Participants in a group photograph
The Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) has held a two-day workshop for journalists in Sunyani, the Bono Region on the Ghanaian Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2024 (Anti-LGBTQ+Bill).
According to the experts from CDD, provisions of the Anti-LGBQT+ Bill if allowed to become law, in its current form, will infringe on the Constitutional rights of minor groups in the country.
They said the supreme law accepted by the people to determine right or wrong of their behaviours is the 1992 Constitution and therefore the Constitution under Chapter 5 provides for Fundamental Human Rights of all persons living in the territory of Ghana.
Senior programme officer at the CDD, Michael Augustus Akagbor, said if the Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill is passed into law, certain categories of workers including teachers, media and medical practitioners, people in the hospitality industry, academics, employers and even parents and landlords shall be guilty of its provisions in the cause of discharging their duties.
He noted that as a democratic state, all persons including minority groups have rights under the Constitution to be protected saying this is without recourse to tribes, religious sentiments and emotions.
According to him, there is the need to promote democratic culture where the rights of every person are respected under the Constitution. “The strength of democracies lie in diversity, it doesn’t really matter our ethic rights and religious teachings, creeds and rules.”
As such the journalists were taken through the definition of fundamental human rights, types of rights and how these rights came to exist.
“We are not here to impose anything on anyone neither are we here to advocates for men to sleep with men. Our utmost duty is to equip you with knowledge and skills necessary to interrogate issues affecting minority rights when you are dealing with issues of these nature that come before you in your profession,” he said.
FROM Daniel Y Dayee, Sunyani