So much has happened...let's see

I’ve finished simplifying the Domestic Violence Act (2007). According to John, the simplified version created last year is still too complicated for those in the Western Regions. It’s quite interesting work, and makes me feel rather good, as this job in particular is helping to increase access to justice. I’ve sent it to John, Bernice and Pat; however, I haven’t heard anything back as yet. Hopefully it is to their liking.

On Tuesday, I got the chance to see John and Mr. Blay in action at a community outreach event in Takoradi on Tuesday. They were educating the attendees on laws regarding marriage and consensual unions. The event went very well, and there were many questions afterwards. One attendee actually gave John an egg as we were leaving. According to Mr. Blay, this means she wants to give him a baby. I guess that’s proof enough that the event was a success.

On Friday, I went to Family Tribunal. It was very interesting, and done in private, so it is much easier to decipher what is being said in the court (because almost everyone is ordered out of the court, you don’t have the courtroom chatter getting in the way of hearing what is being said). There is still a language barrier; however, I can still get quite a bit of information. I also got to see John in action! He is an amazing human rights lawyer, and unlike some other lawyers I have seen, John is very respectful to his clients and seems quite emotionally involved in their cases. Most of the cases I saw were to do with child maintenance, and I was very happy to see that many of the judgments were in favour of the women. I was definitely very happy to see this. There were a few adjournments however, as some men did not attend. It was also very nice (as a Social Worker myself) to see a Social Welfare Officer as a panel member being able to make judgments on these cases.

In other news, the Takoradi office is planning to have a walk this week in Cape Coast for the 16 Days of Activism. It’ll be a big event, and there will be a brass band alongside us. I’m definitely looking forward to it.

On another note, I thought to talk about something that takes place in Africa, Asia, South America and many other regions of the world – Sex tourism. Recently, my host family and I met a man from Texas. He is in Ghana working in the oil industry. He was perhaps 55 – 60 years old, and told us about his family back in Texas, which includes a wife. He also informed us that he thought it was perfectly fine for him to have girlfriends in Ghana. He said that these girls were not prostitutes (although he pays them for their time), and he loved going to places where “they haven’t seen a white man before”. This entire conversation made me very uncomfortable, angry and disgusted. It angers me so much to think of these white men (most of whom have wives and children) who come to so-called developing nations and actively seek “ethnic” women they can spend the night with. The underlying thing here is that these women are perceived as mere objects for these men to carry out their fantasies. Many women end up submitting to these white men, as there is a perception that these men have money (and I’m sure many of these men exaggerate what their income is). Many of these girls are poor, and this white man is seen as a means to escape poverty. There are racist, classist and sexist elements that underline the entire sex tourism industry. We, as coloured women descending from “Third World” nations, are seen as objects for white men from “First World” nations. This idea takes me back to my visit to Cape Coast castle a few weeks ago. This castle was used by the Dutch and the Portuguese to house Africans before they were forced on ships and sent off into slavery. During these times, the Governor would pick an African woman and she would be bathed, then raped. She was also raped by the soldiers on her way to and from the Governors room. I suppose you can argue that women these days are not necessarily being raped by these white men; however, I wonder: How many women would sleep with these men if they weren’t impoverished?

Reena a.k.a. Mina a.k.a. Renee a.k.a. Mini a.k.a. Weena (Inside joke)

Yikes! Sorry again for the lateness.

Wow! The weeks really fly by... but let’s see what I can sum up.

With respect to the presidential forum – a few days ago, the date for the funeral for the most recent finance minister of Ghana was announced. Apparently he was well-loved by everyone and so everyone, of course, will go to his funeral (which in itself is quite encouraging, since bipartisan support of any politician will probably go a long way in itself to ensuring that there will be a peaceful aftermath from the election). However, the funeral is scheduled for the same day as WiLDAF’s forum – and it was at the exact same time! So now, WiLDAF has rescheduled the forum to the afternoon, but this already has created big problems. First off, normal funerals in Ghana are already huge events where everyone gets sucked in, so just imagine the scope of how much coverage and discussion there will be on the funeral. That alone means that WiLDAF and other organizations won’t get as much media coverage as they were hoping for from the forum (though in all honesty, since the minister died some time ago, it would’ve been prudent to schedule the forum for a Wednesday or Tuesday, given that all official funerals start on Thursday). It also is a bit tragic because it shows just how much respect women’s issues are accorded, since it’s becoming increasingly questionable if presidential candidates will actually turn up to the forum (even if it is at a different time of the day). I mean, yes, the Honourable Baah-Wiredu was a great man, but in all honesty, there is an election with 22% of the vote apparently undecided. If this was a debate on other issues or a fundraising event I have my doubts that people would scrap attending – seriously, this would’ve been a good way to tap into the female vote for any of the parties, since females are highly underrepresented in Parliament and none of the parties actually makes a strong argument for a gender parity policy in their manifestos. Of course, maybe the funeral really means that much to people, but I really think that it might also be reflective of just how lowly regarded women’s issues are in the country.

The presidential forum did occur and fortunately five VP candidates did show up, though it was unfortunate that we didn’t see any of the presidential candidates show up. I thought it was interesting and that it probably showed quite a bit of just what leaders likely thought of the debate – they know that the constituency was going to talk about the funeral for ages (which it did and the amount of spending for the funeral was amazing – “anyone who wants transportation to the funeral will get it for free; the catering is by X or Y and everyone is invited, etc etc...” – quote from TV3, the main news station of Accra, which brings me to my next criticism. Funerals are taken extremely seriously in Ghana, but then again what people doesn’t take death seriously? Just consider, though – for a developing country, having a state funeral that exceeds even those held in developed nations... and to think what the funds could do. A few million cedis to fund a school feeding program? That would make sense, or a few million to try and conceive a government affirmative action hiring policy, or to provide rural education. But no – they spend the money on this to add insult to the injury of building a new presidential complex, the Golden Jubilee House. I saw the old one, the Castle, at south Osu overlooking the ocean – it looked functional and I thought would be fine for future leaders with a bit of renovation. However, they go and gut the national zoo in Accra to build something remarkably ostentatious, something which makes Casa Loma or 24 Sussex pale in comparison – and of course to ask for costs of this, the government says, is “classified information”. Right. It really indicates the extent to which corruption and self-serving politics can occur in Ghana, and it is worrisome because corruption disproportionately affects the poor and those who need government services, the larger share being women and children. Other parties claim they would be principled, and the ruling one claims it is, but I have to take things with a cynic’s point of view. It is known that power corrupts, but in Ghana because there isn’t enough money to create a disincentive to corruption, it’s like there’s absolute corruption, indicating that somewhere absolute power is being harnessed, if the proverb is an accurate saying.

