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BOLGATANGA: Domestic Violence Relegating Women to the Background – CODAC

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The Community Development and Advocacy Centre (CODAC) has noted that domestic violence against women and children is a major setback to efforts at improving women participation in traditional and political decision making process.

Speaking in Bolgatanga at a sensitization workshop for traditional rulers, assembly members and other stakeholders concerned, Chairperson of CODAC Norbert Akolbila said CODAC in partnership with IBIS Ghana has been working over the years to encourage and improve upon women participation in traditional and political leadership and decision-making in society.

According to him, the progress so far has been largely very successful, as there are now queen mothers, women representation in the chiefs’ council of elders, assembly women and women in PTAs and SMCs executives among others. These he said have been made possible as a result of unrelenting community sensitizations, advocacy, building of durable partnerships, motivations and through capacity building programmes.

“The continued prevalence of violence against women and girls is one of the major setbacks in this regard. Despite the existence of the Domestic Violence Act, 2007 (Act 732), it seems there is still more to be done to end violence against women and girls in the Upper East region and elsewhere in the country, including increasing awareness and its enforcement. It is against this backdrop that we are organizing this one-day sensitization workshop for traditional authorities including queen mothers in the region on Domestic Violence Act” he noted.

The senior investigator at the Commission for Human Right and Administrative Justice, Edmund Alagpulinsa called on family Heads and community leaders in various communities to be agents of change by leading violent-free behavior for others to follow. He expressed worry at the rate of domestic violence cases in the region attributing part of it to bride price which make some people think that, after paying the bride price of a woman then she must surrender her rights to the husband.

“Society is dynamic, things are changing and we as family heads need to understand that things have changed and those things that we used to do as family heads, we can no longer do them because of the laws that we have. So if we can make a way forward, the best way is to effectively have a sensitization programme so a lot more people can become aware that it has become an offence because with the passage of the domestic violence act, it is an offence. So we need to have continuous sensitization and then it should not end there because if people become aware and one becomes a victim but does not report, you see that you will continue to suffer” he added.

Meanwhile, the Upper East regional coordinator of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service DSP Kwadwo Appiah attributed the lack of a regional statistics on domestic violence to the unavailability of DOVVSU offices in the various districts in the region adding that some people feel reluctant to move to the only office in Bolga to report their cases.

“If you look at the statistics that we have, it appears people are not actually reporting and they are treating the cases as private affair. The unfortunate aspect of it is that, we have only one DOVVSU office in the region and the statistics is not a clear representation of the whole region in the sense that because of proximity it is only people of the Bolga municipality, parts of Talensi, Nabdam and sometimes drops of cases from Navrongo and Paga. So it is a bit difficult to give statistics that represent the whole region,” he lamented.

However, he revealed that with support from United Nation Fund for Population Analysis about two hundred personnel from the districts have been trained and hopefully by the end of the year, all the districts in the region will have DOVVSU offices to enable victims gain easy access to them.

By: Adugbire Cletus | A1RADIOONLINE.com | GHANA


 

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