Committee against Torture hears response of Ghana

Committee against Torture
AFTERNOON

17 May 2011

The Committee against Torture this afternoon heard the response of Ghana to questions raised by Committee Experts on the initial report of that country on how it is implementing the provisions of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

Responding to a series of questions raised by Committee members on Monday, 16 May, the delegation, led by Ebo Barton-Odro, Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Minister of Justice of Ghana, said the Attorney General’s Office was in the process of seeking cabinet approval for the domestication of torture, which would then be submitted to the Parliament and although there was no definition of torture in the Constitution, the Criminal Offences Act took care of situations bordering on ill-treatment. Concerning prisons, Mr. Barton-Odro said there were independent bodies which interacted with prisoners and that prison authorities had received visits by non-governmental organizations. All prisoners were on the National Health Insurance Scheme which had resulted in a drastic reduction in prisoner deaths from 118 in 2008 to 55 in 2010. Caning or flogging was a cumbersome procedure that was not regularly used and concerning the death penalty the last time a convict was hanged was in 1966. Every five years convicted persons on death row had the right to petition the Head of State for a pardon and the conviction could be reduced to life imprisonment. Mr. Barton-Odro said that the number of condemned prisoners had declined from 400 to 120 in 2010.

Other delegation members noted that the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice had convened a broad-based working group to consider the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention that culminated in the cabinet’s approval and subsequent transmission of the Optional Protocol to Parliament for ratification. The Commission monitored detention facilities; it had established a Women and Children’s Unit; it had produced a report on “The State of Human Rights in Mining Communities in Ghana” with recommendations for changes; and it had conducted field investigations at ‘trokosi’ shrines in the Volta Region where it recommended education and sensitisation to create awareness for the gradual eradication of this practice. Supplementing the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice as a complaint mechanism was the Police Intelligence and Professional Service Unit and the complaint mechanism in the Attorney General’s Office. The delegation explained the challenges Ghana faced from refugees as there were 11,000 refugees from Liberia who had lived in Ghana for over 20 years and 13,000 refugees from Côte d’Ivoire who were in camps on the border.

Claudio Grossman, the Committee Chairperson who served as Rapporteur for the report of Ghana, encouraged Ghana to abolish the practice of caning and said it was important to enhance the legal aid scheme so it worked for the poor and elderly in society. Mr. Grossman insisted that it was essential to have data for the formation of public policy.

Nora Sveaass, the Committee Expert who served as Co-Rapporteur for the report of Ghana, encouraged Ghana to strengthen further publicity campaigns and public awareness on the illegality of certain practices which were based on tribal customs. The Co-Rapporteur asked if there were more complaints as a result of the special department set up for women and children’s rights and what campaigns had the Government created to further reduce female genital mutilation.

Committee members raised issues concerning the recourse procedure for military personnel, the specific procedure for prisoners to reach the complaints bureaus, the hierarchy in terms of customary and domestic law regarding forms of discrimination against women and the difference between the status of provisional and permanent refugees.

The Ghana delegation included representatives from the Permanent Mission of Ghana to the United Nations Office at Geneva, the Justice Department, the Prisons Service, the Attorney General’s Department, the Armed Forces, the Police Service, and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice.

When the Committee reconvenes on Wednesday, 18 May at 10 a.m. it will start its consideration of the combined fifth and sixth periodic report of Finland (CAT/C/FIN/5-6).

Response by Delegation of Ghana

EBO BARTON-ODRO, Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Minister of Justice of Ghana, said that the Attorney General’s Office was in the process of seeking cabinet approval for the domestication of torture, which would then be submitted to the Parliament. There was no definition of torture in the Constitution, however, the Criminal Offences Act took care of situations bordering on ill-treatment and any state agent who used his position to engage in such acts as assault and causing harm, and the use of weapons and murder were included. There was no statue of limitation as far as crime was concerned. In normal circumstances, within 48 hours a person should be presented before a court or given bail but in a state of emergency it was required that within 24 hours of the detention, a detained person should be informed in writing of the grounds for his detention and this information would be made available to the next of kin or spouse. From the time of his detention and not more than 10 days after the detention, a notification should be published in the Gazette stating the particulars of the case and the State was obligated to convene a tribunal of three Superior Court Justices. The tribunal had the power to authorise the release of the detained person and the payment of adequate compensation, if required. These provisions ensured that there was no derogation from the provisions of Article 2 of the Convention.

