LAHRIA: Lifetime in the Planning! (2)
Continuing from last week’s column, I intend to conclude the narrative of the birth of LAHRIA and then concentrate on the aims and objectives of the NGO.
I took time out from early practice at the English Bar to do an internship at the famous Institute of Human Rights and Development in the Gambia.
My work focused on plotting policies and strategies for human rights litigation to be employed by NGOs at the African Human Rights Commission and the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights.
This involved the preparation of training manuals and workshop materials and I gained first-hand experience of working with a human rights NGO.
After several years practice at the English Bar, during which I was a very active member of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, I relocated to Ghana to put into practice the ambition of a lifetime — to work in human rights and criminal justice in Ghana.
The plan was to launch LAHRIA straight away on relocation but it dawned on me that the best way to study the system was to gradually learn the ropes of general practice and inculcate the human rights and criminal justice issues incrementally.
Thus, I gradually developed my general practice work whilst doing a lot of ‘pro bono’ work on the side.
However, doing work for free is never a sustainable position and the need for the establishment of an official NGO became apparent.
I have come a long way, but these cases highlight the original dream: the Akwamufie murders, where I worked to free some African Americans who had been wrongly charged with murder; the Denkyira Obuasi lynching of Major Mahama and, by far the most far-reaching, working to free Yaw Asante Agyekum, the mechanic who was wrongfully incarcerated for 23 years as an accomplice of Ataa Ayi, the notorious armed robber.
When Asante Agyekum was freed, I received countless messages from individuals, media people, human rights and criminal justice reform organisations regarding numerous other such individuals languishing in jail. It was time to go full-time with LAHRIA! The work has only just begun and I crave your indulgence and support to make it work.
Next phase
As the embers of the ashes of the successful registration of LAHRIA slowly fade away, there emerges the next phase of the human rights agenda: the setting up of an operational secretariat.
Thereupon, the real work, the reason for embarking on the journey in the first place, begins.
The core objective of LAHRIA is to leverage the undoubted power of international human rights law — dignity, equality and above all justice for all.
We seek to protect individual dignity thereby promoting personal autonomy and respect.
By religiously abhorring discrimination, LAHRIA will work towards ensuring equal treatment and opportunities whilst vigorously defending them when necessary.
Human rights abuses (such as police brutality, arbitrary arrests and detention, aggressive questioning often without legal representation) are very much on the radar.
The whole gamut of the civil and political rights of the International Covenant on Peoples’ and Political Rights (derived directly from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, codified into Ghanaian law by Chapter 5 of the 1992 Constitution) will be our guiding texts.
Our aim is to deploy the human rights law, especially the socio-economic rights, to foster economic development.
In our arsenal is the plethora of rights guaranteed in the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, explicitly adopted wholesale in the 1992 Constitution.
These include, but are not limited to, the right to work, health, education, right to pay and a decent wage, etc.
On the right to work, LAHRIA will protect workers who are unfairly dismissed, address inequalities in pay for some work -prevalent in some industries — whilst at the same time promoting good industrial and labour relations according to International Labour Organisation principles.
LAHRIA will endeavour to bring actions for ordinary citizens to realise the right to health in its purest form.
The areas of work to be tackled to make our dear nation human rights compliant are very wide — non discrimination of vulnerable groups (children, people wrongfully accused of witchcraft, excessive use of powers by the police, to name but a few) but we hope that civil society organisations and corporate Ghana will come on board.
The journey to achieve the ultimate aim of human rights — achievement of true dignity - is taken on in earnest.
It shall be well. Long live LAHRIA!
