The Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) has charged Government to take appropriate and urgent actions to protect women and children in the country.
“Women in Ghana deserve to live, and to live safe and dignified lives in environments that nurture and protect them. The home is no longer a safe haven,” it said.
A statement issued by NETRIGHT on Wednesday and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra said, it was alarming that family life had increasingly become unsafe for many women since the cruel murder of women by partners, close relations and other perpetrators recently had reached an alarming proportion.
According to the statement, since January 2021, over 25 women had been killed in their homes, on farms, in hotels and other private and public places, and the staggering statistics, rate and trend showed that it was a scourge, and a reminder of the spate of murders of women in the country in 1999 or 2000.
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The unacceptably high rate of femicides, it said, had highlighted the extreme forms of sexual and gender-based violence in the country which had been linked to entrenched inequality, discrimination and economic disempowerment in the society.
Adding that, the murders also had been a reminder of the increasing normalisation of toxic masculinity in the Ghanaian society that used women’s bodies as battlefields and the insecurities that women faced in their homes and communities.
“Unfortunately, while society is quick to ask women why they remain in abusive relationships, reports have rather shown that women who choose to divorce husbands are killed, those who threaten to divorce are killed. Likewise, women who choose not to continue with intimate relationships are also murdered. Whether women choose to stay or leave, they are still unsafe,” it said.
The statement expressed worry over the culture of silence by political and public attention to the murders that it would embolden abusers and perpetuates a ‘sense of entitlement’ by the abusers.
“It should be clear to everyone that the institution of marriage or relationships and their gender stereotypical norms should not trump human life,” it said.
The statement urged Ghana Police Service and relevant law enforcement agencies to perform their duties creditably and as expected, for the perpetrators of the heinous crimes to face the full rigours of the law.
It called on stakeholders including state and non-state actors to as a matter of urgency, create spaces and mobilise their constituencies to discuss systemic violence against women within a broader framework of all kinds of oppression and address the issue of femicide.
It called for an end to femicide, and all forms of sexual and gender-based violence against women because it was a crime against women and girls, as well as humanity.
The statement extended NETRIGHT’s condolences to the families of women who had been murdered in Ghana between January and August 2021.
