Keep abreast of family laws : Women advised

The Executive Director of Window of Hope Foundation, a gender-based non-governmental organisation, Mrs Elizabeth Adubofuor, has advised women to learn more about family laws and other legal instruments that protect their rights.

That, she said, would enable them to assert their rights and be in a position to speak out when their rights were being trampled upon or abused.

Mrs Adobofuor gave the advice when the foundation organised a legal education clinic for some women’s groups in the Ashanti Region. The clinic was sponsored by the Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy.

She said a new age was dawning for women, with bright future prospects “if only civil society and human rights institutions will continue to identify and empower excluded groups of women to be freed from injustices and violence and allowed to participate equally in society alongside men.”

She said there was the need for gender-based organisations to educate vulnerable groups within the society, particularly women, on the laws that affected them to enable them to know what to do when they found themselves in certain situations.

Legal education

She said the legal education clinic which formed part of the activities marking this year’s Women’s History Month was to educate women on some selected laws that impacted directly on the family, and for that matter, women.

She said the clinic was aimed at increasing public awareness of women’s legal rights, to increase women’s knowledge of human (woman) and legal rights, as well as to encourage self-empowerment and self-motivation.

“The legal education is to arm women with sufficient knowledge of basic laws so that they could protect themselves from oppression and unfairness of customary practices that violate their human rights,” she stated.

Aside these, she said, the training would also strengthen the capacity of the women to organise themselves to claim their rights and refrain from acts that contravened the rights of children. 

The topics that the women were taken through included Domestic Violence Act, Marriage Laws, Inheritance Law, the Wills Act and the Children’s Act.

Participants

The participants were drawn from women self-help groups from two communities in the Atwima Mponua District and other similar groups from the Kumasi Metropolis.

Some of the groups included Precious Ladies, Odo Na Eye, Modern Ladies, Sisters, Boafo Ye Na, Onua Do Ladies and Mmaa Nyina Aye Yie.