UNFPA boss visits centre at Mallam Atta Market

The Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, Dr Babatunde Osotimehin, has paid a working visit to the community response centre for gender-based violence survivors at the Mallam Atta Market in Accra, to acquaint himself with the operations of the facility.

He was accompanied by the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur; an actress and Goodwill Ambassador of the UNFPA, Madam Catarina Furtado; the Norwegian Ambassador to Ghana, Mrs Hege Hertzberg; the UNFPA Ghana Representative, Babatunde Ahonsi; the Queenmother of the Greater Accra Regional Market Traders Association, Madam Mercy Nii Gyan, among other dignitaries.

The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, in collaboration with the UNFPA, established the centres at the Mallam Atta and Agbogboloshie markets in Accra, to increase the rate of survival of victims of gender-based violence and perpetrator accountability. Another centre is to be established soon at Oforikrom in Kumasi.

Core services             

It would also coordinate and link core services and provide immediate to long-term health care, access to police, legal and counselling services.

Other objectives of the centre is to manage gender-based violence (GBV) cases such as primary mechanism to identify GBV survivors at the market level and station community and market paralegals trained by the ministry for them to provide care and support to the response centre where necessary.

The centres, temporary structures located at the markets, are to serve as complaint centres for victims of gender-based violence in the markets. The counsellors at the centres are also expected to continuously keep track of processes and services that would include trauma prevention, HIV, pre and post-test counselling and prophylaxis (PEP) adherence counselling.

A study on violence against women conducted by the Gender Studies and Human Rights Documentation Centre, a non-profit, non-governmental organisation that strives to address issues of gender inequality in Ghana, indicates that one in three Ghanaian women suffered from physical violence at the hands of a past or current partner.

Vulnerable persons

Many of these vulnerable persons use the market centres as their places of abode and some of them suffer physical, sexual and emotional abuses.

The market centres also have high population of people, especially women, where a lot of young boys and girls from rural communities travel to in the cities in search of jobs as head porters or ‘kayayei’ and truck pushers.

Dr Osotimehin said the UNFPA was committed to looking after the welfare of women, protecting them from gender-based violence and creating opportunities for every young girl to reach her full potential.

Therefore, he said, there was no basis and it was unacceptable for any man to beat a woman, and as such any man who beat a woman must be prosecuted for his actions.

High rate of GBV

The Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, in her remarks, said Ghana, like many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, had a high rate of GBV.

She said rape and defilement, female genital mutilation, child or forced marriage, trafficking of girls and women, sexual harassment at the workplace, wife beating and many others were the commonest forms of GBV and perpetrators comprised intimate partners and family members, as well as strangers, with some institutional factors compounding the problem.

Government interventions

To that effect, the ministry last year launched the National Gender Policy to prove beyond doubt the commitment of the government to push the gender agenda forward for true gender equality and human rights in society.

She said the ministry had submitted the Affirmative Action Bill to the Cabinet for approval and it had also co-sponsored the Intestate Succession and Property Rights of Spouses bills with the Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General.

“The Domestic Violence Legislative Instrument has been finalised with legal advice from the Attorney-General’s Department,” she said.

With these interventions, Nana Lithur said it was evidently clear that the ministry would no longer tolerate unfair treatment of the vulnerable in the country.

“We shall no longer allow gender-based violence to be meted out to the vulnerable in Ghana. Women empowerment remains key to our development process in the country,” she said.