AWLA Champions Women's Rights

November 3, 2004 - (Ghanaian Chronicle - Accra) Women in Ghana are living in a patriarchal society. Repeatedly compelled to play a subordinate role to their male superiors, the nation's laws fail to guarantee for them rights that are equal to those of men.

From the inequitable property rights legislation to the discrimination women are frequently subjected to in the workplace, from a failure to protect women against domestic violence to a neglect of maternal health, the rights of women are all too often overlooked. Men, for the most part, are not interested in the plight of women and more significantly, even the vast majority of women are blind to the injustices being dealt to them.

In the African Women Lawyers' Association (AWLA), however, a glimmer of hope exists for women. Founded in 1998 by a group of professional women lawyers, this non-profit organization is dedicated to the task of defending women's rights and enhancing the status of Ghanaian women. Through the dissemination of laws affecting women, the promotion of legislation to remove all forms of discrimination against women and the raising of gender awareness across the country, AWLA has been working tirelessly for six years to achieve these objectives.

It is not that AWLA is hostile to men. Indeed, the Executive Director of AWLA, Ms. Edna Kuma, was keen to make this very clear. "We are not against men," she told The Chronicle, "but you have to help women simply because nobody else will. If it's not for men, people are not interested. There are even lawyers who disapprove of our work. We have been called a lot of names."

Reliant on donors for its funding, AWLA's finances are a constant source of concern. Their members of staff are not paid competitive or regular wages and with only two full-time lawyers, AWLA is dependent on a corps of professional lawyers who occasionally take time off their other work to offer their unpaid services to AWLA. "When it comes to seeking sponsorship, companies in Ghana are not very helpful," Mrs. Kuma professed. "It seems that they want us to collapse and, as a result, we are increasingly having to depend on foreign funding."

It was not an easy decision for Mrs. Kuma to abandon her former career at FIDA in order to devote herself to AWLA, but it is a decision that she does not regret. "I am a career woman," she explained, "and I thrived on work in the corporate world.
However, I came to the conclusion that women needed our help and that I had to sacrifice my own career for the common good of everybody."

This selfless decision has not proved futile. During its six years in existence, AWLA has made some significant steps forward.
Mrs. Kuma spoke in particular of its success in educating the police on the provisions in the criminal code that relate to domestic violence. It has equipped every police station across Ghana with a manual containing the relevant legislation and given capacity training to policemen and magistrates from every district, enabling them to offer victims of domestic violence the support and attention that has so long been denied them.

The enormity of this achievement cannot be overstated. As one of AWLA's leading executive members, Mrs. Mana Oye Lithur, related, "the police were supposed to be defending the law, but they did not even know the code.

Since our training, however, they have become more confident, they know what they are about and are able to do their job better. Previously, the prosecutors were going to court and losing the cases as a matter of course because they had never had any training. Now, they are able to fight cases to the end".

More recently, AWLA has commenced work on a project concerning the reproductive health of women and access to abortion services. It has published a handbook that highlights all the key provisions of laws and policies regulating abortion in Ghana and it is hoped that this will encourage a broad range of stakeholders to work together to put in place structures that will enable healthcare facilities throughout the country to provide legal and safe abortion services. As the second highest cause of maternal mortality in Ghana, abortion is bringing about too many needless deaths and women have a right to receive a better service.

If this it to be achieved, it is imperative to dispel the widespread fallacy that it is a crime to perform an abortion in Ghana.
In law, there exist three circumstances under which abortion is legally permissible and healthcare providers must be made aware that performing an abortion under one of these circumstances will not be criminally prosecuted. In cases where pregnancy is a result of rape, defilement of a female idiot or incest, where continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother and where there is substantial risk or serious abnormality or disease with the foetus, abortion is within the law.

The abortion service offered to such women must thus be made safe. Only then will it be possible for Ghana to prevent the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of women every year and in doing so, to comply with such international obligations as the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, under which Ghana is legally compelled to improve maternal health.

However, frequently denied, it is a fact in Ghana that the rights of women are not treated with the respect that they deserve. Yet, if Ghana is going to move forward, both on a humanitarian and an economic level, this is something that must change. Women constitute an important cog in the wheel of development.

As the United Nations Volunteers Programme Officer in Ghana, Mr. Joseph Oji, proclaimed last Thursday in Accra, "their patient disposition, maternal instincts, compassion, energy, intelligence, enormous reservoir of skills, ingenuity, creativity and local knowledge hold invaluable potentials for societal harmony and development".

From: http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200411030301.html