ADDRO LAUNCHES DOMESTIC VIOLENCE INTERVENTION PROGRAMME (PAGE 20)

ADDRO stands for the Anglican Diocesan Development and Relief Office now known as the Anglican Diocesan Development and Relief Organisation. ADDRO is an initiative of the Anglican Diocese of Tamale and it covers the three regions of the Northern part of Ghana, namely the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.
The diocese believes in a holistic ministry of saving not only the soul but the body as well, it has initiated a number of development projects in many rural communities, especially in the Upper East Region.
ADDRO started its first mission in 1971. It was an irrigation-farming project intended to support the people involved to produce crops and vegetables during the dry season so that they could improve their standards of living.
In 1978, a new development took place and the Anglican Church Agricultural Project (ACAP) was launched to meet the needs of the poor. All the projects started through private, clergy or parish initiative and were unco-ordinated, scattered and “everybody was doing their own thing”.
The efforts of those projects were not co-ordinated to maximise the effects on the receivers.
However, in 1996, the diocese took a bold and decisive step and consolidated its development work through the establishment of the diocesan development and relief office“ADDRO”.
Over the years, ADDRO developed from a well -willing missionary approach into a professionally based organisation with state of the art equipment, well trained and professional staff members.
One area of concern to this religious organisation is gender discrimination and health education.
Since 2006, Addro has been collaborating with CordAid, a Netherlands-based charity organisation to combat the gender discrimination and violence against women inside and outside their homes.
The aim of that programme was to contribute to the elimination of gender-based discrimination and to promote the reproductive health rights of women. It is targeted at a change of behaviour at the regional, district and community levels in northern Ghana.
Although many people might think that women have equal rights compared to men, especially in the three northern districts of Ghana, practice proves completely otherwise. Child labour, low girl-child education, widowhood rites and property inheritances are socio-cultural issues that need serious attention.
ADDRO wants to be of help with regard to those issues by creating awareness and understanding at all levels in the Ghanaian society, especially in the Upper East Region.
The implementation strategy includes community mobilisation, sensitisation, awareness creation and the empowerment of targeted individuals and groups through workshops to have the capacity to combat gender based discriminations and to promote the rights of women and children.
The organisation has made a great impact on the beneficiary communities and districts which are contributing massively to the reduction of gender based discrimination and its related consequences.
In terms of gender relations in northern Ghana, inequality stemming from traditional norms and beliefs is pronounced. Despite the fact that women provide over 65 per cent of the farm labour and about 85 per cent of the marketing of agricultural produce, they are still discriminated against when it comes to ownership of assets and productive resources.
Women are not expected to be owners nor custodians of productive resources like land, economic trees, or even cattle or bullocks.
Ownership of assets by women is limited to personal effects like cooking utensils, clothing, among others. Women are, therefore, unable to take their destinies into their own hands, as they do not often have control even over their own economic assets. This limits the exercise of their much-needed freedom to live and enjoy life as human beings.
Furthermore, women are discriminated against in matters of education as a result of the literacy level among women compared with that of their male counterparts, which is very low. This high level of illiteracy among women has incapacitated them and limited their exposure to development opportunities to initiate, plan, implement and manage self-help small enterprises on a sustainable basis, leaving them with less economic, social and political power as compared to men.
Besides the above mentioned negative inequalities, gender based violence is prevalent in the area affecting mostly women and occurring at personnel, domestic, community and state levels with its many varied manifestations. The use of violence by men against women is to prevent women from realising their rights, be they economic, social, political or sexual.
The problem is not only widely spread geographically, but its incidence is also extensive, making it a typical and accepted behaviour, widely ignored and so little understood.
It is for this reason that ADDRO has launched a GH¢200,000 Domestic Violence Intervention Programme. The programme is funded by CORDAID and it is to be started by ADDRO in selected communities in the Bolgatanga Municipality and the Bawku West district for the next two years.
Speaking at the launch of the programme, the Co-ordinator for Gender and Development of ADDRO, Mrs Esther Amoako, said domestic violence was on the increase in the area in view of the perception held by the people about the rights of women and children in the family.
She said the gross abuse of the rights of women and children by husbands, denying women basic rights to own property, forced marriages in the name of upholding the tradition had contributed immensely to the increasing poverty situation in the area.
The programme co-ordinator said the trauma women went through when they were abused was so alarming that there should be several interventions to nib the problem in the bud.
Mrs Amoako added that what was even more dehumanising was that wives were sometimes prevented from speaking to their fellow women while others were prevented from seeing family members and other relations.
The Executive Director of ADDRO, Very Reverend Dr Jacob Ayeebo proposed a comprehensive collaboration programme with NGOs working in the areas of human rights-related issues, especially domestic violence, to map up a clear-cut strategy to ensure speedy reduction in domestic violence-related cases in the three northern regions.
He stated that northern Ghana could overcome poverty, “the key enemy in this part of the country, if we work together with seriousness against ignorance and accept the simple education we get from service providers such as ADDRO, we would cross a hurdle in achieving a poverty free system”.
Reverend Dr Ayeebo said battery, physical abuse of especially women and children, economic deprivation of women, sexual abuse and emotional torture of women and children were unacceptable in the 21st Century Ghana, and that such actions were criminal and infringed on the fundamental rights of women and children who are most vulnerable.
Reverend Dr Ayeebo who is also a Member of the Council of State, further called on the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the Departments of Women and Children, the Centre for National Culture (CNC) as well as the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), to collaborate effectively at ensuring that they combine education and action in eliminating the phenomenon.
A Senior Investigator with CHRAJ in the Upper East Region, Mr Mohammed Tiamiyu, who presented a paper on “Domestic Violence and the Law,” said domestic violence in families was not limited to only the battery of women, but that child abuse whether verbal or physical, abusive and offensive words against partners, among host of unhealthy grudges in the family, constituted elements of domestic violence.
He added that physical abuse including forceful confinement or detention of another person, deprivation of a partner or a member of the family from accessing the necessities of life, subjecting one to cruel and inhuman treatment, sexual and economic abuse as well as emotional and psychological exploitation of a family member, constituted domestic violence.
Mr Tiamiyu stated that domestic violence was a human rights issue which was treated strictly as such under the Domestic Violence Law, Act 732, adding that the various laws enforcement agencies would treat such cases with the necessary attention they deserved irrespective of who the offenders were, whether it is the man or the woman.