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Ghana: More Action Needed On Domestic Violence
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Public Agenda (Accra)
EDITORIAL
26 November 2007
Posted to the web 26 November 2007
Last Friday, TV3 showed a gory news item in which a so-called father put hot charcoal in the palms of his son and mercilessly beat him till he fell in charcoal pot and got burnt the more.
Only God knows what punishment this wicked father have been meting out to the boy's mother if they are still living under one roof.
This and other atrocities against women and children give ample justification for all Ghanaians to take domestic violence seriously. Yesterday November 25 a programme dubbed 16 Days of Activism Campaign Against Gender Violence on the theme, "Demanding Implementation, Challenging Obstacles" was launched by the Women's Initiative for Self Empowerment (WISE) in Accra.
The 16-day campaign was planned to symbolically link violence against women to other important landmarks like the International Women Human Rights Defenders Day (November 29) and World AIDS Day, December 1.
At a forum last Friday to outline the activities slated for the event the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs (MOWAC), Mr. Daniel Dugan, announced that the Ministry would soon initiate a programme towards the development of a database on convicted child abusers and domestic violence perpetrators for publication to serve as a deterrent.
This newspaper is all for the publication of names and pictures of child abusers and wife batterers in a bid to name and shame them. This is because the rate at which children, some as young as three are being defiled by adult men is difficult to comprehend. Hardly a day passes without one reading several cases of defilement of children in the newspapers. MOWAC's decision to generate a database of child defilers and domestic violence perpetrators is a laudable idea.
But the problem with such policies is that it is easier said than done, since some policy makers and implementers are themselves potential child and women abusers. That explains why cases of child and women abuses involving influential people are easily swept under the carpet.
No doubt, domestic violence poses serious social and economic challenges for the country.
As the Deputy Minister rightly noted, fighting domestic violence requires the cooperation of state institutions such as, law enforcement agencies, medical practitioners, traditional authorities, opinion leaders as well as individuals.
There is therefore the need to intensify awareness creation programmes on the Domestic Violence Law, using appropriate messages on radio, television, billboards and in newspapers.
Above all, there is need for accountability and political commitment from government and public institutions to prevent and punish all forms of violence against women and children.
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Specifically, the government must go beyond the mere enactment of the Domestic Violence Act to executing it.
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