As it is, the presidential candidates also likely didn’t show up because they likely didn’t have any good ideas on women’s issues. Indeed, through two hours of listening to the vice-presidential candidates, I only heard a lot of self-congratulation about how far Ghana has gotten and identifying the issue that women need to be more seriously considered. However, only one of the five VP candidates (Petra Amegashie, a woman herself) really tried to orient her answers towards women, which was telling that for all the lip service politicians paid, they didn’t see an issue about the status of women in specific. The only other person that I felt really addressed the questions with a clear and firm plan and addressed things was Hannah Tete, who in my opinion was the best speaker of the whole forum (and who, incidentally, replaced one of the VP candidates who claimed he had to “fly to the States” that evening). Ms. Tete, in my opinion, would be an amazing president of Ghana because she actually has a good grasp of issues, can think off the cuff, and is very articulate. She’s sort of like a more personable version of Hilary Clinton, which is quite telling since I don’t think there’s any equivalent of Barack Obama in Ghana at the moment. Thus, even though the debate was televised, I really don’t know if the issues of women from across Ghana were issued, and indeed, WiLDAF and partners had actually canvassed across the country to try and get a sense of some very important issues concerning women. A few of the questions that the moderators did end up addressing to the candidates were:

• I am a girl of sixteen years. Two years ago, I moved from my village in northern Ghana to Kumasi to be a porter, upon which I have been attacked and sleep on the streets. I have never been to school, and I want to ask you what plans you have to give children like myself hope in the future, or my younger siblings.
• I am a representative of the association of the blind. As a disabled woman, I am discriminated against because the majority of available work to women involves manual labour, which I am limited in doing. What parts of your disability policies address the issue of gender inequality even within aiding the disabled?
• I am a nurse, a health provider. I see many of my friends move from Ghana because of the lure of higher incomes. It is clear that in order for Ghanaian women to progress, their health status must improve, but in order to ensure this we need a strong health infrastructure. What plans do you have to try and retain me and my coworkers in our homeland?

See, the questions are deep, but they should be easily anticipated (or analogues thereof) if the political parties had done their homework. As it was, the only person who seemed to was Hannah Tete, whilst Petra Amegashie was good at appealing to women voters. Personally, even though the debate was advertised and all, I felt very disappointed coming out of it because to me, the only person with substantive answers was a person who wasn’t at the forefront of their party.

Then again, considering the presidential debates I’ve gotten to see in Ghana, I guess it sort of figures that the content of the VPs “debating” wasn’t going to be scintillating. In the first of two debates given by the IEA (the Institute for Economic... I forget what A stands for), the candidates knew how to ramble and not address the questions at all, even though unlike the VP forum where the questions were kept secret, these issues were given in advance to the parties to prepare. I didn’t get to see the second but what I noticed is that in Ghana, much like Canada, there seems to be an absolute lack of a statesman, someone who is willing to stand up and say controversial things that are major issues which need to be addressed, and to give radical ideas. The whole concept to each is that they’ll somehow increase secondary school education to 100% across the country, or they’ll provide free health insurance to everyone in Ghana. And somehow they all say they’ll put Ghana in the first-world set of countries by 2015. Great ideas, but there are a few things they seem to be forgetting, such as:

• Education in Ghana, across secondary schools, is highly variable. For instance, one graduate of high school, in preparing for her matriculation exam for math (to get into university), came to ask me for help. The questions were for things like plotting lines on a Cartesian plane, or to solve two-equation, two-variable systems. And then, when I go to the university at Legon, the level of education is still rather behind – they’re only starting to learn how to do acid-base titration in university and aren’t even going into labs to improve their practical knowledge, and they’re “biomedical engineering majors”! Thus, in all honesty, if Ghana is going to become competitive, they need to up the standard of education across all institutions and try to make sure that there is infrastructure to give children time to learn these things. People point to the Asian miracles and even China as quite wondrous, but the fact is that all Asian wonder-countries have strong science and computing programs which serve as the backbone of their development (though it remains to be seen if they’ll overtake Europe and North America for innovation). If the base in Ghana remains to be that far behind what graduation standards are in Canada or the US, it’ll take a very long time for Ghana to catch up, regardless of the drive of the population.
• Just like education in Ghana is variable, the quality of health services is quite different across the country. Much like the nurse’s question of before, it is quite evident that there is a problem of providing health services in a country where the estimated doctor:population ratio is somewhere in the range of 1:22000. Thus, to have a comprehensive health system there needs to be some kind of health care reform to either encourage doctors to stay, or maybe as national service, to sign doctors to a longer term of tenure in Ghana before they’re allowed to move elsewhere to practice.

I admit that I didn’t get to see the second debate but I feel doubtful about people’s ability to accomplish. My hostess sums it up quite concisely: “they promise, they get to power, they drive around in big shiny black cars and when you then try to talk to them, they don’t have time except to leave sand in your face. Then, in four years, they’re suddenly your best friends once more.” Politics.

