The Foundation for Security Development in Africa (FOSDA) has organized an interface meeting for Civil Society fifteen Organizations (CSOs) and the Ghana National Commission on Small Arms and Light Weapons in Accra.
This call comes as part of the Global Week of Action Against Gun Violence and FOSDA as a Women Peace Organization that focuses on gender based gun violence organized an interface meeting between 15 CSOs and Ghana National Commission on Small Arms and Light Weapons.
The meeting held at the premises of the Commission was aimed at building stronger collaboration between the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and the Ghana National Commission on Small Arms and Light Weapons.
It was with support from IANSA under the theme “promoting dialogue and a culture of peace: taking action to end gun proliferation and gender based gun-violence.”
This year alone from January to June from FOSDA recorded about 70 gun violence with seven cases on gender based gun violence against women which mostly are on sexual based.
In an interview with Starrfm.com.gh the Executive Director for FOSDA, Theodora W. Anti said there have been a lot talking without action hence FOSDA felt it will be important that women groups in gender equality, women empowerment, and women rights organization have an interface the Small Arms Commission.
According to her, these CSOs hear a lot of the stories of harm and violence against women using guns adding that “it will be important for them to have one-on-one interface with the Commission.”
“So that they learn arms control mechanisms in the country and know what to tell women and how to educate women from what they will learn from the Commission. When we learn about the mechanism we are able to identify the gaps so far as violence against women are concerned.
“Some of the gaps we have learned for instance is that there is very low education for the populaces. And the arms Commission have confirmed that they are not well resourced so they are also not able to educate and sensitize the population on illicit use of arms and gun violence,” she stated.
The Executive Director stated that as the Arms Commission is not an enforcer of the arms laws they only play an advisory role.
“Their powers are very limited, so their control mechanism is not very strong. Even though they have the mandate to control they actually don’t control, that’s what is happening. So these are some of the things we have learned and these are the gaps. Because when there are gaps, no sensitization, when people don’t even know how to register arms, people are not oriented on who can own a gun.
“If you see someone with a gun that is not registered you report the person to the police, if people are not well informed they will have a lot of arms in the system. Women and children are very vulnerable so when we have illicit arms in the system it’s the women and children who will suffer most. So we have learnt from some of those gaps,” she stated.
Madam Anti further indicated that the meeting resolved that there should be more collaboration with the Commission for more sensitization and to do more education in their various constituencies.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
