Story: Vincent Adedze, Tamale
WOMEN’s access to justice in the three northern regions is being hampered by lack of funding and logistics.
These problems are a great challenge to both governmental and non-governmental organisations in their quest to improve on women’s access to justice.
Ironically, however, significant strides have been made in increasing women’s awareness of the need for them to get justice. Unfortunately, this awareness has not been significantly translated into increased access to justice for women as the system has been characterised by delays in justice delivery and either rightly or wrongly, lack of commitment on the part of law enforcement agencies to make justice readily available to women in the north.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), Ghana, with support from its partners has over the years intensified its activities to help improve access to justice among women. That effort is also being hampered by lack of “donor funding”.
The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) in the Northern Region, has put in place a monitoring exercise to assess the abuse of women’s rights.
Statistics made available by FIDA indicates that 100 cases of various forms of abuse of women’s rights had been recorded by the organisation in the Upper East and Northern regions as of November 2007.
The cases include inheritance, maintenance, domestic violence, widowhood rights, alleged witchcraft, threats of death, rape, defilement and threats of divorce.
The figures showed that 90 cases had been disposed of while the remaining 10 cases are still pending and yet to be disposed of although FIDA has done its best to facilitate the speedy trial of such cases.
The Upper West Region, for instance, has more cases of the abuse of women’s rights than the remaining two northern regions, but the adjudication of such cases is a major challenge to stakeholders. Lack of funding was again cited as the major problem hampering FIDA’s efforts to help provide legal aid to the thousands of women who are still facing difficulties in obtaining access to justice.
FIDA, for instance, is yet to make its presence felt in the Upper West Region and it has attributed its inability to operate effectively to lack of donor funding.
During a recent sensitisation workshop to help improve on women’s access to justice in Tamale, the Executive Director of FIDA, Madam Jane Quaye, expressed regret about delays in the arrest and prosecution of some suspects alleged to have molested a middle- aged woman, Fati Adam, at Gburumani in the Tolon-Kumbungu District.
FIDA is currently facilitating the investigation of the case in which Fati was alleged to have bewitched her stepson leading to the son’s death for which reason she was allegedly molested and chained by her accusers to compel her to confess.
A police detachment from the Northern Regional Police Command, including some officials of FIDA who subsequently went to effect the arrest of the suspects, was attacked by some residents of the community.
The irate youth also vandalised the FIDA vehicle that conveyed the officials to the community.
According to Madam Quaye, “it is two weeks now since the police took up the matter yet when you contact them they always give the excuse that they do not have the needed logistics or that they are still strategising; how can a whole police set-up get to a community to effect an arrest only to be chased out by the residents of that community?”
As part of a routine monitoring exercise conducted by CHRAJ last year, the commission found out that the Gambaga Witch Camp had 88 suspected witches and 12 children. The witch camp at Kukuo, a suburb of Tamale, has 114 women and 171 children accused of witchcraft. All these constitute human rights violation and something needs to be done to address those issues quickly.
No wonder the Regional Director of CHRAJ, Mr Iddrisu Dajia, expressed regret that “it is disturbing that only the Northern Region has witch camps in the country.”
“The human rights dimension to the situation of these women suspected of witchcraft is very serious; apart from the liberty to live freely in their natural homes and communities, their right to dignity, to own property, freedom of movement and expression are all curtailed and the stigma of being called a witch and staying as a banished person can never be compensated for”, the CHRAJ director pointed out.
But sadly, in spite of the visible abuse of women’s rights in the communities there seems to be the lack of commitment to the enforcement of laws regarding women’s rights and their access to justice.
The CHRAJ director did not mince words at all when he pointed out a typical example of a delay in justice delivery in a forced marriage case reported at the Saboba District office of the commission recently.
According to Mr Dajia, the victim, Maanya Kwaku, who was three months pregnant, was tortured to death by her brother and his colleagues for resisting their attempt to force her into marriage with a man she did not love.
The case was reported to the CHRAJ by the fiancé of the deceased. It was then referred to the Yendi police for investigations into the matter.
“But as we speak now, the alleged perpetrators are still walking freely, despite persistent calls by the commission to the police to act”, Mr Dajia said regretfully.
One question worth considering is why some police personnel seem apathetic towards the promotion of women’s rights and fail to facilitate the speedy trial of suspects who have abused the rights of women.
It is, however, heart-warming to note that a unit to promote women’s rights, the Women and Juvenile Unit of the Ghana Police Service, has been created. What is left now is for the government with support from civil society organisations to ensure that women’s rights are not relegated to the background.
That is the only way this dear nation of ours can forge ahead in her development efforts.
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