HIPC Watch to Lobby

Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the three northern regions have called for the immediate review of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) document to enhance its gender orientation.

This was contained in a resolution adopted by the CSOs at a workshop on poverty at the opening of the "Ghana HIPC Watch Partners Lobby Week" in Accra yesterday.

The resolution was read by Mr. Samuel Zan, the Director of the Social Enterprise Development Foundation of West Africa (SEND Foundation), an NGO in the north of Ghana. The resolution said the GPRS "analysis on women is not gender based. The analysis and proposed policy instruments are technocratic."

"The fundamental causes of women's political powerlessness, social exclusion and economic vulnerability are overlooked."

The CSOs therefore called on the National Development Planning Council (NDPC) to immediately convene a special consultative workshop involving gender activists, women group leaders and policy makers and gender researchers with the "sole objective of enhancing the gender orientation of the GPRS".

The resolution called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to initiate peace education in the academic curriculum at all levels of education especially at the university level so that degrees in "peace studies" could be issued.

"The government should actively seek to promote the community-based peace building initiatives that are being championed by various civil society organisations in northern Ghana."

It called on the government to take responsibility for early childhood development by formulating legislation and policies to prevent over-commercialisation of day care centres and to provide infrastructure support for the establishment of such centres and to see to the supervision of existing structures as well.

On the physically challenged, the resolution called on government to demonstrate commitment to their plight through "policy development and enforcement to guarantee them better opportunities in society".

It said chieftaincy institutions and land tenure systems in the northern regions are the root causes of conflict and social destabilisation and therefore urged "regional and national houses of chiefs to find ways of reforming the chieftaincy institution and land tenure system to make them more development oriented."

Mr. Zan said the week is aimed at lobbying Parliamentary Select Committees on agriculture, education, health, roads and highways, women and children and the Ministry of Local Government to "share with them views and insights of northern Ghana CSOs on the GPRS".

He said the occasion would be used to launch the "Ghana HIPC Watch Update", a newspaper, which would serve as a platform for CSOs to share their experiences in the monitoring and evaluation of HIPC funded projects and programs. He said CSOs in the three northern regions have formed the "Ghana HIPC Watch" (GHW) Project led by SEND Foundation with Oxfam-UK, CORDAID Netherlands and Christian Aid-UK/I as external partners. The project, he said, is to contribute towards the maximisation of the impact of the HIPC initiative on process of poverty reduction in the country and to monitor and evaluate projects and programs funded from the HIPC benefits.

He said Ghana HIPC Watch commends government moves to open HIPC accounts at national and district levels as well as to publish a detailed manual that would outline the financial management and monitoring procedures for HIPC funded projects and programs.

Mr. Zan said an eighteen-member lobby team from the Upper East and West and Northern Regions representing the trade union movement, development NGOs, women groups, physically challenged persons, local council of churches and Muslim groups have been constituted to ensure effective lobbying.

An Associate Director of the Foundation for Security and Development in Africa (FOSDA), Madam Afi Yakubu said Ghana would continue to remain in HIPC if the poverty situation in the country, especially in the northern regions is not addressed. She said the illiteracy rate in the north stands at about 85%, which is a major setback for development.