LAHRIA: Lifetime in the planning!
Friday, July 18, was an auspicious day in the life and times of yours truly: the culmination of years of planning and yearning for the establishment of a non-governmental organisation (NGO), specially dedicated to the defence of the poor and indigent persons in Ghana wrongly accused of crime, the promotion of human rights within the Ghanaian criminal justice system and, above all, using human rights legislation and principles for the advancement of human rights and dignity.
Friday, July 18, was the day ‘Law and Human Rights in Action’ (LAHRIA) received official recognition, and thus, attained the status of an operational entity.
Writing about LAHRIA was not supposed to be in the script this week, but the emotions involved in witnessing the birth and coming into being of a lifelong ambition completely and utterly relegated to the background any conceivable topic that was next on the conveyor belt for this column.
LAHRIA
I hope my esteemed and cherished readers will understand why today’s piece is centred on LAHRIA ― after all, the ideas bandied about in this column and the intense lobbying that I have sought to achieve by the advocacy on these pages were points in a long continuum of working towards a credible criminal justice system in Ghana.
Now to the small matter of the anecdote of the birth of LAHRIA. I had always been fascinated by the law and the concept of justice right from an early age.
The earliest trappings of this passion, or obsession if you like, was grounded in a chance drama production at school where yours truly was cast as the character of Portia in the Merchant of Venice, the famous play by William Shakespeare, coming face to face with the machinations of Shylock, the Jewish money lender, whose ruthless, rigid and overly legalistic attitude sharply contrasted with the divine importance of mercy, as personified in Portia’s famous speech.
The nature of raw and unmitigated adherence to the letter of the law, brutally revealed in the character of Shylock, had a sobering effect, bringing to the fore the innate limitations of ‘black letter’ law.
Even though the thought had not crystallised then, it engendered a strong desire in me to work in the law and try as much as possible to temper justice with mercy when possible.
That may explain why the bulk of my practice in the UK was concentrated on human rights and criminal defence.
The near obsession with everything to do with the law persisted throughout my secondary school days.
All my classmates will testify to the hallowed inscription on all my textbooks and notebooks: law or suicide!
It was either law or death.
It remains to be seen whether a wimp like me was ever going to execute that promise! I doubt it, but I can swear to the sincerity and honesty of my intentions at the time, knowing very well now that I will never be taken to task on it, having miraculously and successfully navigated the contours of legal training.
Study
After high school, the political chaos and wanton lawlessness of some elements within the rule of the Provisional National Defence Council, amid the brutal human rights breaches of the day, made me not think twice about accepting a scholarship to study abroad.
At undergraduate level at the University of London, the pursuit of justice, human rights and non-discrimination determined that my long essay was entirely devoted to the systemic discrimination in the Metropolitan Police against black people: the dissertation was entitled ‘Police and Black People’.
The work catalogued the endemic racism and sheer discrimination in the policing of black people as documented in the Scarman Report, which called for reforms in policing in Britain and which came out after the riots in Brixton, London and the brutal policing that led to the riots in Bristol and Broadwater Farm, London.
It was, therefore, only natural that I would then go on to study International Human Rights Law at Master's level at the University College of London (UCL), part of the University of London, while most of my mates from undergraduate level were opting to ‘chase the money’ and head into corporate practice.
The ‘raw deal’ I felt black people endured within the criminal justice system of England and Wales at the time of passing out of Bar School inexorably led me to join 1 Crown Office Row, a leading criminal defence Barristers' Chambers.
Here, I gained invaluable skills from some of the top defence Barristers in the UK.
The writer is a lawyer.
E-mail: georgebshaw1@gmail.com
