Customary Law Project gets a permanent secretariat

Accra, July 25, GNA - Lack of certainty in customary law and conflicting accounts of customary law rules, have been found to contribute significantly to the numerous family, land and chieftaincy disputes.

This state of affairs reinforced the need for the ascertainment and codification of customary rules in the country, Professor John Nabila, Co-chairman of the Joint Steering Committee of the Ascertainment of Customary Law (ACL) Project said on Thursday.

Speaking at the inauguration of a secretariat for customary law project in Accra, he said, the project, which was sponsored by the German Government, would ascertain and codify all the customary rules and practices on land and family.

Prof. Nabila noted that the secretariat would serve as a joint research centre for the two collaborating bodies, which were the National House of Chief and the Law Reform Commission. The project would constitute the first initiative towards fulfilling an important constitutional mandate given to the National House of Chiefs.

"This provision requires the National House of Chiefs to undertake the progressive study, interpretation and codification of customary with a view to evolving, in appropriate cases, a unified system of rules of customary law," he added.

Prof. Nabila said the Steering Committee had decided that the project should be carried out first and foremost on a pilot basis and that 20 traditional areas, with two from each region, had been selected for the collection of data.

In a speech read on his behalf, Mr Joe Gartey, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, said the output of the project would be a comprehensive report from which a set of rules on customary law would be extracted with the assistance of the Drafting Section of the Attorney-General's office.

He expressed the government's appreciation to the German Development Corporation (GTZ) for funding the project. He also thanked the outgoing Programme Manager of GTZ, Dr Mechthild Ruenger, for her personal assistance towards the project. 25 July 08