Source: Spy Ghana 
Former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings, has expressed disappointment at the Member of Parliament for Daboya, Mr Nelson Baani, for making comments which threatened the human rights of women. 

She said such utterances made at the highest level by Mr Baani showed that there were still challenges to ensuring human rights of women in the country.

She expressed the disappointment when addressing the Women's Week Celebration organised by the Women Commissioner's Office of the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale on Monday.

The event was to build the leadership skills of female students of the university.

Mr Baani, in a contribution to a debate on the Interstate Succession Law in Parliament in November last year, said adulterous women should be stoned or hanged.

Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings

Mrs Rawlings expressed surprise that Mr Baani was a Member of Parliament and called on his constituents, especially women, to come out and condemn the comments.

She said: "We as Ghanaian and African women must all stand together against threats to our human and civil rights.

"We should stand together and let it be known that we will not tolerate any infringement upon our right to life.

"Indeed we have overcome tumultuous hurdles as women, however, there is still a lot of work to do because the majority of women around the world continue to face injustice on a national level."

Mrs Rawlings also spoke about women's representation in decision making level saying "twenty years after Beijing, we are witnessing the participation of more women in decision making around the world, however, this is occurring at a tremendously slow pace" citing the country's Parliament where only 30 members of Parliament were women as against 245 males.

She asked; "How can we begin to further advance the empowerment cause when women who constitute over 50 per cent of the national population are grossly under-represented in our legislative body."

She appealed to Government to develop more mixed halls of residence at tertiary institutions to create parity in the male to female student ratio in the country.

Justice Avril Lovelace-Johnson, Justice of the Court of Appeal, who read a speech on behalf of the Chief Justice, said women still faced challenges in society even though various laws were promulgated to ensure their rights and development.

Meanwhile, as part of the event, the UDS Tamale Campus Ladies Parliament was inaugurated to help build the leadership skills of students of the university.

 

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