Speaking a little more about the election, Ghana’s voting day is December 7 as mandated by the Constitution. That means, this time around, it falls on a Sunday, which is actually quite challenging for many people across the country, particularly since the country is predominantly Christian and very devout Christians at that. However, there is definitely a greater effect on women as compared to men for Sunday being the voting day, as a larger percentage of women declare that they plan not to vote. The Ghanaian Christian Council and WiLDAF thus researched the reasons why, and many of the reasons are quite obvious. Some cited that it was a holy day and thus no one should vote (and to that, the leaders of attendant local Christian councils kept insisting that there should be a new constitutional amendment to exclude any religious day from being the voting day, though if one looks at the pluralistic version of the Constitution that could mean almost any day could be considered religious). However, many of the women cited the high amount of domestic labour or social commitments on weekends as being highly difficult issues to work around. As all the Christian leaders had accepted that the right to vote was universal to all adults and that in the terms of Christians it represented a duty to vote if the state wasn’t oppressive, it became very interesting to see what they came up with as ways to encourage women to vote.

What was somewhat troubling about their solutions was that while they were more amenable to trying to talk to the various parishes to encourage pastors to reschedule services to other days or other times in the day to encourage people to vote, when it came to women-specific initiatives the predominantly-male group didn’t really seem to see the obvious solutions to encouraging women to vote. They saw the women’s domestic duties primarily as obligations and that they should be making fufu (which is boiled cassava, pounded until it is a kind of blob that goes well with soup or stew, and is extremely labour and time-intensive to make and guess who has to prepare it in entirety?) since there is time on the weekends, they said. When WiLDAF and the GCC both insisted on trying to either take a greater share of domestic duties that day, or to be less fussy in their desires for certain foods on the Sunday, many did nod as if first considering it, but I even saw some old men in the crowd shaking their heads as if it was their right to have fufu on a Sunday. These self-same old men were concerned about other important issues such as lack of transport to voting stations (as many drivers of tro-tros, the rickety buses that dominate Ghana, don’t drive on that day) or even in trying to give domestic household help the time to vote, but they didn’t seem to recognize the implicit fact that without them helping, their wives and other female relations would be so busy at home that they wouldn’t have time to vote. Or, maybe they did but didn’t believe their wives should be voting. It was quite odd, to say the least, and something very telling because I saw more domestic help and driver-centered suggestions than I did those specifically targeting women.

Then again, at the church my hostess goes to (and so I go, since I don’t really want to be the social outcast of Accra, though I’m not exactly that religiously enamoured), it quickly becomes obvious that the status of women in Ghanaian society is at the very least a problem. On the side of the Constitution, women are construed as equals and per things like the presidential forum, theoretically there are efforts being made to encourage women to assume more of the mantle of leadership and responsibility. However, at my hostess’ church I observe that women don’t take part in any of the process of carrying out the Sunday service, be it delivering communion, taking the donations, leading prayers or sermons. The church has a very restrictive view of what the Bible says, apparently, that women should be “submissive” and that men should be “dominant”, which is sort of equivalent to the evidenced “public-private” divide that used to exist in previous European society. To this extent, even when the Women’s Group in the church met (to whom I donate more often than I do to the church itself), I was asked to pray for the group because apparently, when a man is present, women shouldn’t lead the prayers. I found that the denomination my hostess attends isn’t too sizable a representation, but if many of the larger denominations take similar views (and in even the Presbyterian church I went to once I saw a highly restricted role of women), then how are women to balance their “religious duties” alongside those that government is supposed to be encouraging them to do? Indeed, given how government in Ghana seems to love to invoke God and talk about trying to unite religion and state, how can the government actually carry out its proper mandate? And this whole view of women and men played out not once but three times in the church in one week – there was this discussion I got stuck into once by some senior member of the church, then there was a sermon given by a man my age who’s not married about the “successful traits of marriage”, and that primary is that women should be “submissive” and men “dominant” (which I think is personally a crock, since my parents have a rather equality-based marriage and I personally have only seen huge disputes erupt once or twice in their relationship of over thirty years, and of course the advice comes from the unmarried pastor, though there are many married ones... sure, I think the married ones probably would say the same thing but a “happy” marriage from a submissive-dominant position is happy on whose part? Both? Just one? And if one, let’s consider which side...). Again, talking to my hostess, I made light of the fact that though the majority of attendants at the church are almost always women, they have no power, to which she laments it and says that I should talk to the pastors. I will, I think... but maybe in a sermon form, where I will talk about gender equality – though I need to find the requisite mentions in the Bible. I’m unfortunately not much of a theologian.

WiLDAF works quite a bit with churches, though, to try and instill at least some knowledge of gender-friendly laws, particularly in criminal law and domestic violence. Going to one of the churches with Pat, Gifty and Racheal was quite informative in this respect, as the aim was to go and talk to the youth about domestic violence. What struck me was just how well Pat could converse with the youth – though she is from another area of Ghana, she speaks the Accra local dialect (Ga) very well and had the children laughing and participating a lot. She was the real salesperson who, I think, managed to crack the ice with the teens at first. Gifty could mostly speak in just English, but since Pat had built up such a good rapport between the teens and WiLDAF through her speech, Gifty’s presentation on the laws on domestic violence was very helpful and very well received. It was great to see them present, because I was blown away at how well Pat and Gifty managed to converse with the youth, which are traditionally a problem group to reach in Canada. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that Pat managed to strike more than one balance at a time – between instructor and friendly figure, between friendly figure and moderator, and finally, taking a leadership role whilst encouraging dialogue and chat between the youths. I think some of it likely had to do with the presentation of real domestic violence pictures (and the instances of abuse are severe in Ghana – so much so to the point that husbands amputate their wives with cleavers and to this date still haven’t been prosecuted, even though it had been twelve years since the incident). I really saluted the courage of the victim for agreeing to be in picture, since it really served as a strong wake-up call to the teens in the room; I also really salute everyone at WiLDAF for doing something with such a strong social mandate. See, in Canada, you never get the sense you do anything quite to that level. As a lawyer, what am I going to do in article in Canada? Write briefs? Go to court and sue people for health insurance or for car repairs? Sure, that’s accomplishing something – but in many ways this really shows me just how empty such an existence might prove to be. Of course, I want to be part of that emptiness, and to make money and live in comfort and all, but I’m glad to be in Ghana. Many people wondered what possessed me to go, but I couldn’t really say anything until I got here. Now, I think I still can’t give a solid reason but that doesn’t mean I would change what I’m doing if I could redo it.

