Legal Aid: Strengthening the Rule of Law in Ghana

International initiatives to strengthen the rule of law and improve ‘democratic governance’ are popular interventions for western donors, development and aid agencies who have contributed billions to rule-of-law projects over the past 20 years, ranging from advice on conflict resolution in villages to strengthening bankruptcy law amid privatisation. The United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] is currently supporting a national governance plan for Ghana, having provided $40,000 during 2007, as one of a range of programmes under its Democratic Governance initiative for the country, including support to strengthen the capacity of the judiciary to carry out its work more efficiently.

Under these initiatives, targeting the rule of law, the courts and the wider justice system are presented as ‘technical’ and so politically neutral development interventions avoiding controversy are attached to structural re-adjustment or conditional aid packages. A strengthened rule of law, less corruption and better protected property rights will, so the theory goes, of itself foster development; a solid justice system in which rights are sufficiently protected encouraging investment. However judicial assistance programmes targeting good governance purely as a root to market growth and economic development, rather than a fundamental part of any just society, can see human rights programmes overlooked or neglected. These would include the diversification of legal aid delivery services, human rights training programmes, efforts to build capacity of civil society and human rights commissions or a humane and rehabilitative prison system.

Ongoing development interventions by the UNDP in Ghana have however recognised the centrality of human rights to development. The UNDP’s Country Action Plan for Ghana - the road map for delivery of the UN Millennium Development Goals - includes efforts to strengthen the rule of law and access to justice from a human rights perspective - defining the rule-of-law in terms of substantive justice delivery rather than mere institutional capacity.

Recognising the Prison Service as a ‘key pillar of the criminal justice system’, and noting that despite its central importance to any justice delivery service, it ‘has [so far] been neglected by development partners’, a UNDP/Ghana Prisons Service partnership will see an estimated $230,000 spent in 2008 trying to reform the countries ailing prison system. This allocation of funds in the second year of the project will dwarf the inception year’s budget of $100,000. The four year programme, running to 2010, will see training target officials as the policy builders of the prison service in the hope that the human rights standards and ethics training will filter down, and aim to foster enhanced collaboration between branches of the criminal justice system with a view to expeditious disposal of cases to relieve Ghana’s burgeoning under-trial prison population. The human rights programme will increase the capacity of selected civil society groups to monitor human rights compliance and foster a culture of respect for human rights. UNDP support to the Judicial Services, the Legal Aid Scheme and the Office of the Attorney General during 2006 & 2007 also focused on the plight of prisoners caught up in the country’s over burdened prison system with a standing committee on remand prisoners established by the Attorney General’s Department and the establishment of a court of competent jurisdiction which sat at the James Fort Prison in October 2007 resulting in the discharge of some of the remand prisoners contributing to overcrowding. (James Fort Prison has since been closed with 979 prisoners having been evacuated to other prisons following the Ghana Bar Association’s call last year for the prison to be closed due to its dilapidated state and the danger it posed to the lives of inmates. A new maximum security prison is being built at Ankaful.)

Ghana will also soon be looking to designate a national human rights body as its National Preventive Mechanism [NPM] under the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture [Op. CAT], before ratification of the protocol which it signed in June 2006. The Optional Protocol is designed to build on the preventative aspects of the Convention through providing for jurisdiction to a UN Subcommittee visiting body and the establishment, or designation, of national visiting mechanisms. It is likely that Ghana’s Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice [CHRAJ] will be designated the visiting mechanism at the national level on ratification. CHRAJ will receive in the order of $80,000 during 2008 from the UNDP to increase their capacity, and to undertake training of police personnel with a view to fostering a culture of respect for human rights.