Dakar: Senegalese capital, Dakar, often regarded as the symbol of West African democracy, was a shadow of itself when, in February 2024, the streets, once regarded as the safest place to run to, became a place where state machinery turned against civic space and citizens' right to protest. Tear gas and water cannons were used, and smoke filled the atmosphere as youths protested at Place de la Nation against a February 3 decision by former president, Macky Sall, to postpone the country's elections, plunging the nation into constitutional uncertainty. According to Cameroon News Agency, as a means to stifle the civic space and instill fear among Senegalese, the gendarmes were unleashed on the population. Protests that broke out in the Zinguinchor area were immediately quashed while other cities burned into flames. At least three people died, media reports said, quoting a human rights organization like Amnesty International, which also reported that a hundred were arrested by the Macky regime. In an attempt to shield itself and the responsibility of the security forces, the former President Macky Sall signed a controversial Amnesty Law, which rights organizations said was an affront to the victims of the protests. The law of March 6, 2024, granted amnesty for all acts related to the political protests between February 2021 and February 2024. But many critics said it was a 'double-edged' sword law because, though it allowed the release of political prisoners like the now Prime Minister and President, Ousmane Sonko and Diomaye Faye, respectively, it blocked access to justice for victims of police brutality. After all, the law also shielded members of the security forces from being prosecuted for their role in the killings and torture of civilians. This was a denial of justice by the families and international bodies. In Togo, there was a parallel constitutional maneuvering that did not need guns to be won. This came shortly after Senegal's Amnesty Law was passed in March 2024. In April the same year, the Togolese Pa rliament adopted a new constitution that saw the shifting of the presidential system to a parliamentary system. A group of 17 civil society organizations described it as a constitutional coup. Under this new constitution, the president would no longer be elected through universal suffrage, as in the majority of countries in the world, but the parliament will be allowed to do so. This elimination of direct presidential elections, with more powers given to the Council of Ministers, was a slap in the face of Togolese who had yearned for change since the Gnassingbe family took over power in 1967. The events in Togo and Senegal in 2024 show two different faces of the same crisis: the civic space is in dire need of being protected, and political dissent has become the number one enemy in these countries. At that point, Senegal, once the beacon of democracy in the West African subregion, reduced itself to a dictatorial state, showing how it used Amnesty to bury the past, while Togo used the constitutional amendment to control the future. Looking at the above events in Senegal and Togo, the lifespan of democratic participation by the Civil Society Organizations, CSOs, in these countries was threatened, pushing them to create a defense mechanism and a collective shield that moved the discussion from passive victimhood to active resistance. As the national democratic gains became fragile, there were several collective actions and cross-border solidarity of CSOs, which acted as the most effective defensive mechanism against efforts to restrict fundamental human rights of the people. West African CSOs have now understood that to protect civic space back home, they must rely on supernatural forces abroad. The fight did not end on the streets of Lome and Dakar; they took it to Addis Ababa and Abuja, transforming the regional bodies into arbiters of democratic accountability.
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