I also got to participate directly in teaching people in a domestic violence training, too. One interesting component of how WiLDAF operates involves legal literacy volunteers (LLVs) who act sort of as “in the field” practitioners to educate people on the law and their rights. Thus, I was helping teach people in Ho about the law itself, and it was amazing to see the variety of experiences who came there. So many people who had seen almost anything imaginable in terms of the cruelty one can inflict on one another, so many stories (even happening to them personally) of restricted freedoms, and in many ways they didn’t even know the full extent of their rights. In this way, I really feel like my teaching made a tangible difference to everyone in the field. It was good to go with Pat and work with her and Melody in trying to help the LLVs learn the law and become versed in it. What was interesting about the training, too, was that in teaching them it seems like WiLDAF does some sports psychology-esque work in getting the LLVs to “envision” and act out situations where they can come in to help, and then act them out in role-plays. The role-plays were quite interesting, albeit I couldn’t understand them in full since many were in native languages; however, it showed the drive of everyone present to try and combat the problem of domestic violence. I’m also going to go to Ho (in the Volta Region, or the far east of the country) to work on the courtwatch project, which I think will be interesting but I think also quite frustrating in many ways.

Working with Reena has been interesting since she brings such a different view of the courtwatch’s functions and what she hopes to observe in court. I really enjoy working with her, and when we finalized the courtwatch checklist I thought we really did manage to get a good grasp of procedural and substantive aspects of the law, as well as rehabilitative components that need to be studied in further. Without Reena, I suspect I would’ve stuck to the legal topics without considering things from a “personal” or social work point of view. It’s telling in some ways that when I came from METRAC I had some of this knowledge but even in the field I still revert to the default legal analysis, which somewhat indicates how much law tries to divorce itself from those kinds of issues. It’s hard, too, because Ghana has so many elements to the Domestic Violence Act that seem foreign in practice to me, particularly because many of them seem either to be somewhat large areas of discretion for judges to operate in (ie trying to determine things from a rehabilitative or alternative dispute resolution perspective), or perhaps limiting in some ways. With Reena, I finished up the legal forms and also tried to come up with something to look at DOVVSU with, which will be useful I think. Plainly put, working with le Mina (er Renee, er Mini; it’s an inside joke) is awesome. By the way, we’ve both been on TV and Reena looks *way* better on TV. I think we’ve both been on three times by my count.

It’s interesting since when Reena was gone I went to DOVVSU to watch the unveiling of the Ghanaian Child Abuse Network (CAN), which tries to combine the police, hospitals, rehabilitative areas, etc in trying to bring a polycentric approach to the issue of violence against children. It was interesting, though, because I have a suspicion that even if gender-based violence decreases in Ghana, age-based violence will probably stay quite high because of the even bigger disparity in power imbalance between children and parents or people in caretaker positions. Also, in society, children are viewed as quite low on the totem pole, both traditionally and even in church (the whole ‘honour thy mother and father’ commandment comes into issue). And it’s telling because the statistics bear the brunt – there has been an increase of reported sex-based crimes in Ghana, but the number against children has risen much faster than even that number. It’s a serious issue and it is gender-based, but in terms of many things, it seems even parents are sometimes complicit in allowing certain things to occur. A case in point: from the Ho domestic violence training, a girl was seven years old when she was defiled by two teachers in her school. The parents reported to DOVVSU at one time, but when outside observers came to check up on the case, apparently the parents had dropped the charges, the teachers had paid the parents four hundred cedis and even DOVVSU had taken ten percent of that “payment”. If this isn’t child exploitation, I don’t know what is. Also, in Ghana, while it has been outlawed female genital mutilation (FGM) occurs in many tribes in Northern Ghana in secret. It was horrible to see a young woman go on to talk about how she was restrained by men, and her experience, and her lack of feeling during sex, and even worse was the pain she said she felt everytime she bathed herself and water touched that area. And she didn’t even have the worst FGM – there’s even four types of the demented practice with the worst one removing the labia minora, stitching the labia majora completely and leaving only a small hole for menstrual flow to pass through. On the other side, in some tribes boys entering their teens are also forced to undergo circumcision, which must be painful and potentially dangerous. In sum, these crimes are age-based and in a way, I think society is somewhat complicit because it likes to limit the rights of youth in many ways, but then I can’t think of a way around that because there is a good reason for it, but in many ways the reason has to be more flexibly exercised than it tends to be. Children, much like women, need to be more strongly protected, and I think WiLDAF, in going out to teach teens about the Domestic Violence Act, is somewhat of a trailblazer in the area since not many groups go out to actually teach teens about the law – rather, they go and tell them some parts of their rights but not everything.

Finally, I helped Pat complete WiLDAF’s report for the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which is a human rights review binding to all countries in the world, including the first world. All I have to say is that in theory it sounds good but international commitments have a way of being feel-good documents that don’t do anything. Examples include the League of Nations, the nuclear non-proliferation agreement, and sadly enough in many ways the UN. Maybe, though, this has a better chance of succeeding because whilst the other examples had involved just government this UPR tries its best to include the views of NGOs in the countries being reviewed at the time. NGOs may help to make some difference because they bring a separate viewpoint from within the country itself (without outside observers) that can start to explain certain nuances or holes found with the practices of the reviewed country. Since human rights is a larger mandated issue than nuclear weapons or many of the UN’s initiatives, it might just be that reports from groups like WiLDAF might help to influence government behaviour and commitments. However, I doubt it.

Well, that’s all I have to write for now. Sorry for the long wait! I promise things will get better but the past few weeks have been terribly busy. Anyway, for now... take good care!

LAP...Court Watch

Let's see...what have I been up to.

