WILD trains indigenous women on equality and ownership

By Dennis Peprah

Banda-Ahenkro, (B/R), July 19, GNA – The Women In Livelihood Development, (WILD), a Ghanaian women-led civil society organisation has trained indigenous women in the Banda District of the Bono Region on equality, ownership and human rights.

They were taken through several topics including the Intestate Succession Act, 1985, (PNDC Law 111), to enlighten their knowledge and understanding on provisions of the law for their application and further empower and inspire them to participate in the decision-making
process of the Banda District Assembly.

The three-day training on the theme “Promoting Women’s Access to Control and Use of Land and Other Productive Resources to Promote and Participate in Decision-Making” also empowered the women to play women rights’ advocacy roles in the district to strengthen economic rights of the rural women.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of the training held at Banda-Ahenkro, the District capital, Mrs. Esther Foriwaa, the Executive Director of the WILD expressed worry women in the area were relegated to the background in decision-
making processes.

She said her organisation worked to empower and improve socio-economic livelihoods of rural women, saying women played integral roles in the family, hence the need to empower them to understand their rights in the society.

Mrs. Foriwaa noted many indigenous women were denied access to lands, saying about 20 per cent of women around the globe were landholders without secured rights.

She said women rights and access to land enhanced their economic status, improved living conditions, better nutrition and food sovereignty as well as improved health and education outcomes and gave them higher earnings.

Mrs. Foriwaa said women rights’ abuses and violence were always high among families and in societies where women were not economically empowered to support the family upkeeps, hence the need to train and inspire the indigenous women to also develop interest and participate in the decision-making process at the local level.

She said her organisation was also working in the Tain District and Wenchi Municipality in the Bono Region as well as Obuasi Municipality, Afigya Kwabre District and the Kumasi Metropolis in the Ashanti Region.