Ghana

Provides a listing of articles on restorative justice developments in Ghana. Articles appear in the order in which they were added to the site with the most recent appearing first.

2 Walden alumni, 2 countries and 1 goal: justice

from Shannon Mouton's post on Walden University Alumni Association Blog: What determines whether retributive justice, restorative justice, or a combination of the two is appropriate in a given civil war situation? There are a number of factors that go into making that judgment, including the relative strength of the country’s government, the international political landscape, and whether or not the threat of international criminal courts may deter war criminals from ending the war. The motivation in choosing either type of justice, says Apori-Nkansah, is to have peace: “Is this the approach which will give us the peace we are looking for?”

African NGO Works for Transformation in the Justice System

The Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA), founded in 1994, works toward creating a more humane environment in prisons and alternatives to imprisonment. In the area of justice reform, PRAWA’s Community Justice Programme (COJUP) focuses on the implementation of restorative practices in ways that are sensitive to African cultural traditions. The African Transformative Justice Project is one of the programmes designed to introduce alternative practices into the Justice System.

Ameh, Robert Kwame. Doing Justice After Conflict : The Case for Ghana’s National Reconciliation Commission.

But the introduction of the National Reconciliation Bill in Parliament and eventual passage of the National Reconciliation Act (Act 611) engendered great controversy and lively debate not only between the political parties in Parliament but also among the Ghanaian public. The National Democratic Congress (NDC), the main opposition party, boycotted the proceedings in Parliament at the consideration stage of the Bill and so did not partake in the final vote on the Bill.6 Outside Parliament, a lively debate developed among Ghanaians. The vibrant Ghanaian media (both print and electronic) and Parliament became the sites of contest. The main issues of contention centered on these questions: (i) does Ghana’s socio-political experience require the nation to go through a national reconciliation exercise? (ii) if yes, what period of history or what political regimes should be covered by such an exercise? (iii) how should members of the reconciliation body be appointed and by whom?, and (iv) what ought to be the subject (e.g. murder, torture, etc.) of investigation of such a body? Of these issues, the most contentious were issues (i) and (ii), that is, whether the nation’s past warrants the establishment of a National Reconciliation Commission and the period or regimes to be covered by the NRC’s investigations. The former will be the focus of this paper as the latter has already been addressed elsewhere. (excerpt)

Ameh, Robert Kwame. Uncovering Truth: Ghana's National Reconciliation Commission Excavation of Past Human Rights Abuses

A key mandate of all truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) is to ascertain the truth about past injustices and to establish accurate records of violations and abuses. But truth has different connotations to diverse people and is often applied variously. So, how do TRCs uncover the truth surrounding a case of past human rights abuse? But what is truth? More specifically, how did Ghana's National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) ascertain the truth in the cases that came before it? These are the key questions addressed in this paper, which is based on interviews with members and key staff of NRC, analysis of parliamentary debates and media coverage of the reconciliation exercise, and a two-month observation of the NRC. The paper concludes that the specific yet flexible mandate of the NRC, the standard of proof adopted, the elaborate information management process, and the internal control mechanisms put in place favorably positioned the NRC to ascertain truth regarding the cases it deliberated. (author's abstract)

Ghana. Children's Act, 1998. (Act 950).

(1) A Child Panel shall assist in victim-offender mediation in minor criminal matters involving a child where the circumstances of the offence are not aggravated. (excerpt)

Justice, reconciliation and peacebuilding: Seen through African eyes

from Rev. Clement Apengnuo's First Annual Fr. Bill Dyer Lecture: In 2000 the Catholic Diocese of Damongo in collaboration with the Catholic Relief Services started a peace project to build local capacity for justice-building, reconciliation and peace-building. In the course of my work I had to deal with the issue of the relevance of a Western style peace-building in African conflicts. Why not use the African traditional systems of conflict resolution? Implicit in these statements is the assumption that the Western style is foreign and in effective. African traditional systems work better in an African setting. African conflicts, African solutions. At the international level, indigenous and traditional practices of peace-building are regarded as unaccountable, opague and contradictory to the “enlightened” intentions of Western form of peacebuilding (liberal Peace) and internationally sponsored post war reconstruction efforts.