Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Catholic Relief Services, the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), and the Ministry of National Security have launched the Sahel Peace Initiative (SPI) National Forum to foster social cohesion, security, and peaceful elections in Ghana.
The SPI National Forum, themed ‘Building a more peaceful and cohesive Ghana.
A collective endeavour’, addresses various challenges, including security threats, humanitarian crises, and socio-political tensions in the Sahel regions, which pose risks to Ghana.
The forum aims to prevent the spread of insecurity from the Sahel into Ghana.
In response, the Episcopal Conferences of five West African nations—Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, and Niger—collaborated in November 2019 to initiate the Sahel Peace Initiative (SPI), focusing on promoting enduring peace and social cohesion across the region.
These organizations noted that the violence in the Sahel has caused substantial displacement of people across borders, with many seeking refuge in neighboring countries.
“Since November 2022, Ghana particularly its Upper East and Upper West Regions bordering Burkina Faso has experienced an influx of Burkinabé asylum-seekers.
“This influx has added to Ghana’s enduring challenges to peaceful coexistence, including chieftaincy disputes, high youth unemployment and potential political tensions as national elections approach.
These internal strains, if not addressed, will create vulnerabilities that could be exploited by violent extremist groups.”
The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference expressed concerns about the tensions in Ghana.
“Beyond the immediate security and humanitarian concerns lie deep-seated challenges that contribute to tensions in Ghana. Economic marginalisation, poor governance and social inequality hinder progress and fuel communal resentment.”
The SPI National Forum offers a distinctive opportunity for collaboration, facilitated through a partnership with the Catholic Relief Services, the Ministry of National Security, and theGhana Journalists Association.
A total of 1,939 Liberian refugees have been integrated into the country through the granting of Residence Permits and other support programmes, the Ghana Immigration Service(GIS) has said.
The GIS in 2022, received and helped a total of 2,847 migrants, constituting 1,905 males and 942 females to be reintegrated into various communities in Ghana.
Mr Kwame Asuah Takyi, Comptroller-General of Immigration, speaking at the launch of the Caritas Ghana initiative, Support Service for Migrants and Refugees in Transit (SMART) for Inclusive Development Project in Accra, said the Service had helped returned migrants and refugees and collaborated with relevant stakeholders for their reception, registration, hosting, and integration in the country.
The “SMART for Inclusive Development” Project is an initiative by Caritas Ghana, a charity organisation of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference, with support from the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development at the Vatican.
It aims at offering altruistic assistance and the rehabilitation of returned migrants and refugees in Ghana in nine out of the 16 regions.
The regions are Ahafo, Bono-East, Greater Accra, Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Volta, Western and Oti.
The project was designed to achieve an overall goal of providing “responsive humanitarian assistance and reintegration support for returned migrants and refugees in Ghana and curtail the menace of irregular migration from Ghana into the West through Social and Behavioural Change Communication activities in the communities by 2025.”
The Comptroller-General of Immigration said the assistance to migrants had contributed considerably to the fight against irregular migration and the promotion of safe, orderly and legal migration.
Mr Takyi, whose speech was read on his behalf by Assistant Commissioner of Immigration (ACI), Isaac Ghansah, said the Ghana Immigration Service through the Migration management Bureau had embarked on regular education and sensitisation programmes to create awareness on the dangers of irregular migration and avenues for safe and legal migration.
He said, in addition to creating awareness, the Service had investigated and prosecuted several document fraud, human trafficking and other related cases to serve as a deterrent to miscreants.
Mr Takyi, whose speech was read on his behalf by Assistant Commissioner of Immigration (ACI), Isaac Ghansah, said the Ghana Immigration Service through the Migration management Bureau had embarked on regular education and sensitisation programmes to create awareness of the dangers of irregular migration and avenues for safe and legal migration.
For instance, he said in March 2023, the Anti-Human Smuggling and Trafficking in Person Unit successfully prosecuted a human trafficking case gaining conviction of a 15-year prison term for the trafficker.
In the first quarter of 2023 alone, he noted that some 33 persons had been convicted for various offences, including attempts to obtain Ghana passports by false declaration and other documents resulting in impersonation.
