Phyllis D. Osabutey
8 November 2006
Denial of basic socio-economic rights, such as the right to work, health and education, is a grave danger to democracy, and the legitimacy of government hinges on its genuine determination to ensure that the basic necessities of life are available and accessible to all within its borders.
Ghana is often held up as an example of an African country where democracy and human rights are respected and upheld.
The country's constitution guarantees basic human rights and Ghana has also signed up to a number of international human rights instruments such as the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, to guarantee the respect of certain socio-economic and cultural rights.
However, a lot remains to be done to entrench this philosophy, according to presenters at the second annual human rights public lectures, marked last week in Accra.
The lectures, instituted by the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) in collaboration with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) and the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), focused on realizing and advancing social, economic and cultural rights in Ghana to look at the prospects and challenges to cultivating a human-rights culture in the country.
Realizing socio-economic rights Professor Kofi Quarshigah, a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, in his presentation on "Realizing Socio-Economic Rights Under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana: Prospects and Challenges" noted that denial of basic socio-economic rights, such as the right to work, health and education, is a grave danger to democracy, and that the legitimacy of government hinges on its genuine determination to ensure that the basic necessities of life are available and accessible to all within its borders.
He said this was very relevant to the guarantee of peace in the world and informed the formulation of various international human rights standards, many of which Ghana was a signatory.
This, he noted, imposes an obligation on government to promote respect for socio-economic rights, mentioning that, "since the coming into force of the 1992 Constitution, the country has ratified a number of important international human rights instruments, the existence of which seemed to have been ignored previously."
Key among these are the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, African Charter on Human and People's Rights, Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
While socio-economic rights were formulated at international levels in a general sense, he said, implementation committees outline the components of that right, as well as what a state must do to uphold the right.
He illustrated that under the UN and African regional systems, a committee on economic, social and cultural rights, for instance, expanded the right to food to impose an obligation on government to regulate the activities of individuals and groups so as to prevent them from violating the right to food of others.
"Similarly, the committee declared that the right to housing is not to be equated merely with having a roof over one's head, but extends to the right to live in security, peace and dignity," he said, adding further that the right to health extends to the right to the determinants of good health such as access to safe and potable water, health-related education and information, including education on sexual reproductive health, adequate supply of safe food, sanitation, nutrition, housing and healthy occupational and environmental conditions.
The obligations under these instruments, Prof. Quarshigah indicated, Ghana has taken upon itself to become a state party to. "The implication in these is simply that there exist certain basic levels of deprivation beyond which it would be unacceptable for a people to be abandoned by their government to fall into," he stated.
Role of the judiciary in realizing socio-economic rights Prof. Quarshigah submitted that by Article 34(2), the President of the Republic of Ghana has a constitutional duty to report to Parliament at least once a year on the steps taken to ensure the realization of policy objectives contained in the DPSP, especially in chapter six that focuses on the realization of basic human rights, a healthy economy, the right to work, the right to good health care and education.
The law lecturer pointed out that by a creative inference, socio-economic and cultural rights could be included under fundamental rights to make the DPSP enforceable, stressing, "some of the economic, social and cultural rights can be fingered out for judicial enforcement through some other constitutional provisions or ordinary legislations."
To make this possible, he said, it is necessary for concerned citizens --especially legal practitioners -- to develop the skills that would enable them identify, formulate and package their interest and those of their clients into legally justiceable forms.
He said an activist judiciary is what is needed to transform a non justiceable interest into a justiceable one, saying, "a judiciary that is committed to the promotion of human rights in consonance with the Bangalore principles" would consciously infuse human rights considerations into their decisions.
This role is, however, lacking in Ghana's courts, the professor maintained, noting that a casual examination of law reports in the country reveals that international human rights instruments were rare, if at all considered or even mentioned in courts, in contrast to other African countries, such as Nigeria and South Africa, which made reference to the instruments in certain cases.
He stated that there has been a general failure in Ghana's law practice to articulate legal issues from a human rights perspective, adding, "the legal profession in Ghana has stuck to the traditional approach of litigation."
"From the look of things, one has the feeling that the Bar and Bench have developed an apologetic attitude in favour of governments, possibly based on the sympathetic but now archaic perception that the economic and social rights require lots of financial resources for their resolution and that governments should be left to determine how and when they should be provided as a matter of policy decision for the politicians," he lamented.
Prof. Quarshigah believes that it is not beyond the legal profession in Ghana to promote the realization of economic and social rights through the judicial process while government has to implement decisions of the courts.
He said the legal profession must undergo a conceptual change and begin to recognize that its duties were not restricted to the traditional practices to protect the narrow interests of individuals but, more importantly, to protect rights to the generality of the basics of life.
According to him, institutions having the capacity to influence the realization of economic and social rights such as the CHRAJ, human rights NGOs, community development organizations and civil society should work to ensure that government respects any relevant decision of the courts.
"It is in the change in attitude that lie the prospect for the protection of the economic, social and cultural rights in Ghana," he stressed.
Cultural rights and challenges Sheila Minkah-Premo, a lawyer and human rights activist, pointed out that Ghana has national laws that set standards for the enjoyment of cultural rights, as well as signing United Nations conventions and recommendations of treaty bodies and instruments of the African region providing these rights.
According to her, cultural rights represent the totality of a people's way of life that includes their knowledge base, morals, religion, customs, laws, habits, institutions, rites of passage, artifacts, technology and others developed over a period of time, which a member of a community may exercise.
Some of these rights translate into various practices that a community adheres to for a very long time, respect for which is a duty and disregard for which is a wrong and a factor that underlies true freedom, she stressed.
Ms Minkah-Premo said a major challenge in the realization of cultural rights are some harmful traditional practices regarded as customary or prescribed by religion, such as female genital mutilation, widowhood rites, customary servitude, inheritance rights, but which are contrary to laws or other human-rights standards.
She noted also that lack of enforcement or compliance with legislations enacted to eliminate harmful cultural practices remains a big challenge, saying, "the attempt at social engineering by criminalization of a number of cultuaal practices shows that law alone cannot change practices that are deeply rooted in culture and society."
Ms Minkah-Premo said there is the need for a fundamental attitudinal change towards the enjoyment of cultural rights by placing women equal with men in all respects. Government, institutions like the police service, CHRAJ, chieftaincy institutions and other stakeholders must also ensure the enforcement of legislations that reinforce cultural rights, she said.
She further called for the promotion of social responsibilities by non-state actors, the education of children on their cultural rights and attention to the impact of scientific innovations on cultural rights, saying, "there is the need to focus not so much on conflict but to spend our energies in finding the synergies between custom, law and science, which will enable us to enjoy to the fullest our right to culture as enshrined in the constitution and in other human-rights instruments."
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2006 Ghanaian Chronicle. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
