Bolgatanga, Sep 17, GNA – The Community Development and Advocacy Centre (CODAC), a Non-Governmental Organization has held a day’s capacity building workshop on the Rights of Women and Children for Media practitioners in the Upper East Region.
The workshop which was in partnership with Plan International under its gender parity project dubbed, “Women Voice and Leadership,” had financial support from the Canadian Government.
The project aimed at strengthening the capacities of media practitioners on rights of Women and girls using Legislations and other laws that protect the rights of the vulnerable.
The objective of the workshop was to enable media practitioners appreciate the concept of Human Rights and its historical development, develop sensitivity to women or girl right issues, champion their rights and identify and report on their violations.
Mr Sumaila Saaka, a Human Resource consultant and facilitator of the programme urged Journalists to devote time in reporting on issues affecting the vulnerable in society and be sensitive in their reportage especially on issues regarding women and girls.
“Gender equality is not only women issue and should be a fight for them alone, when gender equality is achieved it will benefit the larger community and the media is in the right position to champion this course by being sensitive to issues of women and report the problems they encounter.
“There must be a collective effort from all of us in identifying these problems of child marriage, child abuse and trafficking among other depravities that retard the progress of the Girl child,” he added.
Mrs Limatu Afayak, the Programme Officer of CODAC, emphasized that, there was the need to seek legal redress when the rights of women or girls were violated.
“Issues of women or girls must be referred for legal redress than stay in the traditional council which sometimes does not give solution to the problem, making it a norm in most rural communities and that is why we are advocating the inclusion of Queen mothers in decision making so that the voice of women can be heard,” she stated
Mr Michael Yen Zuure, the Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator for CODAC bemoaned about the unawareness of women and girls on their rights and the low publicity of their advocacy work.
“Most women and children in our Communities do not know their rights and therefore are unable to speak up when such rights are violated which is a major challenge for our work and sometimes our advocacy works on the rights of women and children do not get the desire publicity from the media” he said
“As an organization, we are appealing to the media to help us publicize our works to make an impact in our various communities,” he appealed.
GNA