Govt must step up efforts to eliminate discrimination against women — NGOs

Ghanaian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have raised concerns over the country’s inadequate response to some of the provisions in the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

In 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 on the combined sixth and seventh reports from the government of Ghana, the NGOs highlighted three critical issues that they said Ghana must intensify its efforts to address.

Critical areas

These are the abolishig of 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.

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

“ Those women, due to stigmatisation and fear of being lynched, found refuge in the witch camps,” she stated.

 Presently, there are six witch camps, with 452 adult residents. In three of the six camps, there are 503 girls who far outnumber the alleged witches. 

She cited, for instance, the fact that at the Kpatinga Camp there were 42 alleged witches and 100 children. 

These girls were sent to the camps to care for and work to support their grandmothers and are not beneficiaries of the state’s Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education programme which is guaranteed under Article 25 (1) of the Constitution.

Ms Addotey noted that although Ghana had not passed a law to abolish that practice, in 2011 it commenced the implementation of a road map for the abolish of the witch camps and the reintegration of the women into communities of their choices.

Domestic violence and other laws

Ms Addotey, who represented the NGOs together with Mrs Bernice Sam and Mr Frank Bodza, both from 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 lack of legislative instruments to operationalise them”.  

The consequences, therefore, she said, were that victims had difficulty accessing medical care after abuse, particularly sexual abuse, and the police were unable to effectively prosecute cases.

Furthermore, efforts to protect victims of trafficking and domestic violence also continued to decrease because the state’s two shelters were not in operation, persons with disability, particularly women, had difficulty accessing justice, maternal care and higher education in public institutions, which are also not disability friendly.

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, majority of whom contracted customary marriages.

“Similarly, at dissolution of an Islamic marriage, women and men did not share joint property equally,” Ms Addotey added.

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, and called on the committee to urge Ghana to fully endorse the position of the Supreme Court by passing the law without further delay.