He said issues of migration was an essential constituent of globalisation and development and integral part of humanity and that in view of the critical role it played, there was the need to ensure that it was safe, orderly, regular, and responsible as prescribed in the Sustainable Development Goal.
Rev. Fr. Charles Boampong Sarfo, Assistant Secretary General, National Catholic Secretariat, said to ensure that activities and project structures continued to work beyond the funding window, Caritas Ghana would ensure a community-driven approach to the project implementation.
That, he said, would require the adoption of local structures and partners to carry out direct implementation whilst Caritas Ghana played a facilitating role, adding that the local government structures would be directly engaged to enable them to learn from the process and begin to include the project intervention in their annual operational plan.
The Project action, Fr. Sarfo said, would include improving the institutional capacity of Caritas Ghana to respond to the relief and emergency needs of migrants and refugees in Ghana, shifting the perspectives of migrants, refugees and their families, and community on successes and failures related to migration.
Rev. Sr. Regina Ignatia Aflah, Project Coordinator, Human Rights and Justice, called for the support of all stakeholders to enable Caritas Ghana harvest as many outcomes as possible to secure the future of the country’s labour force, which was under threat due to the menace of irregular migration.
The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC) has urged the government to implement more social intervention programmes to bring some relief to the citizenry amid the economic hardship.
It also asked the government to harness more resources to reduce the cost of living in the country.
A statement issued and signed by Most Reverend Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, Catholic Bishop of Sunyani and President, GCBC, said though 2022 was a ‘difficult’ year, it was necessary that Ghanaians thanked God for His grace and mercies that they had enjoyed despite the hardships.
The Conference advised the populace to act responsibly in all spheres of life as 2023 unfolded.
“It is our fervent prayer and hope that the year 2023 will be a year of new beginnings for our country Ghana and that as citizens, we will all act responsibly in all spheres of life.”
It said Christmas was a time to recall God’s ineffable love and renew one’s resolve to love as God had loved humanity and encouraged all to share with others, most especially the needy.
The statement appealed to road users to observe rules and regulations to ensure safety on the roads during the yuletide and beyond.
“Let us avoid the temptation of drink-driving and driving under stress. Indeed, peace is disrupted in the family, corporate, community and sometimes in national life when road accidents occur,” it said.
The Conference called on all the relevant state enforcement agencies to ensure that all road users complied with the road rules and regulations.
The statement called for humility and peaceful co-existence amongst all citizens in the coming year.
Bishop Matthew Gyamfi, president of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference, has criticized CNN for a report that claims that it and other churches in Ghana received funding and foreign aid from organizations in the US, UK, and Europe that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) activities.
In the report, CNN said the churches received not less than $5.1 million in monies from donors for development projects by or for the church but continued to promote no support for same-sex rights.
But speaking to GhanaWeb in a phone interview, the Catholic bishop wondered which aspects of human rights the church had trampled on and for what reason the CNN report would seek to impugn it for receiving donor funds from countries that support LGBTQ rights.
He also explained how it is that churches in Ghana receive such donations from foreign countries.
“We are not taking any money to promote LGBTQ but remember that the churches here- many of the churches, also have branches in the United States, in Europe, and elsewhere; and the church does charity work. Now, some of these branches take money from the government to add to what the church also has, and these governments help the church execute development projects and other issues in the country.
“So, it’s not a new thing for anybody to say… So, which human right did the church destroy; human rights approved by the United Nations… has the church frowned upon?” he quizzed.
Background
Find below the breakdown of the donations to the various churches cited by the report:
Import of the report?
The report, through its findings, sought to suggest that these churches in Ghana still benefitted from millions in Western aid despite having campaigned and strictly stated their stance against LGBTQ+ activities in Ghana.
CNN spoke to some foreign organisations who clearly stated their displeasure about the fact that donor countries who have widely indicated their support for human rights, gender diversity and sexual rights of members of the LGBTQ+ community are still making room to donate to churches and organisations in countries like Ghana who are against the same course.
