Ghanaian NGOs call for 3 issues to be addressed at 59th Session of CEDAW Committee
Ghanaian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have raised concerns over the country’s inadequate response to some of the provisions of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)
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They highlighted three critical issues that they said Ghana must intensify efforts to address. These are abolishing witch-camps and servitude of girls, passing legislative instruments to the Domestic Violence, Disability, Human Trafficking and Mental Health laws and passing the property rights of spouses bill.
These formed part of a shadow report prepared by 50 of the country’s NGOs to the UN Committee for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women.
Stating the case of the NGOs at the 59th Session of the CEDAW Committee which is underway in Geneva, Switzerland, Ms Afua Addotey, of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA Ghana), referred to the customary practice where elderly women from rural areas in the northern regions accused of causing misfortunes in their families were labelled witches.
Witch-camps
“These women, due to stigmatisation and fear of being lynched, find refuge in witch-camps,” she stated.
Presently, there are six witch camps with 452 adult residents. In three of the six camps there are 503 girls. For instance, she said there were 42 alleged witches and 100 children at the Kpatinga Camp. The girls are at the camps to care for and work to support their grandmothers and are not beneficiaries of the state’s Free Compulsory Basic Education programme, which is guaranteed by the Constitution.
Ms Addotey, however, pointed out that although Ghana had not passed a law to abolish the practice, in 2011, it started implementating a road-map for the closure of the witch-camps and reintegration of the women into communities of their choices.
“Implementation of this road map has been slow to the detriment of girls of school age at the witch-camps,” the NGOs said, and urged the CEDAW to recommend that Ghana fully implement the road map to disband the witch camps, and reintegrate all the women into communities.
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The NGOs also asked for the reintegration of girls in witch camps with their families and ensure that their fundamental right to basic education was guaranteed.
Domestic violence / other laws
Ms Addotey, who represented the NGOs together with Mrs Bernice Sam and Mr Frank Bodza, all of Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF Ghana), said while the country had passed the Domestic Violence, Human Trafficking and Mental Health laws, “these have not been effectively implemented due to the lack of legislative instruments to operationalise them.
“The consequences therefore, are that the victims have difficulties accessing medical care after abuse, particularly sexual abuse, and the police are unable to effectively prosecute cases,” she said.
Furthermore, Ms Addotey said persons with disability, particularly women, had difficulties in accessing justice, maternal care and higher education in public institutions which were also not disability-friendly.
They, therefore, advocated that the country should pass the legislative instruments to aid implementation of the Domestic Violence, Disability, Human Trafficking and Mental Health laws.
Property rights of spouses bill
With regard to the property rights of spouses bill, Ms Addotey said 22 years after the promulgation of the Constitution and eight years after the Committee’s recommendation, the law had not been passed.
“Despite the absence of this law, the Supreme Court of Ghana, relying on CEDAW Articles 5 and 16 and recognising women’s reproductive work has established the “equality” principle in the distribution of property at divorce in a landmark case in 2011,” she said.
However, she said, outside the formal court system, there were grave disparities in the application of customary law in cases of customary marriage dissolution that often did not inure to the benefit of women, particularly rural women.
Ms Addotey said similarly, at the dissolution of an Islamic marriage, women and men did not share joint property equally.
She emphasised that the passage of the property rights of spouses’ bill into law would ensure equality in property distribution at divorce for all three types of marriages in Ghana, namely customary, Islamic and civil marriages.
Other issues that the NGOs raised in the 40-page report, were that it appears the national gender machinery was focusing more on social protection than gender equality and children and that it should be better resourced to enforce its mandate.