By Iddi Yire
Accra, March 10, GNA – Vice President Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang has called for an end to violence against women, including gender-based violence.
The Vice President made the appeal in her keynote address at a National Dialogue to mark this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) in Accra, on the theme “Resetting the Agenda for Women: Accelerating Action on Women’s Rights, Equity, and Empowerment.”
This year’s IWD marks 30 years since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a commitment to advancing women’s rights globally. Reflecting on Ghana’s progress.
“We must choose to end all forms of violence against women and girls. In whatever form it may take, in whatever rationale we can profess for it, whether human trafficking, domestic violence, accusations of witchcraft and the resulting instant justice, child marriage, female genital mutilation or sexual violence, all of these demand our sustained action.
“Beyond decrying these unhelpful practices, we must interrogate whether there is any reason to justify these, to see them persist like incurable diseases in the space of women in their lives.
“We must try to tackle the problems at their roots, ignoring the needs of girls and women, obstructing their pathways to advancement, killing their dreams and clipping their wings, enforcing women’s acceptance of mediocrity, refusing even to encourage them, glamorizing systems that keep us at the bottom.”
She said all of these also constitute unacceptable forms of violence against women and they require urgent action.
“Today, we stand in solidarity with women and girls. We must live in dignity. We must be intolerant of any form of violence against girls and women, whether in our homes, in our schools, places of work, places of worship, communities and any place in our nation.”
The Vice President said it was time for women, it was time for men too, boys and girls, to choose to end such violations of fundamental human rights.
“Just the right to grow, the right to choose what helps, the right to contribute to your community, the right to contribute to your nation. It should not be seen as an aberration.”
The Vice President restated the need for sustained and inclusive action in the areas of women’s leadership and economic empowerment, girls’ education and reproductive health rights and eliminating gender-based violence in all forms.
She called for a renewed commitment to addressing systemic barriers that hindered women’s advancement, from harmful societal practices to economic and educational inequalities.
Vice President Professor Opoku-Agyemang also highlighted the Government’s immediate action on providing sanitary pads to keep girls in school.
She said the Affirmative Action Act beckoned, and that they must seize that moment to push forward policies that uplift, protect, and empower all Ghanaian women
She said the milestone that Ghanaians want to achieve as a country through an inclusive and sustained method was highlighted by an intersexual, intergenerational women’s dialogue, which aims at resetting the agenda for all of them, uplifting all Ghanaian girls and women, whether they were students, babies, parents, traders, farmers or fisher folk, people in other professions, homemakers or rulers, regardless their backgrounds, and abilities or disabilities, they all matter.
GNA