The Takoradi office recently held a DV Training seminar for LLVs, which I was lucky to be able to participate in. As part of a section on 'global awareness' I created a presentation on the domestic violence from a Canadian perspective. Hopefully it was somewhat helpful to the LLVs. It was great getting to meet some LLVs and gaining a greater understanding of the LAP program. I'll write more about the LAP program next week, but for this post I thought to continue with what is happening in the court watch.

The barriers I am facing are as follows:

1.) Language barriers - In Takoradi, everyone prefers to speak Fante; therefore, although the magistrate, lawyers and other court personnel tend to speak in english, the victim(s)/accused person(s) speak in Fante. As a result, I lose a great deal of valuable information.

2.) Being the "obrunie" in court has its benefits and drawbacks. One of the main drawbacks is that I am unable to blend into the courtroom atmosphere, which I feel is an essential part of being an observer.

3.) Being aware that an observer is present, court personnel may be performing their jobs better than usual. Thus my results may be different from what is realistically going on in the court on a day to day basis.

4.) Where I have to sit during proceedings is at the same table as the lawyers and other court personnel. I have no freedom to write things down (which sometimes may be negative). I tried to sit behind that table during my last experience in court; however, I was told to move back to the front table.

In terms of the language barrier, CCI suggested a translator. However, there may be costs involved, and I wonder how much significant information is "lost in translation". I am gaining quite a lot of interesting information on the general demeanor of court personnel, and I am noting anything I find to be remotely significant (mostly race, class and gender related observations); however, I understand that my main objective is to observe DV related cases.

The positive side is that whatever I experience (negative or positive) will allow me to make useful recommendations for the continuation of this project for future court watch volunteers. James will be heading to Ho in the upcoming week, so it will be interesting to see his observations.

Updates

It has been an eventful week. One of WiLDAFs mandates is to increase women’s participation in government. Therefore, on Tuesday and Wednesday I attended a capacity building workshop organized and facilitated by WiLDAF and ABANTU for Development; “Strengthening the Capacity of Women Parliamentary Candidates for Election 2008”. The purpose of this workshop was to educate female candidates on various elements of effective governance. This includes:

(1) Understanding democracy, and approaches to increase women’s participation in governance (2) The importance of involving women in politics; challenges and solutions
(3) The electoral process in Ghana
(4) Developing an effective campaign message
(5) The importance of the media
(6) How to increase funding
(7) Showcasing women currently in politics

Some of the key barriers to women’s participation in government were defined as:
- Lack of time – Due to traditional roles, women are often solely responsible for household work, and any work involving the children. Thus, there is a lack of time.
- Training – Female children are more often removed from school due to financial constraints within the family. Traditional gender roles place women in roles associated with the maintenance of the household and children; therefore, educating females is not viewed as a priority. Also, traditional gender roles often result in the belief that males should have better occupations and be the main providers in the household. Therefore, females will often strive for so-called lesser-than occupations that are not perceived as harmful to the male ego. Additionally, females are often removed from school if they become pregnant, whereas the males who impregnate the females are allowed to remain.
- Information – Women lack the access to information to be effective decision-makers in their constituencies. Much of this is due to the lack of training and resources allocated to women because of patriarchy.
- Money – Women lack the resources to fund effective campaigns. A key point in this argument is that male candidates are given more monetary support from their respective parties.
- Support – Lack of support from family, political parties, etc.Interestingly, a lack of resources was the main concern amongst the majority of female candidates in attendance. The women felt that things such as posters, t-shirts, etc. were crucial elements to the success of their campaign (which arguably is true in this day and age of politics). It is difficult to campaign against someone who has the resources to put up a billboard, when you barely have the resources to print t-shirts.
Some of the strategies outlined for increasing women’s participation in government are:
- Government should enforce the Affirmative Action Policy
- Traditional roles should be eliminated (beginning from the household)
- Female children must be educated
- Males must support women
- The state should provide adequate childcare for families
- Cultural practices that are detrimental to women should cease
- Political parties must provide adequate funding and other support to female candidates. Additionally, parties should select women candidates for ‘safe electoral districts’ rather than marginal ones.

Being that WiLDAF and ABANTU for Development are non-partisan organizations, all the support that could be given (in a non-partisan way) was given (e.g. posters supporting women in politics, “We Know Politics” t-shirts). The workshop was a great success and all the women expressed that the event was extremely helpful to the effectiveness of their campaigns. The evening news showcased the event, which is great news, and according to James, I got my 20 seconds of fame! That makes T.V. appearances: James – 1, Reena – 1

On another note, I started my court watch on Friday. On Friday’s Family Tribunal takes place. This generally deals with issues surrounding child maintenance. Unfortunately, two of the four panel members were not in court for unknown reasons, so most of the cases had to be adjourned to next Friday. One interesting thing I noted was that some court staff were not aware of the fact that child maintenance issues can fall under the DV Act. According to James, child maintenance may largely be the jurisdiction of the Children’s Act; therefore, this may account for some of the confusion.

Also, there is quite a large barrier to my court watch work (and possibly James’). In Takoradi most people prefer to communicate in Fante. This means that although court personnel, lawyers and the magistrate speak in English during proceedings, the victim(s)/accused speaks in Fante. This is not translated into English; therefore, there is quite a bit of significant information that is lost.

Another interesting story – I asked John about social welfare in Ghana. He said that the current government implemented a system where the very poorest members of society receive about 8 Ghana Cedis monthly. These 8 Ghana Cedis are not even given to each member of the family; it is one amount that is supposed to cover all members of the family. Also, it is important to note that Ghana’s culture is largely community based. Therefore, extended families tend to take care of one another if financial hardships arise. In effect, ‘community = social welfare’. This has largely defined the economic welfare system in Ghana, so it is quite interesting that this government implemented this new system. According to John, the new system is pointless in the context of Ghana’s community-based culture.

I’ll be heading into Accra in a few days for the Women’s presidential debate. I have to say, it is very exciting to be an Intern with an organization as well established as WiLDAF.

