals were being held under detention orders at Tanka Tanka Mental Home. The Minister for Health stated that a draft disability bill was under consideration. Children 89. The Gambia has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Children’s Act 2005 provides child offenders with free legal representation and separation from adults from the pretrial to trial stages. Under the Act, a children’s court was established in Kanifing Magistrate Court to hear all juvenile cases (there are plans to establish a children’s court in every region)26 and child welfare units were established in police stations. 90. While section 220, paragraph 9, of the Children’s Act 2005 prohibits corporal punishment as a judicial sentence, there is no explicit prohibition of corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure and it is routinely practised in the home and in schools.27 Neither the Criminal Code nor the Children and Young Persons Act 1949 prohibit corporal punishment, either as a judicial sentence for a crime or as a disciplinary measure in juvenile detention facilities.28 The Special Rapporteur was unable to visit the juvenile wing at Jeshwang Prison, as visits to places of detention had to be suspended. Women in detention 91. There is a female wing at Mile 2 Central Prison. According to information that the Special Rapporteur received, the female wing is also kept in very poor, unsanitary conditions, with substandard food and cramped cells. According to reports, young female detainees are removed during the night and returned in the morning, the inference being that the guards and/or male detainees mistreat and rape them. The Government has said there are plans to relocate the female prisoner’s wing to a newly expanded area of Jeshwang Prison. Violence against women and girls 92. The National Women’s Council advises the Government on policies and plans aimed at promoting women’s rights and works closely with the Vice President, who is also the Minister for Women’s Affairs. In order to combat gender-based violence, the Domestic 24 25 26 27 28 16 Amadou Scattred Janneh, Standing up against injustice: a memoire, (XLIBRIS, 2013). Bakary Samateh, “Gambia: Lang Conteh arraigned, remanded at Mile 2”, All Africa, 8 July 2014. Available from http://allafrica.com/stories/201407081041.html. See CRC/C/GMB/2-3, para. 222. Global Initiative, submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, February 2014. See CRC/C/GMB/2-3, paras. 35, 36 and 92.