Hassan Shire (right) and Esther Tawiah display their copies of the MoU.
THE GENDER Centre for Empowering Development (GenCED), a non-governmental organisation that seeks to empower women and youth for sustainable development in Ghana and beyond; and human rights advocacy group, DefendDefenders have launched the Ubuntu Hub Cities in Accra.
The Ubuntu Hub Cities is a relocation initiative aimed at providing safety and security for human rights activists on the African continent faced with various pressures and threats as a result of their work.
Accra comes as the seventh destination since the inception of the project, and the second in West Africa after Abidjan in the Ivory Coast.
Hassan Shire, Director of DefendDefenders in his remarks noted that the project would provide a haven for human rights activists threatened in their home countries on the African continent to be able to go about their work.
“This is a relocation initiative for the African human rights activists and this is to disabuse the notion that African activists can only be safe outside the continent”, he stated.
Mr. Shire assured that activists would be provided with adequate safety, security as well as reliefs while given the needed support to be able to go about their work.
“We need to stay alive. We need to do our work. And we need to stay in our continent to be able to do our work”, he stressed.
On her part, Madam Esther Tawiah, Executive Director, GenCED acknowledged the difficulties some activists undergo in their line of work and noted that her outfit would give human rights defenders the needed security and support for their work.
“At GenCED, we have a huge responsibility. Our role is to make sure that we attend to the needs of people by providing counseling among other forms of assistance. We need to be able to support activists to integrate into the community they find themselves in”, she iterated.
She said Ghanaian activists who feel threatened can also call on them for assistance following the submission of reports to them.
Both Esther Tawiah of GenCED and Hassan Shire of DefendDefenders signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to seal the agreement after which the latter presented a symbolic key to the former at the ceremony.
By Nii Adjei Mensahfio