Other delegation members provided information on the role of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice. In 2006 the Commission convened a broad-based working group to consider the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention. The working group culminated in the cabinet’s approval of the Optional Protocol and subsequent transmission to Parliament for ratification. The Commission on Human Rights also monitored detention facilities and issued reports on its findings. For example, the Commission found in Gamaga Prison conditions of inadequate sanitary facilities, poor lighting and ventilation and that inmates went a month without washing or bathing due to lack of soap. This report was forwarded to the Ministry of the Interior, the Director General of Prisons and the Inspector General of Police for remedial measures. The Commission also established a Women and Children’s Unit which received and resolved complaints mainly involving child protection rights and violence against women and children. The unit made referrals to the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service. In 2008 the Commission issued a report following its investigation entitled “The State of Human Rights in Mining Communities in Ghana” which found the illegal arrest and detention of community members, torture of persons illegally arrested and detained, and assault and battery of youth accused of trespassing. In reaction to this report the Ministry of Environment Science and Technology set up a Committee of Enquiry to consider the findings and recommendations and mining companies had, in compliance with the Commission’s recommendations, become engaged in consultation with members of the community to resolve potential conflicts. The Commission also conducted investigations at ‘trokosi’ shrines mainly in the Volta Region where the practice was widespread and victims were virtually held in bondage at shrines as atonement for the sins or crimes of their ancestors or forebears. The Commission recommended education and sensitisation to create awareness for gradual eradication of the practice and had worked with a non-governmental organization (NGO), International Needs, to facilitate vocational training sessions which led to the shrine owners and priests recognising the need to liberate these victims. The intervention of the Commission had reduced the practice in the affected areas of the country.

EBO BARTON-ODRO, Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Minister of Justice of Ghana, said that there were independent bodies that interacted with prisoners, the Prisons Council, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice, the Prisons Visiting Committee and the Discharge Board which monitored prisons and made public reports after visiting facilities. Prison authorities were not averse to visits by NGOs and visits had been conducted by Amnesty International, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Prisons Ministry and Centre for Human Rights and Civil Liberties. The Prisons Service had separate facilities for prisoners: persons aged 12 years were referred to the Department of Social Welfare, which managed remand centres; persons aged between 13 and 16 years were kept at the Senior Correctional Centre in Accra and young offenders aged between 17 and 20 were kept at the Senior Correctional Centres with a maximum sentence of 3 years. All prisoners were on the National Health Insurance Scheme which had resulted in a drastic reduction in prisoner deaths from 118 in 2008 to 98 in 2009 and to 55 in 2010. Caning or flogging was a procedure that required an application to the Director General that was required to establish a body composed of a doctor, a lawyer, a social welfare officer, a prison service representative and a representative from a religious body to ensure the inmate was in good health to receive the lashes. The body was required to issue a report before the punishment and this cumbersome process meant that caning was not regularly used. The Prison Service had supplemented the feeding grant for inmates with produce from prison farms. There was a 10 year strategic plan to modernise prison facilities and to introduce commercial activities like construction, farming and weaving of crafts into the prisons to benefit the prisoners. A United Nations Development Programme project had created a new system to ensure that prisoners were properly profiled on arrest and detention.

Concerning the death penalty, Mr. Barton-Odro said that the last time a convict was hanged was in 1966 and the last known firing squad took place in 1993. Every five years convicted persons on death row had the right to petition the Head of State for a pardon; the conviction could also be reduced to life imprisonment. The number of condemned prisoners declined from 400 to 120 in 2010. The Government planned to commission a new 3,000 capacity state of the art prison in 2011 and to establish more farm settlement camps for first time offenders and low sentence prisoners, which were designed to introduce the prisoners to farming and to decongest overcrowded prisons.

