Human Rights Education Project
Funded 2006

Violence, in whatever form, keeps women marginalized and exploited. Many women are stigmatized into keeping silent and refrain from getting the help they need. This silence also masks the scope of the problem.

The focus of this project was to bring to light the difficulities faced by women who experience domestic violence to the agencies responsible for adjudicating justice and to health care providers. A two-day discussion forum gave women public space to tell their stories. Most of these women were survivors of violence and voluntarily shared their stories publicly in order to spur public discourse on the issue. In order to successfully meet the needs of vulnerable people within society it is essential to establish what their needs are and work with them to realize a solution.

A strategy was developed to make the shift in the behaviour of women from suffering silently to one of reporting their case to the appropriate agency.

In her own words, one of the participants had this to say about the forum: "it gave me an opportunity to tell the world how we suffer in the hands of men in this community of ours. I think there is no better time to articulate more on violence against women so as to institutionalize respect for women's rights than NOW!"

Present at the forum were resource persons, law enforcement personnel, health care professionals, and other public officials responsible for legal process and enforcement.

The fundamental principle of the program was to inform community members of the need to have a better understanding of the devastating effects of violence on women, families, and society as a whole and to prompt them not only to join the struggle to resist domestic violence but also to contribute in different ways to ameliorate the situation of the survivors of violence. The program also sought to reduce the frightening statistics around the issue by advocating ground-breaking preventive measures and igniting community support to end gender-based violence.

By the end of the program community members had gained in-depth knowledge of women's human rights issues and an appreciation of the fact that abuse of women is unacceptable and is a violation of not only the laws of Ghana but that of international human rights laws.