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Economic and Social Injustices in Ghana’s Military Regimes: an Investigation of Price Control Policies.
... The Price Control Laws were used by the security service personnel as an excuse to invade shops, seize wares, and torture traders (Alidu, 2014;Oduro, 2005). 3 Traders accused of non-compliance were arraigned before makeshift military courts which passed quick judgement and sentences. ...
... It was in no way an attempt to return victims to the status quo ante. By the end of the reparations programme, the Reparations and Rehabilitation Fund had provided monetary reparations to about 2,117 women and men (Alidu, 2014). ...
With increased attention to the needs of women in conflict and post-conflict situations, a multitude of resolutions on Women, Peace and Security have been adopted at the international level. Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820, and 2122 all reflect an increased recognition of the need to engage, monitor, and increase women’s participation in post-conflict recovery process. Although scholars on reparations have focused on the benefits that a gendered perspective brings to reparations programmes, scare research exists on the experiences of women years after the acquisition of reparation. This article investigates the lived experiences of female beneficiaries of Ghana’s reparations programme 8 years after completion of the programme. It highlights the violence experienced by four female beneficiaries of the programme, showing the long-term impacts of violence on their lives. The article reveals the reparations programme’s inability to adequately address the effect of violence on the lives of female beneficiaries.
... Studies also show that older generations who have witnessed human rights violations that often characterize military regimes are more likely to support democracy (Bratton, Mattes and Gyima-Boadi 2005;Sanches and Gorbunova 2016). Hence, older Ghanaians who witnessed human rights violations that marked military regimes (Alidu 2014;Oquaye 1995) may be likely to support democracy. ...
Objective
This article addresses the following questions: (1) What is the extent of Ghanaians' support for democracy? (2) What are the influences of education, the pursuit of political news, and the discussion of politics on citizens' support of democracy?
Methods
This study combines the sixth and seventh rounds the Afrobarometer surveys on Ghana. The total sample for this study is 4,800 adult Ghanaians. Binary logistic regression analysis was employed for the multivariate analysis.
Results
About 81 percent of the respondents prefer democracy to any other form of government, including a military rule. Also, the study also found that education attainment, the pursuit of political news information, and the discussion of politics is significantly linked to citizens' support of democracy.
Conclusion
The study shows that increasing access to education and political information are vital mechanisms for strengthening democratic consolidation.
... The post-independence history of Ghana has been characterised by long periods of military regimes and human rights abuses (Oquaye 2004;Alidu 2014). After the overthrow of the First Republic (1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965)(1966) under President Kwame Nkrumah, there were interludes of civilian governments during the Second Republic (1969)(1970)(1971)(1972) and the Third Republic (1979- 1981), which did not survive due to successive military subversions (Zounmenou 2009:2-3). ...
Doctoral thesis submitted to the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
... If anything, the opposite can also be argued. 10 Contradictorily, while the 31st DWM carried out its women's empowerment campaigns, the PNDC's controversial anti-kalabule project targeted market women in big cities in Ghana (see Alidu 2014). 11 In the early 1980s, market women in major markets in the main cities of the country were harassed, humiliated and blamed for the country's financial woes through unfair capital accumulation (Campbell 1985). ...
Despite the crucial role feminist movements play in securing progressive development policies, legislation and attitudinal changes for women, labeling women’s rights issues as feminist has contradictory, mostly negative, effects on the women’s movement in Africa. This paper discusses research findings that show that older women (activists) are more likely to self-identify as feminists than younger women in Ghana. I argue that, while resistance to feminism may have roots in anti-imperialism, socio-cultural and economic privileges play a crucial role in such resistance at an individual level. I suggest that the perceived threat of feminism to African culture: (a) opens up possibilities for advancing women’s rights through a push for women’s inclusion in development planning through a more transformative civil liberties route as opposed to a “‘special victims’ unit” approach, and (b) calls for further research on feminist campaigns with regards to inclusivity and coalition building among female constituents in Africa.
