A Brief Overview of Humanism for Ghana – Rights, Frameworks, Culture, Exemplars, and Modernity
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Roslyn Mould
Publication (Outlet/Website): Assorted In-Sight (In-Sight Publishing)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/02/03
Rights
International women’s rights are, as such, global because there are no boundaries to the high ideals universally agreed to, at least on paper and stipulated in international declaration, by humanity at large. Violations in rural villages and urban metropolises are no different at root. Violations are violations.
Violations of women’s rights are violations of women’s rights regardless of race, creed, color, religion or irreligion, or political ideology. Humanism, as a democratic and rights-based life stance, overlaps with these stipulations. Any humanism, defined properly, will incorporate them into life as well as possible.
Same with Ghana. Ghanaian women deserve equal rights and status with men. All women deserve rights and privileges recognized at the international level in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human rights contain women’s rights. Women’s rights remain distinct. In that, human rights and women’s rights remain distinct and substantially overlapping domains of stipulated rights in international documents from the United Nations. Let’s look at some of the examples.
Frameworks
United Nations Women (UN Women) follows numerous documents for guidance on the rights of women. UN Women is the organization of the United Nations devoted to women and girls. It developed from the international need of the implementation of international women’s rights for women’s advocacy, emancipation, and empowerment, and one can argue facilitated by the feminist ideological stances of the previous Secretary-General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon. “I am proud to call myself a feminist,” Mr. Ki-Moon said.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (PFA), UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security (2000), and some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (and some of the previous Millennium Development Goals or MDGs, 2000 to 2015) hold import within the international context of the United Nations.
CEDAW remains devoted to the all UN Women programmes with over 185 countries party to the convention, which means in general agreement about it. The Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action (PFA) was adopted in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women to enhance government commitments to women’s rights, where Member States of the UN decided to reaffirm and strengthen for the global review process that happens every 5 years.
This was reiterated by Member States of the UN at the review in 2005, 2010, and 2015. UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security (2000) had recognition of the ways women are affected by war in disproportionately compared to men. There was a reaffirmation within the document to increase women’s role in the decision-making processes for conflict prevention and resolution.
Following the partial fulfillment/non-fulfillment of the Millennium Development Goals by the international community (2000 to 2015), the Sustainable Development Goals were made active and effective for the Member States that remain part of them, which means most or all of them.
There are 17 new ones for the agenda with over 169 targets for the elimination of poverty in addition to combat inequalities with a distinct focus on prosperity promotion connected to the protection of the environment. Of course, international women’s rights links to Ghana as well. The Gender Inequality Index (GII) ranks Ghana 140th in the world in terms of gender inequality.
That’s low. This has implications for the economy, the political system, and women’s status with the country. Numerous sub-factorial rankings within the GII represent these facts such as the relative high maternal mortality rate alone at 380 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, and the mean expected educational years for women at 5.6 years and men at 7.9.
These remain distinct disparities based on the societal disadvantage of women in terms of livelihood and life prospects. There have been inroads made with respect to Ghanaian gender equality and international women’s rights, but most societies seem to have longstanding cultures. Ghana has one, too.
Culture
Culture influences the implementation of women’s rights in Ghana too. In that, the perception of a woman’s proper place in society. The concept of the ideal female. The status of women tends to relate to the marital, religious, and parental status of the woman. For marital status, if the woman is not married to a man, and if she does have this officiated within a traditional parental and religious authoritative context, then the woman loses status within the perception of the community.
For religious status, if the woman is irreligious or of a discriminated against religious status, and if tied to the marital status, then the woman will be discriminated against in the concept of an ideal female. That is, a woman requires the legitimation of religious authority in both personal and professional life including marriage.
For the parental status of the women, if a woman does not bear children and raise them, and if the woman does not have a husband, and if a family for the woman is not in a religious context, then the woman loses respect and experiences pressure from the community to have children, become religious, and get a husband. The pressures and discrimination can be persistent, and at times painful, in daily life.
Exemplars
The major levers of power come from elected representatives. Votes are cast. The will of the people is put to the test. The societal preferences are then seen in mass. The sex disparity is readily foreseeable with the 140th placement in the GII, for instance. Ergo, the sex disparity in politics can, to some extent, be an indication of gender equality. First woman running mate, Brigitte Dzogbenuku, was the running mate for the People’s Patriotic Party (PPP). Also, another woman, Charlotte Osei, was the first woman selected as Chair for the electoral commission of Ghana.
She has been praised. People worried about declaring the man that selected her for president. People were happy with the way the election went. Ghana has never had a civil war. Conspiracy theories abounded about the election. The winner was obvious. There were rumors about the electoral website being hacked, but there is substantive evidence. The winner was the first woman flagbearer and founder of her party, NDP, and former first lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings.
Modernity
The clash between modernity and fundamentalist religion within the country is something important to humanists in the region because human preaches to the human rights and scientific worldview-oriented. It is a small sector of the Ghanaian population, but something deeply important for the maintenance of the global humanist movement within the localized context of Ghana.
The north of the country is mostly Muslim, but demographics are changing because people are seeing the Christian God as more ‘right’ than the Muslim God. The northern region in Ghana is one of the poorest areas. The Upper East, the Upper West, and the Northern region make the Northern part of Ghana. The Northern region is the biggest region in size in Ghana and is one of the least dense in population.
Each region has a regional capital. The biggest one is Accra. Basically, people wake up and can start a church, even on the side of the street. People don’t necessarily need to go to seminary or theological schools and train to become a priest, pastor, minister, and so on. The reason given is that the “Holy Spirit” works in mysterious ways. You do not have to be anybody. The new priests aren’t necessarily educated, or even need to speak English. This is dangerous.
The recently most popular is Daniel Obinim. He has been arrested. He is in custody because, finally, he had a church of hundreds of people, where he claimed to be an angel. He would do anything to stop anybody. But he was known to be originally selling yogurts on the street. Now, he wears colorful suits and has lots of money.
There were viral videos of him. He would say you’re going to get rich later, or you’ll die soon. Well if you get rich, then you give him money; if you think you’ll die soon, then you give him
money. And if you don’t get rich, then no problem, just another ignored miss. Jon Benjamin is the only British ambassador in Ghana. He is very Ghanaian, though. The main point is people really believe this stuff.
In the light of individuals believing the fundamentalist creeds, and with the cultural environment providing the possibility to start from the street, there seems to be the greater need for a humanist movement in Ghana, and external support from countries with more established humanist movements because of high levels of religiosity, subsequent discrimination against the secular, and difficulties faced in family life, employment, and political life for humanist in Ghana.
As this remains true for the general humanist Ghanaian community, it remains even more so for women, so women’s rights and human rights are tied together with humanism in a Ghanaian context. Whether from a humanist, human rights, or women’s rights perspective, we should share the common goals.
Bibliography
1. http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/GHA
2. http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/gender-inequality-index-gii http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
3. http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/
4. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/
5.http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/csw/pfa_e_final_web.pdf
6. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/
7. http://allafrica.com/stories/201609221321.html
8. http://www.unwomen.org/en/about-us/guiding-documents
10. http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
11. https://www.modernghana.com/news/740976/vote-for-women-in-the-2016-general-elections.html
13. http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/I-fired-warning-shots-Hajia-Gariba-497378
15. https://bettymould.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/‘towards-increased-women’s-participation-and-representation-in-parliament’/ 16. https://appliedsentience.com/author/humanistservicecorps/
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com.
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