Human Rights in Benin has the Human Rights League or the HRL as the largest functioning Non-Governmental Organization or the NGO in the entire west African land. The Community of Democracies' (CD) Convening Group invited the
Human Rights in Benin in order to attend the second CD Ministerial Meeting, which was held in the month of November 2002, at Seoul. In fact, the Government of Benin has always shown much amount of respect to the Human Rights in Benin although there are some problematic areas in this field.
Some of the most serious problems which are usually encountered by those involved with the Human Rights in Benin include the following:
- The failure of the Benin police force in curtailing the acts of vigilantism and of the tendency amount of mob justice
- Unbelievably harsh and unhealthy conditions of the prison
- The delay of the administration in the litigation of the ordinary criminal cases
- Unfair and delayed trials
- Corruption in the judicial section
- Acts of societal discrimination as well as violence against women
- The abuse and the trafficking of children
- Female genital mutilation (FGM)
- Infanticide
- Child labor
The Benin Human Rights monitors and the NGOs have the permission of the government to visit various prison cells. The Benin Commission for Human Rights (CBDH) even made some surprise visits to some of the the prisons in December 2001.