Mr. Barton-Odo explained the four main areas of the Justice for All Programme: the remand review project, the sentencing policy review project, the prosecutor’s capacity building project and the systems and procedures analysis project. Under the remand review project, special courts were established to sit in the prisons or after court hours and 239 prisoners had benefitted from the project since its inception in 2007. The remand population, which had been one fourth of the prison population, was now reduced to one-eighth. The detention of prisoners over long periods before trial was caused mainly by a combination of factors, including the adjournment of court cases, the lack of court rooms and the inadequate number of judges. There were also problems with automated courts set up around 2001 and in which most of the computers were broken due to overloading and overuse, power outages and the absence of capacity which led to court proceedings being taken in long hand. There were also problems with the procurement of witnesses, and the inability of accused persons to obtain counsel, especially in cases where the Constitution mandated that they have legal representation.

A member of the delegation said that an independent witness was any person, other than a police officer or a member of the Armed Forces, approved by the detainee and this person should understand the language of the detainee and should certify in writing that the statement was made voluntarily and that the contents were fully understood by the detainee. The Police Intelligence and Professional Services Unit was established to deal with complaints against the police. If a person was not satisfied with the way the Police handled the complaint then there was the option to go to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice. Aggrieved persons could also go to Court to seek compensation by taking civil action against the Attorney General.

There were currently 68 cases of trafficking under investigation. The delegation provided examples including, the conviction and sentence of a trafficker in December 2008 for three years for trafficking three Ghanaian female children to the Ivory Coast for labour. Victims of trafficking were handed over to the Department of Social Welfare which had shelters where they would stay until the relatives of the victims were traced.

The legal aid scheme was advertised through the use of TV and radio programmes and the outreach programme covered a period of three years between 2007 and 2010. The scheme was working out a plan to educate persons on legal aid by introducing the Legal Aid Week. At the moment there were only 15 lawyers nationwide on the payroll of the scheme with 20 lawyers doing pro bono work. Private legal practitioners were reluctant to take on legal aid cases because of the low remuneration they received from the scheme.

The delegation said that there were 11,000 refugees from Liberia who had lived in Ghana for over 20 years and the Government was looking to either localise them or send them back to their country of origin. There were now 13,000 refugees from Côte d’Ivoire who were placed in border camps and there were new camps being built in the centre of the country to accommodate them. The Army and Security Services provided protection for these people along with medical care.

The request for the Special Rapporteur on torture to visit Ghana was made too late, with only two months to allow for a visit, when at least six months was required to make the necessary arrangements. The Permanent Mission of Ghana decided to await a request from the new Special Rapporteur on torture on his assumption of duty and no such request had yet been received

In 1998 a Domestic Violence Unit was established to assist women and children. There were 123,000 reported cases between 1999 and 2010 of female genital mutilation, showing a 25 per cent decrease.

There were proposals for expanding mental health facilities in the country and efforts were underway to reintegrate persons declared fit, however, the attitude of relatives created problems. The social stigma attached to mental health made former patients undesirable to their relatives, some of whom had refused to take them back. Electronic convulsion therapy was used mainly in the treatment of epileptic patients.

EBO BARTON-ODRO, Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Minister of Justice, said that there was a general perception of corruption in the judiciary. A code of ethics for judges and staff was produced under the sponsorship of the German Development Fund. There were two bodies established by the judiciary to deal with infractions by its members. There were two Ethics and Integrity Committees which were sworn into office in 2011. There was a Complaints Unit which was set up for the public to enable them to lodge complaints against judges, magistrates and other staff of the judicial service. Currently, five judges faced charges for offences committed while in office and two of them were facing impeachment charges. The Optional Protocol was presently before Parliament but due to a backlog of work the ratification process was delayed.

Questions by Committee Experts

CLAUDIO GROSSMAN, the Committee Chairperson who Served as Rapporteur for the Report of Ghana, said that the Committee insisted on a unified definition of torture to facilitate monitoring and comparisons. Could torture be listed as a non-derogation right under any state of emergency? The Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice lacked funding. Mr. Grossman suggested that if caning was so cumbersome and not practiced then it should be abolished. Had Ghana considered abolishing the death penalty? Mr. Grossman said he was impressed by the commitment of the Government to address situations that were inadequate. He noted that it was important that the legal aid scheme worked for the poor and elderly in society. Now, there were insufficient lawyers. Could the delegation provide an example of compensation for human rights violations and also address the issue of witchcraft. Mr. Grossman insisted that for the formation of public policy it was essential to have data as this would provide the analysis to make appropriate recommendations.

