Under the Enhancing Citizens Participation in Border Security project, it was geared towards monitoring border security and engagement between security agencies and residents in border communities between October and December 2021.

A total of 85 local volunteers were deployed to 44 selected border districts across 10 out of 16 regions of the country to monitor security situations in targeted border communities for three months with 369 border communities within theperiod.

The findings of the report, the second to be released as part of the project, were disseminated at a media briefing in Accra, said most communities monitored (68 per cent) rated their security awareness level as either “excellent,” “very good,” or “good” compared to 48 per cent awareness rate recorded in first report.

It said 65 out of the 369 communities monitored (18 per cent) rated awareness of border residents on security as “fair” depicting an improvement in security awareness from 28 per cent in the first report.

Dr Paul Mensah, Programmes Manager, CDD-Ghana, attributed the improvement in awareness rate to education and sensitisation programmes that were conducted by its volunteers as part of the project.

“Within the reporting period, the volunteers conducted 267 community education and sensitisation programmes, the findings suggested that out of the 369 communities monitored, 53 (14 per cent) of them were rated very poor or poor and improvement we are realising as a result of such programmes conducted by our volunteers.

“The report also found current security situation in eight out of ten communities monitored was “generally good” however, in 41 (11 per cent) of the communities monitored in Bono, Oti, Upper East, Western North, Savannah, Northern, Volta, Western, and Upper West Regions, the volunteers rated current security situation as “poor” or “very poor”.

He noted that the volunteers found human rights abuses in border communities remained very low because close to nine out of 10 communities monitored recorded no such incidents.

Mawusi Dumenu, Senior Programmes Officer, CDD-Ghana, cautioned that involvement of residents in border security had become essential in the wake of surging cross-border crimes and external security threats, particularly violent extremism, and terrorism in West Africa.