Mainstream Human Rights education - Nana Oye

Accra, Dec. 14, GNA - Nana Oye Lithur, Coordinator of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, on Thursday called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to mainstream Human Rights (HR) Education in the curriculum of basic and secondary schools.

This, she said, was necessary to instill a culture of respect for human rights in the people right from their childhood. She made the call at the launch of a HR essay competition for 30 basic schools in the Central Region by the US Embassy to mark this year's HR Day that fell today.

The competition was to raise awareness about HR among students of basic schools in Ghana, with particular respect to school related gender violence and the need to create a gender safe environment in schools. Nana Oye noted that respect for individual rights was foreign to many Africans and that was facilitated by a culture that protected community rights at the expense of individual rights.

She said to change that cultural orientation, "we need to mainstream HR education at the basic level of our educational sector to ensure that our children of today would grow into adults who are HR rights conscious."

"It should be possible to fashion an HR education curriculum that recognizes our culture of respect for the elder to prevent children from unduly taking advantage of the HR to take their parent to the police and the courts," she suggested.

Nana Oye said ignorance about HR was very high among Ghanaians and that a recent survey carried out by her outfit indicated that 71 per cent out of 2000 respondents did not know about the 1992 constitution much more knowing about theirs and other people's rights.

Some 5.9 per cent had copies of the constitution but had not read it and the remaining respondents know just about the constitution. She said that phenomenon was not limited to ordinary citizens but even frontline defenders such as the security service, lawyer and judges not very conversant with HR laws and issues.

Nana Oye called for a vigorous education for lawyers, judges and security agencies on HR to ensure that they dealt with cases involving HR violation with better judgment.

Sheikh Armiyao Shuaib from the Islamic Education Unit said the need to mainstream HR education for children was imperative in that, according to the National Reconciliation Commission (NCR) report, in the past, student movements collaborated with military adventurers to perpetuate HR abuses.

"If such students had knowledge of HR it would have been difficult for them to have been used by illegitimate military rebels to commit such atrocities and that is why we need to instill HR education in our kids now," he said.

Shiekh Shuaib suggested that civic education should be change into HR education for basic and secondary schools and even to the tertiary level. More

Ms Sue K. Brown, Charge d'Affaires of the US Embassy in Ghana, lauded Ghana's HR record, characterized by the passage of the Children's Act (Act 560), Disability Act and the setting up of the defunct National Reconciliation Commission to deal with cases of HR abuses in the past. She, however, pointed out that there were still issues of concern including the life threatening prison conditions, vigilante justice, police abuses of people' rights, child labour, discrimination against women and children, human trafficking and other HR abuse which gave Ghana bad publicity.

Ms Brown said the recently published corruption index for Ghana was equally disturbing, especially when Ghana was reputed for winning very high votes at the United Nations HR Council. 14 Dec 06