Some leaders of these organisations who spoke to CNN said these as captured below:
“It’s like stating you’re going to go green and then funding the petrol industry,” said Neil Datta, executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights. Donor agencies need to be “more aware that sexual and reproductive rights are contested issues”, and make sure that “they are not inadvertently funding the organizations who are working against some of their other objectives,” he said, calling for stricter “background checks” on potential grantees.
“This reveals inconsistencies in the funding practices of major donors and implicates them as complicit in fostering homophobia and transphobia in Ghana,” said Caroline Koussaiman, executive director of the Initiative Sankofa d’Afrique de l’Ouest (ISDAO), an activist-led fund supporting gender diversity and sexual rights in West Africa. “This is the antithesis of “do no harm” principles.”
“We need donors to support our struggles for liberation, and not directly or indirectly fund anti-gender movements which we know are extremely well resourced,” she added.
Foreign donations suggest fostering homophobia or transphobia?
CNN in its report also spoke to some of these foreign donors to enquire how that monies were still being sent to churches in countries that were homophobic.
This was despite its indication that these foreign donations cannot be said to be used for funding anti-LGBTQ activities but generally for developmental purposes.
“There is no indication the funding identified went to any explicitly anti-LGBTQI+ activities,” the CNN report said.
While some of these donors indicated that support had been stopped in that regard, some others said the funding was done under now-outdated guidelines.
Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation for instance, told CNN it “is not responsible for the use of these [identified] funds,” saying they go directly from people’s taxes to different religious organizations that distribute the money for development work.
Below are some of the donations as listed by CNN’s report:
1. Citing the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) for instance, the CNN report said that more than $140,000 of taxpayers’ monies from the UK [which is a co-chair of the international Equal Rights Coalition, an intergovernmental organization that protects LGBTQI+ community members worldwide] was donated to the council between the period of 2018-2020.
2. CNN’s analysis also found that some other members of the Equal Rights Coalition — the US, Germany, and Italy — funded projects by or for some of these churches in Ghana that have opposed LGBTQI+ rights “before, during, and after they benefited from aid money”.
3. In 2018 also, £100,000 (about $130,000) of the UK taxpayers’ money went to the Christian Council with a stated goal of fighting corruption in schools, the report further stated.
4. The report also noted that the US federal government sent more than $13,000 to the Christian Council in January 2020, for a project to provide shelters to refugees at Krisan Camp in southwestern Ghana.
5. 208,000 euros (about $245,000) of German aid money went to the Christian Council between 2014 and 2018, via an intermediary called Brot für die Welt.
6. German as well as Italian aid also went to development projects run by or benefiting some individual Christian Council Ghana member churches including projects of Ghana’s Methodist, Evangelical Presbyterian, and Presbyterian churches who received at least $670,000 from these countries via intermediary religious NGOs between 2016 and 2020.
7. Germany, Italy, and the US have also funded projects by or benefiting the Ghanaian Catholic Church. German Catholic intermediary NGO, Misereor, disclosed spending 2.8 million euros ($3.1 million) of German taxpayers’ money on projects by the Catholic Church’s partner organizations in Ghana between 2016 and 2020. This included $127,000 that was spent on a project with a broad goal of strengthening strategy and management standards for the churches’ development work.
8. Despite pledges to protect the rights of sexual and gender minorities, US and European donors spent at least $5.1 million of taxpayers’ money on projects run by or benefiting Ghanaian religious organizations whose leaders have campaigned against LGBTQI+ rights.
9. Aid benefiting Ghana’s Catholic Church also included $850,000 from the US. Between 2019 and 2020 this money went to Ghanaian and US contractors for a project whose goal was to transition several dioceses of the Church to solar power.
Ghana and the LGBTQ+ Bill:
Ghana is currently working on a proposed bill – Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill proposed to introduce restrictions on LGBT+ activities in the country.
The Bill was proposed by some 8 Members of Parliament – Sam Nartey George, Della Sowah, Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah, Alhassan Suhuyini, Rita Naa Odoley Sowah, Helen Ntoso, Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, John Ntim Fordjour in June 2021.
