He noted that much had not been done after the establishment of the Disability Act 2006 to improve the living conditions of the persons with disability, adding that it had taken the country from 2006 up till date to amend the Act and put it into action.

“As a nation that pride itself with the rule of law and democracy, it has taken us from 2006 to be able to amend the Disability Act to put it into action. That, we are saying is long overdue. We need the Disability Act to be amended for the LI to be put in place,” he stated.

Mr Osei Owusu made the call during a two-day multi-stakeholder workshop organised by the POS, Attorney General’s Department with funding from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFP) for government bodies and civil society organisations (CSOs) in Koforidua.
    

The workshop was organised to enable the participants to develop an implementation plan to foster the effective implementation of recommendations accepted under the UN Universal Periodic Review (UPR) cycle, which was created by the UN General Assembly on March 15, 2006 by a resolution 60/251 which established the Human Rights Council (HRC).

The UPR was a state-driven process which reviews the human rights records of all 193 UN member states.

In January 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland, Ghana received 298 recommendations on how to improve the country’s ability to ensure human rights human rights, out of which they accepted 268.

Mr Osei Owusu revealed that disability issues became one of the main issues that was raised during the review at the UPR in Geneva, reiterating the need for government to pay more attention to it.

He urged government to quickly ensure the amendment were done and the Act put it into action to ensure that PWDs human rights were respected and included in all aspect of governance.

He mentioned the need for government to also critically consider and address issues concerned with women participation in politics, children’s development, child marriage and labour, criminal justice, minority groups or sexual minorities, freedom of expressions, media and freedom of assembly, adding that these issues were the highlights that came up for the country to address.

A State Attorney from the Office of the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice, Mr George Tetteh Sackey, who read the speech on behalf of the Deputy Minister of Justice said Ghana’s human right records have seen improvement even though there have been challenges.

He said that the government would continue to work hard to improve the human rights records and living standards of the average Ghanaian.

For his part, the UN Resident Coordinator, Charles Abani, whose speech was read on his behalf, stated that Ghana would need to continue its work towards the championing and acknowledgement that every person has dignity.

He said his outfit would continue to work with the country to facilitate the important role of the implementation plan in enabling Ghana to strengthen its human rights records, recognising that long term change was possible without sustainable cooperation and trust.