Ghana And 15 Other C'wealth Nations Classified LDCS

The Programme Coordinator of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI), Ms. Bernice Baiden, has disclosed that 664 million of the Commonwealth's population of two billion live on less than a dollar (?7000) a day.

This includes Nigeria, Zambia and Ghana.

She added that HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis also claim millions of lives in the Commonwealth with Zambia losing 1,300 teachers to the disease.

She said 16 out of the 54 Commonwealth countries were classified as least developed countries in 2001 by the Third United Nations Conference on the 'Least Developed Countries.'

She made these known at a press conference held at the International Press Centre in Accra, last week.

Ms. Baiden stressed that poverty forces both men and women into precarious economic and social lifestyles that shape their vulnerability to diseases, and these translate into dire health, economic and social implications for citizens of the Commonwealth.

She stated that the 1992 Constitution guarantees to Ghanaians basic rights such as food, shelter, education, adding that inability to gain access to adequate basic human needs is a massive violation of the health and employment rightsof the citizen.

The programme coordinatord said poverty is not merely about absence of income to meet basic necessities of life, but it is about lack of opportunity that t facilitates good life.

Ms. Baiden added that children are given away in bondage as househelps and 'trokosis', young daughters are married off and taken to urban centres, with their attendant vices, where they are left to support themselves and send back home their part of meagre earnings.

She revealed that men are so stretched to the limits in their effort to support their families that they are drawn away that they abandon their responsibilities and burden their wives and families with additional responsibilities to sustain themselves.

On his part, Sam Okudzeto, a member of International Advisory Commission of CHRI stated that CHRI is an NGO and their aim is to promote and encourage human rights and educate the people of Ghana about human rights.