CODRIGAM SUPPORTS 63...To contest assembly polls (PAGE 12, SEPT 15, 2010)

COMMUNITY Driven Gender Advocacy Movement (CODRIGAM), a coalition of communities in the Upper East Region, have nominated 63 women to contest in the upcoming district level elections scheduled for October this year.
In all, 19 communities have nominated 21 women to file as candidates for assembly positions and 42 others for unit committee positions in the region.
The women were organised in 30 communities in the Bolgatanga Municipal, Talensi-Nabdam District, Bawku Municipal, and Kassena-Nankana East District assemblies and they would be given the necessary support to contest in the forthcoming elections.
CODRIGAM is one of the major outcomes of the Centre for Sustainable Development Initiatives (CENSUDIs) gender advocacy work with communities in the Upper East Region.
According to the coalition, the communities would continue to provide moral and fiscal support to these female candidates while the CENSUDI, a local NGO, assists them with campaign skills and strategy.
Speaking at a ceremony to introduce the candidates in Bolgatanga, the Chief of Yorogo in the Bolgatanga Municipality, Naba Awuni A. Johnson, bemoaned the unfair representation at decision-making levels of governance, adding that women for the greater part of their lives have been reduced to household managers without any significant representation at the assemblies and unit committees.
Naba Awuni, who was flanked by two other traditional rulers, the Chief of Kalbeo, Naba Apasipange Aguuseyine and the Chief of Tenzuk, John Bawa Zuure, said the coalition would extol women’s virtues and do house-to-house campaigns for them, educate and discourage people from demanding alcohol and money from the candidates.
Rather, they would urge people to choose women over men based on the capacities of the women to develop their areas, as well as support them after they had won, with good ideas and also give them encouraging words if they fail to win.
The chief observed that poverty remained the biggest problem in the homes and communities in the Upper East Region as well as the Northern and Upper West regions, constituting 70 per cent of Ghana’s poor living in these three sister regions.
Naba Awuni believes that two major factors perpetuate poverty in the homes and communities in these regions; the unfair discrimination against women and children that lead to ill treatment, marginalisation and exclusion from major resources and decisions about development, and confusing wants for needs of the communities resulting in wrong expenditure patterns that sink the people deeper into poverty.
Explaining his assertions, the chief contended that those factors were confirmed in a participatory poverty assessment carried out for the World Bank and UNICEF in 2009 by Participatory Development Associates which established that nine out of 10 women are subjected to domestic abuse by men and boys just because they are women, and for no good reason; seven out of 10 married women are “living widows” literally married to their marital homes and not with men who came to court them; one out of five older women will be accused of witchcraft unfairly; many households will borrow money for funerals, alcohol, religious and traditional practices that do not add value to their lives or development but will not do same to send a girl-child to school, even though the district assemblies, the house of chiefs, the traditional councils, ministries, department and agencies and even some NGOs that claim are working for women are headed by men.
Naba Awuni expressed regret that out of the 14,856 candidates who filed for the 2006 district level election, only 1,772 were female candidates of which only 478 won their seats, representing 10 per cent of all district assembly seats in the Upper East Region.
According to him, less than 10 per cent of the 1/3 appointed district assembly members in the region between 2006 and 2010 were women.
A community member and an aspirant for the assembly member position, Madam Agnes Sakelob, said as members of the coalition, it was their belief that in order to achieve sustainable development, there was the need to correct the gender imbalances that existed in the society.
“The major role of district assemblies and sub-district structures is the reduction of poverty for the attainment of sustainable development and this is why we need to get more women into these decision-making organs since it is believed that women will be in a better position to bring to the fore issues affecting them in all facets of life when given the opportunity”, she said.
The CEO for CENSUDI, Ms Franciska Issaka, whose organisation have been working with the coalition since 2005, said the ultimate goal of the communities was to tackle the underlying causes of their pervasive poverty.
She explained that under the guidance of CENSUDI, communities had put in place processes and systems that reduced unfair discrimination against women, adding that with more support from her organisation, those communities had become a coalition to strengthen their ability to encourage other communities to emulate their kind of gender advocacy.
She emphasised that CODRIGAM aimed to lobby traditional councils, district authorities and even national level government to adopt and implement appropriate gender and child-friendly policies and practices.
“CODRIGAM knows that this increase in women’s participation in local governance will contribute immensely to reduce the canker of poverty and stunted development of the region, which is one of the poorest regions in Ghana where 9 out of 10 people randomly selected live below the poverty line”, she said.