Just a new note: I attended court again today; however there were no DV related cases. Unfortunately, my experience reinforced the language barrier. How can I assess the type of domestic violence occurring (from the victims mouth) if I cannot understand? As you can tell, I am quite frustrated.

Until next time,
Reena

First Post

Hello All,

I have been in Ghana for over a week; thus, I felt it was time to write about my initial experiences here. I landed in Accra, but have been staying in Takoradi for the past week. I believe that the first and most significant thing to mention is cultural awareness. I am not familiar with Ghanaian culture, and this is a significant roadblack in my work. It is not explictely stated; however, cultural understanding is the foundation of all development work. Sustainable development must be carried out from the local perspective(s); otherwise, it is simply perpetuating the North-South divide, and is another example by which the North excerts dominance and superiority. Anyway, this gives me a great excuse to go out and experience Ghanaian culture. Thanks to John and Helen (my host family), I have learned quite a bit thus far about the history of Ghana (including colonization and the slave trade), natural resources, language and cultural norms . It seems that every conversation is a learning experience.

In addition, I am running into a key theme in all aspects of my work: Access to justice. Most often, this manifests in the lack of financial resources. To use a wider example from Ghana: According to John, gold is a key natural resource in Ghana; however, Ghanaians lack the resources and technology to actually mine the gold. Therefore, approximately 80 - 90% are owned by Europeans. This is a key problem in many developing nations. Globalization has created an atmosphere where the North economically exploits the South. This system perpetuates the underdevelopment of the South, and is really just an extention of colonization. On a smaller level, lack of access to justice manifests in many forms: There may be language barriers that prevent citizens from understanding the laws. This is further complicated by the fact that there may be a significant lack of funds to support programs that increase access to justice. One of my newly formed objectives here will be to simplify laws relevent to WiLDAF for release to the general public. I'm sure I will have more to say about these issues as time goes on.

On another note, I have met with many of the people I will be working with at DOVVSU and the courts. James and I just finished preparing the data collection sheets for the program and my first official day in court will be tomorrow. I'm very excited to start my work here. I've also had the opportunity to sit in on some counselling and mediation sessions.

That's it for now; Stay tuned.

Reena

So late, so late so late... goodness

Well! I’m sorry for the long absence... work has picked up and in my haste I’ve missed updating this blog. I know that it’s unpardonable but I hope it’s okay!

Let’s see... what has happened since the bout with chicken pox? First off, another intern from CCI has come. Give some warm greetings to Reena (who will be posting her entries from time to time as well, so you don’t have to get stuck with my meandering narrative all the time)! When I met her I got to show her around a lot of Osu – basically, just getting meals and showing her where to relax and unwind (though jet lag for her was killer – she literally slept past noon one of the days, which is amazing considering how crazy the roosters are in this country)! Reena’s got quite an overlap with my mandate... she’ll be centered in Takoradi, which is on the far western coastal edge of Ghana. Among her duties includes the court watch project and taking notes on WiLDAF’s LAP/LLV strategy.

It will be very useful and important to have her around and not just because she will contribute to getting a better data sample for the court watch. Reena’s background is in social work (and she hopes to go into development work someday), so an examination of Ghana’s DVA is very much interesting from her perspective. Whilst I’m very well-versed in the legal aspects of the DVA (and have a decent idea, now, of Ghanaian society and where challenges that aren’t simply based in statute may lay), Reena brings an understanding of social psychology and restorative justice that I don’t think I’ve studied quite as in-depth as she has. Some of what she brings to the court watch is that knowledge, as well as a female perspective, which may be quite different from what I can observe. As well, she is observing legal aid clinics, mediations and other legal processes that I might have less access to wherever I am, which will give her a better social nuance of how the other cogs in the DVA engine (the ADR and restorative justice parts, in particular) operate and whether or not they contribute towards the mandate of the DVA in general (which is to protect women and children, in particular, from domestic violence).

In drafting the court watch with her, some of the variables I identified as being useful to examine include:

• Demographic statistics – just who comes to apply under the DVA? Does this seem to be affected by any prosecutorial bias as to what constitutes domestic violence (and thus, other applications may be filed under assault instead)? How do these prosecutorial decisions function in conjunction with parts of the DVA which encourage an expansive reading of domestic violence and domestic relations in general?
• Types of DVA-based claims – physical and sexual claims, of course, are expected to make up the majority of actions. But how willing are judges or prosecutors in looking at economic, psychological, or even the “small acts occurring repeatedly” definitions that can also be encompassed by domestic violence? An interesting question that we won’t get to answer because we don’t interview people would also be – how many people actually come to report those types of violence but drop those charges before court in pursuing the more obvious physical and sexual assault patterns? How does that reflect on Ghanaian society as a whole?
• Attitudes of the court and court officials – how do court staff, lawyers and judges interact with one another and the parties at hand? How attentive are judges? Do the lawyers and judges conduct themselves professionally, and especially in these cases, neutrally (since interactions between defence and prosecution send messages to victims)? How helpful were police and court officers to either party in obtaining legal advice, therapeutic avenues, etc?
• Proper application of the law – are the judges exercising the DVA properly? Are they allowing certain cases to be dropped and settled out of court (as some can be, if the request is made by the victim) or are they refusing? Also, how constructive are the judgments? Are they of a more penal nature or are they better intended towards discipline whilst trying to provide economic and social support towards both parties? Also, how much do judges consider other factors in their judgments? How much do they consider victim impact statements and perhaps rule accordingly?
• Arguments pursued in court – How do the prosecutor and defense present their cases, interview their clients and cross-examine? How much of their cases are based in the facts as opposed to potential stereotypes, social pattern evidence or conjecture? How constructive are they in building their case as opposed to destroying the testimony of the other party?
• Victim satisfaction/comfort – how are victims, in particular, treated at court and how does the procedure potentially aid or hurt them in their pursuit of justice, whichever route they choose to take?

