Reflections on the Work of the National Reconciliation Commission
Ghana's National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), created by President John Kufuor in 2003 to establish an accurate and complete historical record of violations and abuses of human rights, submitted its report to the government earlier this month. Although the document has not been released publicly, it reportedly faults the country's military, police and prison services for most of the rights infringements that have occurred over the past two decades.
The violations were not confined to unconstitutional governments, the report stated, but the commission estimated that 84 percent of all abuses took place when military regimes were in control. Dr. Akrong, a professor of religion who served as senior research officer for the commission, shares his perspective on the body's work and impact.
The setting up of the National Reconciliation Commission of Ghana marks an important milestone in the checkered political history of Ghana since independence in 1957. That history has been characterized by turbulent political changes and a plethora of coup d'etats and so-called 'revolutionary' changes, interspaced with short periods of civilian democratic rules.
But the sheer rapidity of violent political changes did not allow civilian regimes during their brief tenures to consolidate democratic governance that is needed to develop and entrench human rights traditions as inviolable ideals in a political culture. What we have had instead has been confusing and catastrophic political changes that have left in their trail serious violations and abuses of human rights.
The tragedy is that these political misfortunes have bequeathed to us a culture of human rights violations and abuses that has spawned polarization tendencies and fed divisive politics. And these continue to thwart, frustrate and disrupt the nation-building process today.
Ghanaians have expressed grave misgivings about this legacy of human rights violations and abuses, its negative impact on nation building and national development and its potential for destabilizing the nation. These misgivings prompted agitation for a process of reconciliation to heal the divisions of the past and create the conditions for building a credible human rights tradition to guide our fledging democracy and promote national development.
The agitation for a reconciliation process became very vocal at the beginning of our fourth republic in 1993. However, it was not until 2001 that reconciliation emerged as such a high political priority that a new government, formed by the New Patriotic Party and led by President John Kufuor, set into motion the mechanism for the creation of a National Reconciliation Commission, which was created by an act of parliament in 2002.
The legislation that set up the National Reconciliation Commission mandated the commission to undertake a complete and accurate historical record and analysis of human right abuses from independence in 1957 up to 1993, the fourth republic, focusing especially on periods of unconstitutional rule. The mandate included the investigation of the context or the enabling environment for the human right violations, including identification of the structures, norms and culture within which institutions may have promoted and condoned human right abuses as well as the identification of the broader elements like party rivalry and intolerant attitudes towards opponents that might have contributed to victimization of political opponents.
Above all, the commission was charged with analyzing periods in our national history during which there were clear signs of crisis or conflict resulting in political and social upheavals, which might have produced human right violations and abuses.
The commission operationalized its mandate in two main forms. The first was the investigation of petitions filed by aggrieved persons, and where the commission deemed necessary, petitioners were given the opportunity to provide evidence in a public or in-camera hearing. The other part of the work of the commission was through committees that were set up to analyze the socio-political context within which the abuse of human rights took place, especially the role of institutions and the public at large in creating the atmosphere that supported the abuse of human rights in Ghana.
Once the commission started its work, there emerged differences of opinion about the value and relevance of the reconciliation process in the building of democratic governance based on respect for human rights. One school of thought held that digging up the past would open old wounds which might destabilize the country and that the best option was to let sleeping dogs lie. Another held that the reconciliation process was a necessary political exercise that will allow the country to come to terms with its past record of human rights abuses and provide public space for those whose rights were abused to be heard.
The differences of opinions about reconciliation created anxious and tense moments at various points during the commission's tenure. In spite of these differences, the commission carried out its mandate and held a series of public hearings. And many Ghanaians tuned in to hear the stories, some of them quite gruesome, of human rights abuse from those who petitioned the commission. In this way, Ghana gained intimate knowledge of human right abuses, which triggered discussion in the media and the public arena about how these abuses could have taken place in our country, which prides itself as a peaceful place. Through the stories of the victims, our country woke up to the contradictions in its political history.
Those of us at the commission who read the testimonies and interacted with the petitioners saw first hand the effects of the atrocities. Initially, we were so traumatized by their stories that we found it very difficult to handle them. We kept asking how these hideous things could have been done to our own citizens by our own government, clandestinely, and what could have warranted these actions.
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As the stories emerged, it became obvious that national security was the blanket justification used by the state security agencies to excuse wanton violations of human rights. As ethical standards were progressively compromised, there merged a perspective that those suspected of breaching national security automatically forfeit their rights and that anything done to them was acceptable.
It seems, therefore, that the way to create a healthy human right tradition in Ghana is through a reform of our security services. We hope that the horror stories of the victims of human rights abuses will become a mirror through which we can look at our past history and commit ourselves as nation to the respect of human dignity.
We want to develop as a nation on the basis of the philosophy that development is about improving the quality of life of our people. But improving lives cannot exclude respect for the rights of our citizens, because, without that, we shall have a faceless and a vacuous development.
Dr Akrong is a member of the faculty of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana
