Government urged to address issues on disability as a key human rights issue

Mr Jonathan Osei Owusu, Executive Director of the POS Foundation, a civil society platform has stressed the need for government to address issues bordering on Persons Living with Disabilities (PWDs) as a key human rights matter.
“Amending the disability Act is a key human rights issue government must critically look at, from 2006 that the disability Act was promulgated nothing much has been done and its long overdue”
He cited the moratorium placed on public facilities to factor accessibility of PWDS into their designs as one of the measures which unfortunately had not worked because the amendment of the Act had delayed
Mr Owusu was speaking at the opening of a two-day national multi stakeholder workshop on the implementation plan for recommendations accepted during Ghana’s UN’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) held in Geneva in January this year.
The workshop was organized by the Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice in partnership with the POS Foundation with funding from UNFPA to design steps and timelines for implementation of the accepted recommendations to protect and promote rights of Ghanaian citizens.
He said During the Review where government of Ghana stated its human rights records, Ghana accepted 263 recommendations of which disability, gender, child rights, media freedom and prisoner’s human rights were key among the issues.
Some of the recommendations rejected included the LGBTQ and the abolishment of the death penalty “however the parliament of Ghana has passed the law to abolish the death penalty and that is a plus for Ghana’s human rights records.”
He said other human rights issues which came up strongly for Ghana to take pragmatic steps to address were gender equality, child development in terms of child marriage and labour and the violations of press freedom.
Ghana is a party to the UPR which was created through the UN General Assembly and is a state driven process which reviews the human rights records of all 193 member states and Ghana has been to the UPR in 2008, 2012, 2017 with the latest in 2023.
Mr George Tetteh Sackey, office of the Attorney General said Ghana’s Human rights records had improved over the years and mentioned the passage of the witchcraft bills as one of the improvements.
GNA