As one can see, most of my questions are based in what happens in court. It will be interesting what Reena will add to the mix! Also, Reena is conducting many studies which closely overlap with mine. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

The other big thing I’ve been doing in past weeks is my research document which will look at the DVAs of a bunch of African commonwealth countries and compare outcomes. In looking at a country, I decided to examine it from the following perspectives:

• Their DVAs in strict isolation – how expansive or restrictive is the language in the Act itself? What interesting wording is there to note?
• Status of the DVA – is it enacted? If not, why has it not been?
• Their constitution and applicable legal documents and agreements – are these DVAs constitutionally consistent? How well are human rights enshrined legally in the constitution and international agreements? Aside from domestic violence, what other rights are given from gender, family, age, and disempowered-groups perspectives? What other laws exist which may cause conflict with proper enforcement of the DVA, and what would likely be chosen when in conflict?
• Applicable case law and trends in the country – how is the DVA being interpreted in the country? How are equality rights provisions being interpreted as well – is there an active or passive duty assigned to government and society? How does the case law potentially differ from another country and what kinds of legal traditions differ between these countries?
• Social history and the events leading to drafting of the DVA – were these DVAs well-thought out processes or enacted in haste, in response to an impetus? How well do the DVAs capture the mandate of the Constitution – for that respect, how much thought was put into the constitutional documents themselves? Was it an evolutionary process in introducing these rights or was it a direct result of decolonization?
• Social components in society – what kinds of social traditions exist which may increase or decrease the difficulty of effective DVA implementation across the country? What other events occurring in the country may cause social turmoil, which tends to be accompanied with a rise in DV or gender-based violence? How about other components in society (religion, traditional government, current leadership, etc)? Are they receptive to the idea that domestic violence is an issue and not a mere “family disagreement”? How do they perceive domestic violence – as a necessary component of their functioning society or as something else?
• Practical outcomes – what difficulties exist in enforcement of a DVA? What kinds of movements exist to try and aid victims to bring their claims forth? What kinds of potential proposals exist in the country to try and confront these problems?

So far, I’ve examined three countries with respect to these issues: Ghana, Uganda and South Africa. Ghana’s recently enacted their DVA, South Africa did about a decade ago, and Uganda still hasn’t even after 40 years of pushing for something. What is interesting to see is why Uganda has had problems (civil war, difficult social traditions, unresponsive government with a president who has sat for 26 years so far), why South Africa has such expansive civil rights (gradual process of decolonization and transition to democracy, careful drafting of Constitution which included strong enshrinement of human, particularly gender-based rights, and a stronger base of women’s organizations to help create the document). Ghana is somewhere in the middle (stable democracy with stable changing government, fast drafting of Constitution, challenging social traditions, strong base of NGOs due to stable aid-encouraged development) and it will be interesting to see it negotiate its future path. I hope my document will help in potentially drafting recommendations on how to bring Ghana more in line with South Africa and less so with Uganda.

These recommendations could also be helpful in potentially giving Reena some ideas on how to incorporate certain goals into the CEDAW (UN Committee to End Discrimination against Women) toolkit that WiLDAF wants her to make. In a way, all of what we’re doing is tied into CEDAW – further strengthening the institutions that enforce the DVA, further enlarging the scope of therapeutic services to victims of domestic violence, trying to work against gender-based violence and to curb social traditions which work to marginalize women... it all ties in.

Finally, I’m helping to organize a presidential forum with women from across the country going to talk to the presidential candidates about issues pertaining specifically to the condition of women across the country. It’s fascinating to see how quickly things coalesce in Ghana when they want to, and how much access WiLDAF has (I mean, seriously – when would I ever get to organize this kind of forum in Canada and how would I manage to persuade *all* parties to attend)? It’s quite heartening to see it take place (and I’m helping with things ranging from mailing out invitations, to arranging media interviews and coverage of the event, to getting in contact with some of the network of women’s organizations to see who will attend and what women might be chosen from various constituencies... to have one’s hands in something so direct is quite a neat feeling.

Well, that’s pretty much it for now. When I have more time (I forgot my laptop charger at work! Argh!) I’ll go into further detail. But for now, take care and thanks for reading!

Ugh...

Sorry I haven’t written for the past two weeks! I came down with chicken pox and so that put me out of commission for a straight week. It’s not exactly easy to be mobile with a bunch of red sores on you, and having people wonder if you’ve been eating something bad.

Anyway, before that happened I started getting down to work in both devising the court watch program that I’ll be overseeing in the next few months. That involved meeting with Irene Oppong at the DOVVSU (the domestic violence sections of the police force in Ghana) and writing a letter to a magistrate asking for clearance to attend court sessions. Writing to a magistrate is a bit of an odd thing, since I’d never even drafted a letter to one, much less to ask permission for something. It was interesting that WiLDAF already has an idea of who to contact, and so I just had to outline the skeleton of my project and the premise of it – it illustrates that at least some of the judiciary is taking this as a serious problem.

That was backed up by my visit with Irene at DOVVSU. The trip to the police station was somewhat challenging for me, since I had no idea where it was exactly, but now I have a better idea of where it is in the city. The police station is crowded, noisy, dark, and very hot – not the most ideal place to bring a victim of domestic violence, particularly since police officers are often overworked and trying to oversee more than one thing at a time. That was the case with my meeting with Irene – every three minutes she jumped up to talk to someone else in one of the local dialects, so the flow of conversation was very disjointed. It gave me a sense, though, of just what kinds of difficulties the officers in this country face – on the first two floors there were well over one hundred civilians and maybe ten or twenty police officers at most. That kind of workload, that kind of environment makes it hard to try and solve crimes, particularly since law enforcement in itself is so chaotically busy. Also, when one considers that the police make little over three or four dollars a day (and in Accra, that really doesn’t go all that far), it makes one wonder about the incentive to work hard, or worse yet, to stand up to corruption.

