Education Matters: Children's rights in Ghana
Time to walk the talk
In a traditional society or village in the dim past, had a precocious child suggested that, one day, it might be possible to talk with another person in any part of the world through a simple pocket size gadget, the elders might have declared on the spot that the child, especially if a girl, was a witch.
That verdict might have hinted to the clan that the child be abandoned in the forest, delivered to some odious shrine for redemption from evil, or butchered to death. That's an unexamined tradition for you! And that, also, is the gory background against which children's rights in Ghana and Africa have to be seen and understood – even in the 21st century. The appropriate redeeming actions have long been necessities. Today, they are imperative.
Children continue to be victimised worldwide even in the most unexpected places. Even today acts of sodomising children persist in great churches by none other than “holy” men to whose fatherly love and care children had been entrusted, in line with the biblical “Suffer the children to come unto me”. Various religions and insidious native practices and superstitions, in holier-than-thou guises, breed some of the creepiest pretenders and offenders.
An introduction to the novel “Nicholas Nickleby” by Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870) noted that “the very people that we fly to [are] the very people we fly from in life.” Drawing from personal experiences, Dickens, in his “Bleak House”, Thomas Hughes (1822 – 1896), and Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) alluded to the horrific state of children around the world by sourcing crude and cruel examples from their own majestic England.
You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it. The book, “Children's Rights in Ghana: Reality or Rhetoric” reflects that belief. It demonstrates a shared commitment by the authors to protect and save the Ghanaian child.
The book has assembled contributions by about 15 eminent writers and practitioners in the fields of law, human rights, anthropology, social work, etc. It was edited by Robert Kwame Ame (an assistant professor of human rights and criminology at Wilfrid Laurier University), DeBrenna LaFa Agbenyiga (an assistant dean in the College of Social Science, Michigan State University), and Nana Araba Apt (dean at Ashesi University).
Published by Mot Juste, London, the 231 page book is of three parts. Part I, “Childhood and Identity”, introduces the challenges in optimizing child rights in Ghana, and in refugee camps; and sheds lights on the controversies about paternity, asking, “Who is a child's father under Ghanaian law?”
The part II, “Children in Dangerous Circumstances: Exploitation and Abuse” examines corporal punishment and child labor, and the difficulties children encounter when trying to access education and health services.
Part III: “Policies, Laws and Programs” focuses on controversial traditional practices and the Trokosi system; and assesses the first ten year progress of the 1998 Children's Act of Ghana. The section reflects also on correctional institutions for children in conflict with the law; and how rhetoric meets reform in Ghana's educational system.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) guarantees: 1. Rights of provision (adequate nutrition, health care, education, economic welfare); 2. Rights of protection (from abuse, neglect, violence, exploitation); and 3. Rights of participation (a voice in decisions affecting the child). It places an obligation on states to provide and protect these rights. Ghana ratified the UNCRC, and became the first country to do so.
This seminal book - the first of its kind since Ghana ratified the UNCRC in February 1990 - should be of interest to local and worldwide policymakers, human rights activists, NGOs involved with children, and international development partners in children's affairs. The appendices, for example, exhibit the texts of “United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child 1989”; and the “The Children's Act, 1998, Ghana”.
The book will be launched by her Ladyship Chief Justice Georgina Wood at the British Council, Accra, Wednesday, 18th January 2012, from 4pm – 6 pm. The event will be MC'd by Mr Kwame Sefa-Kayi of Peace Fm, and chaired by Prof Ken Attafuah. The book review for the occasion will be done by yours truly.