The establishment of Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission was a response to gross human rights violations perpetrated under the rule of eight different civilian and military governments. Starting from the era of the Convention Peoples’ Party in 1957 and continuing through the end of the military rule by the Provisional National Defence Council in 1993, this chapter delves into the historical and social context within which the National Reconciliation Commission was established. It also relates the recurrence of the military in Ghanaian politics during the period as well as the role of both the military and constitutional governments in perpetrating human rights violations. Tracing the factors that created political divisions in the country, the chapter asserts that pre-independence polarisation in the country disposed successive governments to opposition. The chapter also provides a description of Ghana’s transition to democracy, the factors that either enhanced or disrupted the process and identifies the reasons why Ghana remained a conflicted democracy for nearly ten years after transitioning to democratic rule. The events that culminated in the creation of the National Reconciliation Commission not only provide an insight into the choices that Ghana made during its transition but also shed light on the rationale behind the commission’s mandate.
Economic and social rights are understudied, and the core international treaty covering these rights—the International Covenant
on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)—has rarely been analyzed. This paper examines the effect of the ICESCR on
(1) labor rights in law and practice and (2) the constitutionalization of socioeconomic rights. Membership in the ICESCR paradoxically
improves de facto labor practices but not de jure labor rights laws. This effect represents an instance of “substance without ceremony,” and is consistent with recent empirical
findings on the effects of global institutionalization. Treaty membership also prompts countries to enact constitutional provisions
regarding socioeconomic rights, albeit in purely aspirational language. Countries that ratify the ICESCR remain hesitant to
formulate such rights in enforceable terms.
This article examines the various points at which accountability for economic crimes, including large-scale corruption, intersects
with accountability for human rights violations. To date, transitional justice has largely compartmentalized legacies of abuse
into those based on a narrow set of human rights violations and those based on economic crimes, which the author argues is
an inadequate way to address both sets of abuses. Because corruption and human rights violations are mutually reinforcing
forms of abuse, the field of transitional justice should approach economic crimes in the same way it approaches civil and
political rights violations. The author suggests that traditional transitional justice mechanisms would be strengthened by
an engagement with corruption and economic crimes, which would allow for both sources of impunity to be confronted.
Formal acceptance of international agreements on human rights has progressed to the point where currently over three-quarters of the UN member states are parties to the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights. In fact, becoming a party to this covenant seems to be concomitant with joining the UN. Of the newly independent states in Eastern Europe and in the region of the former Soviet Union, only Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Moldova, and Macedonia have not joined the treaty. This article tests empirically whether becoming a party to this international treaty (and its optional protocol) has an observable impact on the state party's actual behavior. The hypothesis is tested across 178 countries over an eighteen-year period (1976-93) and across four different measures of state human rights behavior. Initial bivariate analyses demonstrate some statistically significant differences between the behavior of states parties and the behavior of non-party states. However, this difference does not appear in the bivariate analysis that compares the states parties' behavior before becoming a party to the treaty with their behavior after becoming a party state. When the analysis progresses to more sophisticated multivariate analysis, in which factors known to affect human rights are controlled, the impact of the covenant and its optional protocol disappears altogether. Overall, this study suggests that it may be overly optimistic to expect that being a party to this international covenant will produce an observable direct impact.
Oil and other natural resources are linked to many bad outcomes, such as civil war, autocracy, and lack of economic development. Using a state-centered framework for revenue extraction, we identify why oil should also be linked to another bad thing–repression. We argue that where states do not rely on their citizenry for generating revenue, they are more likely to use indiscriminate violation of personal integrity rights as a policy tool. We test this argument using a cross-national database with a variety of indicators of oil and fuel rents and personal integrity violations. Across all specifications and different indicators, we find a substantive and significant relationship between a state relying on oil and the violation of personal integrity rights.
