UN Women commends Ghana for playing up women

United Nations Women, the main UN body dedicated to gender equality and empowerment of women has commended Ghana for being one of the robust countries on the African continent that has women playing very important roles in government.

Currently key positions in the President John Mahama led government are held by women these include the Ministers for Foreign Affairs,Justice and Attorney General, Education, Health, Transport, Tourism and Gender..

Apart from the Chief Justice, the chairperson of the Council of State, director-general for Prisons,Government Statistician, Ghana Investment Promotion Centre and the Ghana Aids Commission,Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, and National Commission for Civic Education are all headed by women.

Dr. Phumzille Mlambo-Ngcuka, Under Secretary General and Executive Director of UN Women,made the commendation on Thursday, when Nana Oye Lithur, Ghana’s Gender, Children and Social Protection Minister, currently in New York for this year’s 58th session of the Commission on the Status of Women called on her on Thursday(March13,2014).

“We think Ghana is one of the country’s where we can do business with”, stated Dr.Mlambo-Ngcuka ,the head of the global body that champions the rights of women and girls.

She pointed out that women’s economic empowerment is the first step in diffusing their abuse.

In this vein, she said the UN Women will like to team up with Ghana, because success breeds success.

“I know Ghana is seriously addressing Reproductive Health Services which is good,but the situation isn’t so good in Africa, with children marrying children”,the head of UN women stated.

To address the problem,Dr. Mlambo-Ngcuka called for a curriculum on sex education for schools drawn by governments and other local groups to ensure that it achieves the necessary support.

Likening the situation where children are having children to a contract with poverty, she expressed optimism that there will be greater emphasis on education and leadership in the post 2015 MDGs to correct the current challenges in the system..

“We need gender mainstreaming. we need rights to move the access to land, reproductive health,right to access finance in a very defined way. We need to fight the battle to win the economic rights of women”, She stated arguing that “We can’t deny women their rights to sustain the lifestyle of men”.

Nana Oye Lithur, presented a document on what Ghana had done on the achievement of the MDGs and called for a strong presence of the UN Women in Ghana to enable the county benefit from its technical expertise in women's issues.

Her Ministry, she said had launched a campaign against gender based violence,by scaling up male involvement to address the root cause of the problem.In addition, she asked for discussions and advocacy with various sections on affirmative action.

On HIV/AIDS, The Minister noted that the prevalence rate had declined by more than 25% between 2001 and 2011, so Ghana is on track to meet all the 2015 MDGs on HIV goals.Currently, she indicated that the HIV prevalence rate had dropped to from 3.6% in 2003 to 1.35% in 2012.

Stigmatization and discrimination against people living with HIV, the Minister said was high but it was being addressed through various strategies, including education and heart to heart campaigns.

Responding to a request from the Minister, Dr Mlambo Ngcuka said a technical officer will soon be posted to Ghana to support the work that was being done there.