Workshop on women’s land rights held in Accra
The Ministry of Land and Natural Resources is advocating the prioritisation of gender and land rights for equitable development.
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In a speech read on his behalf at the opening of a two-day orientation workshop for gender officers involved in land administration and representatives of civil society organisations (CSO) with focus on women’s land right, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr John -Peter Amewu, said that was because gender incorporation had been on the development agenda of the country.
He noted that Ghana's policy direction on gender equality was manifested in the enactment of laws, policies, strategies and commitments to international instruments such as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
The aim of the workshop was to enable the gender officers gain understanding on the roles and responsibilities they could play to move the gender agenda, especially women's land rights issues in the country.
Shared growth agenda
Mr Amewu stated that "the Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda I and II, the National Gender Policy, 2015 are all geared towards enhancing socio-economic development for women alongside men for national development," he said.
“There is, therefore, the need to give priority to gender and land rights through adequate institutional capacity building and also engage MDAs and MMDAs, private sector, and other stakeholders to promote gender equality for equitable national development,” the minister added.
According to him, this can be achieved by putting in place appropriate budgetary support, coordination and administrative systems to collect gender disaggregated data.
Land Administration Project
The minister said the Land Administration Project (LAP) had been implementing a gender strategy to mainstream gender in various components of the project since 2012 in response to national gender initiative and demands from civil society.
According to him, the objective of LAP was to provide a coherent and sustained approach in addressing women and men's concerns for equitable development.
"One of the key indicators of LAP is to establish Gender Desks in land administration, in 2013 the project recruited gender officers for a period of two years but unfortunately, contracts of these officers could not be renewed due to limited funds," he said.
Human right
Speaking to the Daily Graphic, the Chief Director of the Community Land and Development Foundation, Mrs Nana Ama Yirrah, said women's land right and property right was a fundamental human right issue which needed attention.
Women in poor areas, she said, were denied equal rights to access to land, right to use, inherit, control and own land.
The issue of gender and land rights, she said, was bedeviled by socio-cultural practices which placed limitation on women's access to land and put land ownership in the identity of men.
She called for more education to increase the awareness of women's land and property issues to eliminate the numerous consequences women suffer as a result of the inequitable system.
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