A Legistlative Process for Ghana's NGO / CSO Sector
Background
The struggle to come to a regulatory and legislative framework for NGO/CSOs
in Ghana started back in the nineties or, according to some, even before.
In 1993 NGOs rejected a legislative proposal by the Rawlings Government.
In the years after that, civil society maintained a successful dialogue
with government which resulted in an improved and generally supported
framework in 2004 (there was a change of government between NDC and NPP).
The principles as laid down in the 2004 framework are seen as a good basis
for the drafting of a Bill for the NGO/CSO sector.
Over the
past year, CSOs in Ghana are showing growing concerns about
Government’s rather sudden move to couple the NGO/CSO legislative
process with a further advanced Trust legislative process, merging apples
and oranges into the same legislative and regulatory framework. This
phenomenon, a NGO/CSO legislative process hopping onto the bandwagon of an
already further advanced legislative process for Trusts, could result in a
potentially stifling or even repressive legislation for NGO/CSOs.
Over the past years, Civil Society expressed its concerns and critique to
government, stressing it is absolutely in favour of legislation and
regulation of the sector, but not at all cost or when poorly conceived.
It presented its comments to the committee drafting the legislative
framework at various occasions. Government does show a degree of
cooperativeness, but refrains from responding to the primary and most
fundamental point of critique: to decouple the two legislative processes
and to have a separate framework and law for NGO/CSOs as they are
essentially different from Trusts.
As there was
indication that Government is pushing to have the Bill presented to
Parliament before the end of 2007 - with the argument of 2008 being a very
busy year for Ghana - civil society felt it needed to give a very clear and
unambiguous signal to Government that it would not accept a poorly
conceived law to regulate the sector. It was decided to feature the issue
at the 2007 Convention of Ghana Research and Advocacy Organisations, a
national event bringing together Thinks Tanks and Advocacy Groups (RAOs)
with representatives of government, parliament and the donor community.
The 2007 RAO Convention, held in Accra on 22-23 November, featured some
very straightforward presentations on the Trust/NGO Draft Bill issue.
Analyses of the legal hitches, persistent inconsistencies and grey areas
in the last version of the Draft Bill were highlighted. Major contributions
were given by Prof Gyimah-Boadi of the Centre for Democratic Development
(CDD-Ghana), Dr Yao Graham of Third World Network (TWN-Africa), Dr Rose
Mensah-Kutin of Abantu for Development and by Dr Raymond Atuguba of the
Legal Resources Centre, LRC.
The responsible Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Manpower, Youth and
Employment, Hon. Mrs Akosua Frema Osei-Opare - a former country director
of ActionAid-Ghana – gave the key note address, defending
Government’s position but also showing an opening for further dialogue.
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