Response by the Delegation

EBO BARTON-ODRO, Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Minister of Justice of Ghana, gave an example of a lawyer who was incarnated by a policeman when he asked for bail for his client; upon release he sued and won and the State had to pay compensation.

A member of the delegation provided a case where a 72 year old woman was branded as a witch and set ablaze. Her case was presently before the court and the individuals were being tried for murder.

Questions by Committee Experts

CLAUDIO GROSSMAN, the Committee Chairperson who Served as Rapporteur for the Report of Ghana, asked if the delegation had considered developing a special training programme to sensitise and make tribal leaders aware of acts that were not acceptable.

NORA SVEAASS, the Committee Expert who Served as Co-Rapporteur for the Report of Ghana, said she appreciated the openness of the delegation to share experiences and noted the considerable success of public awareness campaigns in Norway; she suggested that such public awareness campaigns could be strengthened further in Ghana to communicate the illegality of certain practices. Ms. Sveaass asked if the mandate of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice was established in the Constitution and said that their work, especially the effectiveness in the mining cases, was impressive. Had there been more complaints from women as a result of the special department set up for women and children’s rights? What campaigns or plans of action had the Government created to further reduce female genital mutilation and also to change the perception of mental health patients.

A Committee member urged the Ghanaian authorities to take action to eliminate caning as a form of punishment. Was there a recourse procedure in Ghana whereby soldiers or military personnel could reject an order if it contravened the Convention against Torture? Concerning the interrogation rooms, the Expert said the reply by the delegation that the rooms only had a table and a chair was insufficient and asked if there were video or audio recordings?

An Expert asked for information on the complaints procedure. Was there data on the number of cases on the allegations of torture and had any of these cases been prosecuted. Was the Police Intelligence and Professional Service Bureau independent from the Police? What was the specific procedure for prisoners to reach the complaints bureaus?

A Committee Expert said that the response on preventive detention was not satisfactory as there was no indication as to how the problem would be resolved. There was also no response regarding child labour and the State party needed to step up its efforts, particularly in the penal justice system where there should be a review of the penal system in pre-trial detention.

An Expert asked if Ghana would permit someone indicted by the International Criminal Court to enter the country. Another Expert asked about the hierarchy in terms of customary and domestic law regarding forms of discrimination against women, which applied, and asked the delegation to explain the difference between the status of provisional and permanent refugees.

Response by the Delegation

EBO BARTON-ODRO, Deputy Attorney General and Deputy Minister of Justice of Ghana, in reply to the questions, said that there were fixed CCTV cameras in the interrogation rooms so there could be monitoring of the interrogation. All prisoners were placed on the national health care system and were treated. The Chief Act regulated the power of tribal chiefs by law. Pregnant women were treated free of charge by the State. A law regulated the distribution of the assets of a deceased spouse to curb the situation where women were ill treated. The cost of litigation was a real problem in Ghana where lawyers were not prepared to work pro bono and the Government was working to better fund legal aid. If a person had escaped from custody and was indicted by the International Criminal Court, Ghana would not allow them to enter the country but if the person had been granted bail by the International Criminal Court then the case would be considered on an individual basis.

A member of the delegation provided statistics from January to December 2010 on domestic violence cases: 954 cases were sent to court, 108 accused persons were convicted, 23 were discharged, and 794 cases were still in the courts. All individuals had the right to file complaints about human rights violations to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice which had 12 regional offices to receive complaints. However the Commission could not disaggregate case data on torture complaints because this was not covered in the civil code but it had data on cases of ill treatment. If there were allegations of brutalisation or use of excessive force by the Police then the Commission would treat these cases as misconduct and refer it to the Police Intelligence and Professional Service and the Commission on Human Rights would act as a check on it. Complaints to the Commission could be filed in writing, by telephone, email and even by persons outside of Ghana.

Mr. Barton-Odro explained that the whistle blower act provided for a complaint mechanism in the Attorney General’s Office, a third alternative mechanism to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice and the Police Intelligence and Professional Service Unit.

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