On 2 August 2021, the bill passed its first reading in the Ghanaian Parliament, being referred to the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs for assessment.
The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference has thrown its support behind two bills currently before Parliament which seek to abolish the death penalty from the country’s legal system.
The bills when passed will amend the law that gives the state the authority to take away human life when an accused person is convicted of crimes such as murder, attempted murder, treason, piracy, mutiny with violence etc.
It will also substitute the death penalty in favour of life imprisonment.
In a memorandum to that effect, the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference has called on all Ghanaians to “work with determination to abolish the death penalty from our legal system.”
According to them, human dignity is inviolable and as such every human has a fundamental right to life.
“God created the human person in His image and likeness and therefore He alone can take back the human life. It is therefore, an obligation of every possessor of life to strive at all times to preserve the sanctity of human life,” the memorandum read.
While describing the death penalty as a sin, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference further stated that “the death penalty does not offer the convicted person the opportunity to repent and seek forgiveness.”
Also, it noted that sometimes, innocent people fall victim to the law in cases of a miscarriage of justice.
“It is for this aforementioned that the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference submits this Memorandum in support of the two Bills laid before Parliament of Ghana to end the death penalty in our statute books,” the statement signed by the President of the Conference, Most. Rev. Philip Naameh concluded.
Most Reverend Philip Naameh, the President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference, has called on the government to address the rising poverty levels and discrimination in the distribution of state resources to avoid insurgency.
He said: “Poverty and rising inequalities have fostered a culture of hopelessness in our Ghanaian communities, and this has contributed to the recruitment of many of the youth into violent activities, putting the country at risk of external attacks.”
Most Rev Naameh underscored the urgent need for government to distribute development fairly among all groups to avoid widespread perception of discrimination and exclusion among the citizens, to strengthen the peace and social cohesion.
Speaking at the launch of the Sahel Peace Initiative (SPI) Phase II at Bolgatanga, in the Upper East Region, Most Reverend Naameh who is also the Metropolitan Archbishop of Tamale Catholic Diocese, noted that the high unemployment, corruption and unequal access to capital leading to unrest in some Sahelian countries also affected Ghana.
He said there had not been a comprehensive agenda to create enabling environment, particularly for the youth to thrive and that had made them vulnerable to attempts by terrorists’ groups to be recruited to cause instability.
“Once we create this vulnerability for our youth and many of our citizens, then, we invite the conflict even without intending it.
“Evidence of this is the reported incidents of activities of extremists in some neighbouring countries like Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and along some border communities in Northern Ghana, giving widespread perception that governments in the Sahel are failing to provide critical social services,” he stressed.
Most Rev Naameh said it was “a big scandal” for majority of the citizens to be discriminated against when it came to the distribution of development projects, adding that “leaders must be committed to the common good of all Ghanaians.”
“While the majority are poor and struggling to get one meal a day, others can afford everything from the same Ghana, even primary school, they will send their children to Europe and America and this a big scandal which I call on those who manage our resources to address and do so immediately.
“If there is hardship, let everybody living in Ghana experience it but if some are excluded from it and take a life which approaches more of a wealthy country, then I will say that it is not right,” he said.
The archbishop commended government for efforts being made in the security and said it needed to make security presence visible in communities in Northern Ghana, especially those bordered by the countries which had experienced violence, to ensure that the country was protected.
The SPI is a peace project being rolled out by the Catholic Church with funding from the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), to create awareness on threats of terrorism, promote social cohesion through advocacy and build the resilience of communities affected by conflicts in the Subregion.
It would also work with relevant stakeholders to find mitigating measures to resolve conflicts through mediation and dialogue and respond to humanitarian needs of people affected by the threats and conflicts.
The project is being coordinated by the National Catholic Secretariat (NCS) and implemented by the Navrongo-Bolgatanga Catholic Diocesan Development Organisation (NABOCADO), a faith development organization.
Mr. Thomas Awiapo, the Executive Secretary, NCS, said the project which would involve women in the peacebuilding processes would build the capacity of communities especially the youth to enable them to identify early warning signals of activities of terrorism and help to combat them.