While there is increasing momentum behind the notion that the tools of transitional justice should be marshaled in response to large-scale human rights atrocities and physical violence — including murder, rape, torture, disappearances, and other crimes against humanity — the proper role of transitional justice with respect to economic violence — including violations of economic and social rights, corruption, and plunder of natural resources — is far less certain. Historically, if mass atrocities and physical violence have been placed in the transitional justice spotlight, issues of equally devastating economic and social justice have received little attention. The marginalization of the economic within the transitional justice agenda serves to distort our understanding of conflict, and the policies thought to be necessary in the wake of conflict. This article argues that a more nuanced, contextualized, and balanced approach to a wider range of justice issues faced by societies in transition is necessary. To this end, this article proposes that one way to achieve a more balanced approach would be to re-conceptualize and reorient the “transition” of transitional justice not simply as a transition to democracy and the “rule of law,” the paradigm under which the field originated, but as part of a broader transition to “positive peace” in which justice for both physical violence and economic violence receive equal pride of place.
Le Ghana a rejoint le groupe des démocraties en transition en créant la Commission de réconciliation nationale (CRN), qui débuta ses travaux en 2002. Elle reçut le mandat d'enquêter sur les atrocités et violations des droits humains passées, de recommander des compensations adéquates pour les victimes et de réconcilier la nation. Or, les attentes et la confiance des Ghanéens en la capacité de la CRN de guérir les blessures du passé, mettre un terme au cycle de vengeance et de vendettas et de réconcilier la nation furent partagées depuis que la Commission termina ses travaux et remit son rapport, en octobre 2004. Cet article prend position pour la Commission de réconciliation nationale au Ghana, soutenant qu'elle est la meilleure parmi les solutions possibles pour traiter des violations passées des droits humains au Ghana.
Ghana joined a group of transitional democracies in the world by establishing a National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), which started work in September 2002. The NRC was mandated to investigate past atrocities and human rights violations, recommend appropriate compensation for victims, and reconcile the nation. But expectations among Ghanaians of the ability of the NRC to heal the wounds of the past, end the cycle of vengeance and vendettas, and reconcile the nation have been mixed even after the NRC completed its work and submitted its report in October 2004. This paper makes a case for Ghana's NRC. It argues that a National Reconciliation Commission is a better way of dealing with the egregious human rights violations in Ghana's past than the alternatives available.
A key mandate of all truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) is to ascertain the truth about past injustices and to establish accurate records of violations and abuses. But truth has different connotations to diverse people and is often applied variously. So, how do TRCs uncover the truth surrounding a case of past human rights abuse? But what is truth? More specifically, how did Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) ascertain the truth in the cases that came before it? These are the key questions addressed in this paper, which is based on interviews with members and key staff of NRC, analysis of parliamentary debates and media coverage of the reconciliation exercise, and a two‐month observation of the NRC. The paper concludes that the specific yet flexible mandate of the NRC, the standard of proof adopted, the elaborate information management process, and the internal control mechanisms put in place favorably positioned the NRC to ascertain truth regarding the cases it deliberated.
This study explores the relationships between state violations of different human rights. Though most quantitative studies in international relations treat different types of repressive behavior as either independent or arising from the same underlying process, significant insights are gained by conceptualizing different human rights violations as separate but dependent processes. We present a theoretical framework for conceptualizing the mechanisms relating human rights practices and produce a novel measurement strategy based on network analysis for exploring these relationships. We illustrate high levels of complementarity between most human rights practices. Substitution effects, in contrast, are occasionally substantial but relatively rare. Finally, using empirically informed Monte Carlo analyses, we present predictions regarding likely sequences of rights violations resulting in extreme violations of different physical integrity rights.
In December 2001, the Parliament of Ghana passed a law to establish the National Reconciliation Commission (the “Commission”).
The law, known as the National Reconciliation Commission Act (Act 611), came into force on 7 January 2002, when it received
Presidential assent. The Commission was inaugurated on 6 May 2002. The goal of the Commission is to help reconcile the people
of Ghana by finding out the truth about past human rights abuses and helping those who were hurt by the abuses to deal with
their pain and to move on with their lives. The Commission will also help those who participated in the abuses to come to
terms with the experiences and to obtain forgiveness.
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