Irene outlined many problems with trying to enforce the Domestic Violence Act which I found very interesting. Whilst she said that the Act was substantively quite a good piece of legislation, it was the mechanics of enforcement that were extremely difficult. Trying to convince people to lodge complaints, or to further carry their issue to a later stage in court, was especially different. I haven’t yet spoken to anyone at court or seen a court case, but I have an idea I’ll be seeing this kind of problem. In South Africa, it was reported that absenteeism of parties to the courtroom represented one of the greatest challenges to actually enforcing the act, primarily because things such as protection orders required service on the receiving party in order to take effect. In Ghana, I can see it being even moreso, since in Ghanaian court I’m not one hundred percent sure if domestic violence is viewed as a criminal or as a family matter. South African courts already outlined that problem, and there is a strict characterization of domestic violence as a criminal matter. Since Ghanaian court emphasizes reconciliation and makes means such as mediation available for offenses lacking a certain severity, does that mean that domestic violence has more of a social, more of a civil mandate? And, if so, when people fail to show up, what do courts do? South African courts often try to proceed without the parties present, but that’s because they have a strict mandate that the action is to be tried by the state (due to their characterization of criminal law); with Ghana, I’m not sure what will happen, whether an action can still proceed in the absence of parties. It makes it very tough, then, to find ways to encourage victims of domestic violence to not just make their statements, but to go through the whole court procedure, especially if they feel that the state may not be trying to represent them, but make them go up against their domestic partner in some kind of ‘grudge-match’ to determine whether protection orders are necessary. An interesting issue, indeed.

I also got to go to the launch of Ghana’s Millennium Development Goals Shadow Report, which tries to detail the progress Ghana has been making toward the MDGs - since it is 2008 and the goals are supposed to be reached by 2015, it was sort of a ‘halfway progress report’. Instead of being a comprehensive seminar on what Ghana does need to do and what it has accomplished, it was a lot more self-congratulation about what great work the committee does, and some discussion of what Ghana has done to reach some of the goals. What I found very interesting was when people were invited to ask questions of the ‘panel of experts’ (whom were all some sort of doctor or pastor or whatever), they firstly limited the number of questions to three, which I thought was self-defeating since I thought the greatest questions could arise from discussion and not just straight agenda issues. Then, when some schoolchildren decided to ask questions (which I thought was great), they asked strong questions and I don’t think their questions got answered. What instead came out was what I call a UPS, a Universal Political Speech, which obfuscates and takes focus away from the question rather than answering it. For example:

Student Q: You emphasize that children’s education is important, however you do not make any emphasis about the infrastructure that children need. For example, transportation – many of us have to take tro-tro (the Ghanaian version of a bus, but it is a *slow* bus) or walk to school, which can take upwards of a few hours each way. The distances to school can discourage some of my brothers or sisters (in Africa, they really get into the habit of calling colleagues this, which is very charming, I find). What do you say about trying to increase road availability, or better yet, making school buses available for children?
“Head of Ghana MDG progress committee”: That’s a great question. By one of the students, at that. Can we have a hand of applause for this student? (applause) Now, your question is so good and my answer is that we all have to sacrifice. The MDGs aren’t for one person to achieve, they’re not for the government to achieve, they’re for everyone to sacrifice, old and young and students. I actually have a story for you: back when I was going to school, all of us had to walk to school. And it was five miles away, and let me tell you this: when I got to university, I was so good at running I was my university’s long distance runner! (more applause as he sits down from his “answer”)

Do note, this wasn’t even a politician, this was an eminent researcher at the University of Ghana, who headed this committee – it’s not like I could see any overt political agenda, but maybe there is one. As it is, it does make me pause when I think that the message to children is “sacrifice” – sure, sacrifice is important and it’s key that everyone does things, but seriously, if children aren’t able to obtain sufficient education where will they go? Everyone was applauding how great this professor was for becoming a distance runner in university and whatnot, but I was far less impressed, because he failed to even try and address the question, even if it is to say that nothing is forthcoming and here’s a good reason why, instead of talking about sacrifice.

Let’s put this into perspective somewhat: the head of the committee was someone in his sixties, which means that when he was going to school it was in the fifties, at the birth of Ghana as a nation at best. Back then, there were no standard graduation exams to enter university for Ghana, and I’ve seen the ones they now give and they’re really hard given the standard of the students I’ve seen. To pass the exams, one needs to study – now, if they have fifteen pounds of books on their back when “jogging” the five miles back, that’s likely to take a longer time, and I’ll give them an hour or so to jog back. So, they get home at four. The sun sets at six, and there are likely to be chores at home to do. Thus, when they start to study, there’s probably no light and if they live in the villages, there’s no electricity. How easy is it to study trigonometry by I dunno, very limited firelight? Not to mention, there is a large rainy season in Ghana which might even complexify matters! Thus, bright answer professor, but the simple answer is that if you want to bring people to a certain educational standard, the standards have risen compared to where you were, so you are going to likely need to make things more available for students in order for them to actively explore these educational possibilities. I’m not sure if I’ll get lots of agreement on this, but I gave this answer an F even though it got the largest round of applause (even if I think most of it came from the rest of the “panel of distinguished speakers”).

I’m interested to see the shadow report, though. It’s apparently available somewhere in the building I work in (the Christian Council of Ghana) but I haven’t been there to pick it up (for obvious reasons). As it was, I guess the camera got some pretty good shots of me looking intent (though that was mostly because my arms weren’t able to move since they were both ultimately very sore, which is apparently an early symptom of chicken pox) since I got calls the day after from my coworkers saying I was on the news. That, or well, when trying to look for the most striking images in Ghana, look for the Chinese guy who (seemingly) randomly is present at these events, eh?

Finally, while I’ve been on my back, I’ve done some research and I’m getting really interested. My project, while it looked sort of straightforward (and still looks that way), is growing much more interesting, since it is really taking a polycentric approach to looking at domestic violence through the many lenses it can be portrayed. Hopefully, I’ll be able to publish my reports and then everyone can see them in the end!