By Solomon Gumah
Tamale, Feb 24, GNA – Madam Bushira Alhassan, Acting Northern Regional Director, Department of Gender, has entreated persons living with disabilities (PwDs) to strategise in their collective efforts to fight against issues of Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV).
She urged them to carry on with their advocacy campaigns and stakeholder collaborations to ensure that issues of abuse and discrimination were exposed for necessary action to be taken by relevant institutions.
She made the call whilst addressing some young women and adolescent girls with disabilities on gender-based violence at a sensitisation workshop in Tamale.
Madam Alhassan expressed need for duty-bearers to pay serious attention to issues such as gender equality, access to social services, and skills for decent work, adding some cultural prohibitions even served to perpetuate inequality.
She urged the public to refrain from making disparaging remarks about persons with disabilities because such behaviours only served to promote discrimination and stigma.
Participants at the event were sensitised on their rights, conventions, legal and policy provisions on their right to access social services and resources, channels and processes to seek redress on gender-based violence issues among others.
The event, which formed part of the implementation of the project dubbed: “End Violence and Abuse”, brought together young women and adolescent girls with disabilities in the Sagnarigu Municipality of the Northern Region.
It was organised by the Centre for Research and Development Alternatives (CREDA) in partnership with Norsaac, both non-government organisations under VCP Experimental Global Fund Projects with funding support from Oxfam in Ghana.
Mr Abukari Iddrisu, Programmes Manager at CREDA said the workshop was to build advocacy and influence the skills of beneficiaries to effectively engage duty-bearers to implement policies and programmes that guaranteed their well-being.
He entreated them to unite and accelerate their advocacy efforts to help combat systemic discrimination that prevented them from being included in societal decision-making processes.
Madam Adam Ayishetu, Northern Regional Vice President, Ghana Association of Persons with Albinism, said although the country was a signatory to several conventions on rights of persons with disabilities, she was yet to see the full implementation of such hence the need to intensify advocacy to draw stakeholders’ attention to the need for implementation.
Participants pledged to step up their advocacy efforts to help reduce the prevalence of discrimination and stigmatisation against them.
GNA