African Women Lawyers Association

Membership

On the local level, A.W.L.A Ghana has been actively involved in a number of projects aimed at realizing some of these goals:

1 DAY OF ACTION
2 PROPERTY RIGHTS
3 TRAINING OF SECURITY AGENCIES IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
4 MILITARY TRAINING ON CHILDREN'S RIGHTS

1 DAYOF ACTION

In 1999, A.W.L.A was elected to be the focal NGO in a Law Group to mark a "DAY OF ACTION" organized annually by the International Human Rights Law Group and the West African Civil Society. This activity is aimed at raising consciousness and to draw the attention of international, national and regional Governments, groups and individuals to the need to ban or review customary inheritance practices which deny women the right inherit land and other landed properties in equal proportions to men.

The Day has been observed every year since 1999 with the following activities:

Press conferences and Media Briefings. Please go to our Press Releases page to read the Press Statements
Colloquium with the Women's Caucus in Parliament which drew attention to the need for the Intestate Succession Law, 1985 (PNDCL 111) to be reviewed in the light of the myriad of problems with its implementation.
Briefings of Minister of Women and Children's Affairs and top officials in charge of gender and child rights issues.

The Day of Action is organized simultaneously in other West Africa countries namely Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Gambia, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo.

In respect of the continued strategy on inheritance rights, the Law Group held an initial "Trainer of Trainers" programme. This involved bringing together trainers from South Africa and Botswana with West African Civil Society NGOs to work actively on issues involving gender and inheritance rights. It focused on specific techniques, strategies and approaches for reaching grassroots communities through mobilization of public education techniques, and also for designing and implementing broad-based community-oriented comprehensive outreach strategies.

Pressmen and A.W.L.A members at Press Conferences marking the Day of Action

2 PROPERTY RIGHTS

A.W.L.A submitted a position paper to the Attorney General's Department with specific recommendations for the drafting of a new law in this area. This initiative became necessary in the light of the various problems and short- comings of existing legislation. A.W.L.A has also collaborated extensively with other gender groups in advocacy in this area of the law.
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3 TRAINING OF SECURITY AGENCIES IN DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

A.W.L.A is the lead NGO in Ghana involved in a comprehensive national programme in the training of Police Officers on the issue of Domestic Violence and Violence against Women. The need for sensitization of police personnel on issues of domestic violence cannot be overemphasized since the police are the first point of contact for victims of Domestic Violence. Hitherto, such cases were treated as trivial or as falling in the family domain, and were consequently rarely prosecuted or sanctioned. A.W.L.A identified the need to change the attitude of the Police and to equip them with suitable intervention skills. With funding from the Danish International Agency for Development (DANIDA), a comprehensive training manual on Domestic Violence and Violence against Women was compiled for use in the training programs.

Topics covered in the training were Gender, Human Rights Instruments relating to Gender Violence (National, Regional and International), Intervention skills and some practical insight into how Gender-violence cases can be handled more effectively.

The initial phase of the training targeted 141 senior police personnel. Of these 15 came from each of the Greater Accra, Ashanti, Eastern, Brong Ahafo and Volta Regions; 16 from the Western Region; 14 from the Central Region and 12 each from the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions.

Pictures from our training sessions

4 SAVE THE CHILDREN

Since December 2001 we have been working in partnership with Save the Children, Sweden as the focal NGO on a project aimed at putting children's rights on the training agenda of the Military, both at the national and regional levels. This training program ensures that countries in the ECOWAS sub-region contributing troops to Peacekeeping Forces in turn give training on children's rights and child protection to those Military personnel.
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