Mr. Joseph Whittal, Commissioner of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has said Section 104 of the 1992 Constitution, if there are limitations to 104, Ghana can proceed to amend it instead of coming with a Bill that criminalizes all over again.
Expressing his views on Parliamentary Committee currently engaged in a public hearing on the anti-LGBTQI bill Mr. Joseph Whittal said “If the [Parliamentary] committee believes that the species of activities that are covered under Section 104 in the light of the fact that it is an old legislation, require further improvement by an amendment, that will take care of current and future possible activities, which you would want to criminalize, I said you should go ahead, and that is something you should be looking at instead of this [anti-LGBTQI+] Bill,” he added.
“The commission takes the view that section 104 has already criminalized the act, that is the position [of the law] so why then add provisions that will now bring other persons or people when they are to do [or] associate one way on the other just like it happened in Ho [Volta Region] into it, why.”
“I think section 104 is sufficient and if it is not sufficient, we can make an amendment of that position sufficient to deter people along those lines and not to open up so that anyone of us, like me [Whittal] as a member of the commission or commissioner of CHRAJ with a mandate to promote human rights, if I decide to speak on behalf of minority and the vulnerable, then I’m opening myself to possible criminal prosecution, why will that be. We need to be careful as we consider the Bill.”
“Again the promoters went a distance at trying to let you as a committee to appreciate that there is nothing wrong at the international level regarding the commitments of Ghana, in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and other international instruments including the African Charter. I beg to differ.”
Because there are internal comments of the committee on economic, social, and cultural rights committee, which have defined sexual orientation as a human right and by the way, Ghana has ratified it, without reservation.
“So what we can do as a nation should be, we have all the power to go back and make some reservations if we want. But to say that is not a human right, I say, once the committee on economic, social, and cultural rights, Ghana is a member of the General Assembly of the UN, and is subject to the jurisdiction of that committee, and the general comments of that committee have included sexual orientation as a human right, we need to be very careful because it only takes the Supreme Court to import that into our law…, so let’s be very careful, I think since I’m not here to speak for or against, I’m only drawing attention, that if there are reservations that we have to make, we have to do that so that we know where we are trodding.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Kofi Atakora
