Workshop On Human Rights Held In Accra

A two-day workshop for lawyers and judges, aimed at discussing critical issues about economic, social and cultural rights that have been neglected in the country's jurisprudence, has ended in Accra.


Attended by 45 lawyers and judges drawn from the Judicial Service, Civil Society and those in private legal practice, it also aimed at examining the substantive and procedural law of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights.

The workshop was organized by the Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL), a legal non- profit making organization that focuses on the protection of human rights through the instrument of law and the promotion of pro-bon law practice culture in the legal profession in the country.

Dr Dominic Ayine, a lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Ghana, said with very few exceptions, governments the world over had paid little attention to the process of realizing social and economic rights in practice.

He said further that very few states had properly defined in their constitutions and laws, the substantive content of these rights and stressed the need for developing countries to take social and economic rights seriously.

Dr Ayine, who is also the Executive Director of CEPIL, said experience has shown that some lawyers in the country did not even believe that the word "right" should be used to describe what they consider as discretionary economic/social benefits.

He said that the workshop had resulted in a better understanding of the international and regional human rights standards and jurisprudence with respect to economic, social and cultural rights in Africa and Ghana in particular.

"Additionally, partici-pants had benefited from an open and active exchange of ideas and opinions on this important subject," he stressed.