All Have Equal Rights Regardless of Sexual Orientation - Legal Practitioner

A Training of Trainer's Workshop, organized as part of efforts to reduce gender-based violence and advocate equal opportunities for all, has taken place in Accra.

The two-day training workshop, which took participants through areas such as Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV), Human Rights, Sexually-Transmitted Infections (STI's) and Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS), was the fifth in succession by Inerela + Ghana, a faith-based international organization made up of religious leaders living with or personally affected by HIV/AIDS.

It was designed to bring influential females, religious leaders, policy makers, law enforcers, the media and counselors as well as those affected by SGBV and survivors into a stigma-free space to discuss approaches of mobilizing faith communities to address their problems and provide possible respite.

In an address, a legal practitioner, Yaa Fosua, called for the equal treatment for all regardless of their sex.

Mad Fosua reminded government of the need to enforce the several Treaties and Conventions on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women that it had signed, adding that gender was not calling for men and women to be equal but the creation of a level playing field for all, so as to avoid gender-based violence and its vices.

In a statement, Mrs Mercy Acquah-Hayford, country representative of Inerela +Ghana, who doubles as a Deputy Director of Nursing Services at the Ridge Hospital in Accra, took time to take women through STI and HIV/AIDS education.

Mrs Acquah-Hayford expressed concern about the failure by several women to practice safe sex to avoid Sexually-Transmitted Infections (STI's) and urged women to be vigilant by assessing the genitals of their male partners to avoid exposure to infections".

She reminded women of the increasing transmission rate of HIV/AIDS, alongside STI's which, she said, claimed the lives of women across the world and, most especially, in Ghana.

She, therefore, stressed the need for the creation of more allies and collaborations to provide institutional synergies and encourage best practices for an HIV stigma free society.

Source: ISD (Delassie Mabel Awuku)

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