Implement strategies that would promote child justice - Aba Oppong

Stakeholders involved in child right, justice and protection have been urged to develop and implement strategies that would ensure equal justice for children at all levels.

Madam Aba Oppong, Executive Director of Rights and Responsibilities Initiatives Ghana (RRIG), who made the call, said even though the country’s child justice system was friendly, lack of effective structures and resources made enforcement very difficult for some children to access it.

She said inadequate resources and support systems, especially for the vulnerable and children in deprived communities made it very difficult for children who had come in conflict with the law to access justice.

Madam Oppong was speaking at a ceremony organized by the Defense for Children International (DCI) Ghana, a child rights organization based in Kumasi, to mark this year’s Day of the African Child in Kumasi.

The theme for this year’s celebration was: “access to child-friendly justice in Ghana”.

Madam Oppong said it is important for stakeholders in children protection to design advocacy programmes that would empower children to be responsive to issues that would promote their survival and development.

She said the Family Head Accountability Law, 1985, which seeks to support training, development, control of deviant behaviour and nurturing of children with the family, needed to be made to function well to bring sanity in most homes.

Superintendent Susana Dery, Ashanti Regional Head of Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU), of the Ghana Police Service, called on the public to keep abreast with issues of rape and defilement and work to ensure that such cases were settled in the formal justice system at all times.