‘Increased sexual, gender-based violence cases worrying’
The Deputy Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Mrs Della Sowah, has lamented the increase in the reported cases of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the country, attributing it to the watching of pornographic materials by some men.
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She said records available at the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service indicated that in the past five years (2011-2015), the country had recorded a total of 85,590 cases of SGBV nationwide, with 15,749 of the SGBV cases recorded in 2015 and 15,426 cases in the previous year.
Out of the number recorded in 2015, she said, assault on women accounted for 4,500 cases (almost a third); 316 were rape cases, while defilement accounted for 1,180.
Dialogue
Mrs Sowah stated this in Tamale in the Northern Region in an interaction with the media, after the opening session of an engagement dialogue that brought together judges of the various family tribunals, circuit and GBV Courts, the high courts, senior state prosecutors and investigators from the DOVVSU units in all the 10 regions.
It was held on the theme: “Improving Justice for Victims of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV): The role of the judiciary.”
The engagement dialogue was held to discuss the best ways of handling SGBV cases in the country, and also provided a platform for the participants to examine challenges and the way forward in improving the justice system in order to increase convictions for SGBV cases.
According to Mrs Sowah, the kind of movies people were watching in the media, including pornographic films, contributed to how badly some men treated their spouses, thereby increasing the rate of SGBV in the country, pointing out that SGBV was almost becoming an epidemic in the country and needed to be tackled head-on.
Convictions
Mrs Sowah said out of the 1,291 SGBV cases sent to court in 2015, only 139 of the cases were convicted, with 10,945 of the total of 15,749 cases still under investigation.
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She added that in 2014, out of 1,547 SGBV cases sent to court, only 160 were convicted with 11,705 of the 15,426 remaining cases under investigation.
She explained that currently, the conviction rate for SGBV cases in the country was approximately 4.4 per cent, which was very low and not acceptable in a country that had ratified various international human rights instruments.
The Northern Regional Director of the Department of Gender, Mr I. P. S. Zakaria-Saa, decried the alarming increase in SGBV cases in the country.
He expressed worry that in recent times many of the victims of SGBV were senior high school students.
“In recent times there have been several cases of SGBV and schoolgirls, especially those at the second cycle level have been the victims, causing some of them to drop out of school,” he indicated.